Five Ashes Primary School
Five Ashes Church of England Primary School is a very small school with a warm and friendly family atmosphere. The school is set in a rural area in the village of Five Ashes drawing children from a range of socio economic backgrounds. Our local community is a mix of both expensive and affordable family homes, social housing and a settled traveller population; our school community reflects this range.
We have 3 classes and 62 children on roll. Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 share a classroom with an EYFS teaching assistant employed for every morning to support the teaching of the Reception aged children.
From September 2016, we entered into a formal federation and became part of the Aspire federation with Mayfield CE Primary School led by one Executive Head with Heads of School in each school. We have since formed the Weald federation with Mark Cross CE Primary School and Frant CE Primary School where we share an Executive Headteacher over the four church schools.
The school was last inspected by Ofsted in March 2020. Overall effectiveness was judged as “good”. The areas for improvement identified by Ofsted in March 2020
Senior leaders have made many improvements to the curriculum so that pupils learn well across a wide range of subjects. For all subjects, leaders have written detailed progression documents that describe the expected sequence of learning over time. However, teachers are not yet consistently using these documents to plan all their lessons and to deepen their subject knowledge in a few subjects. Leaders should ensure that teachers do so. Curriculum leaders should check that the progression documents help pupils to learn in a sequential way across the whole curriculum.
Pupils learn to read fluently. Nevertheless, leaders correctly identified that pupils were not developing strong enough comprehension skills, particularly in key stage 2. Leaders have successfully introduced a greater focus on developing these skills. However, teachers do not yet teach comprehension skills with sufficient rigour. Leaders should ensure that this happens so that standards in reading continue to improve.
The school was graded “Outstanding” in all areas by Anglican Church school inspectors in March 2018.
A variety of after school clubs operate (dance, pottery and sports) and the school provides a breakfast club.
The school offers a range of enrichment activities and opportunities participation rates are high.
At Five Ashes, pathways will be endless; children are cherished and challenged to thrive.
Five Ashes Church of England school is a small, supportive and cohesive family. We are a warm and kindly community that nurtures and cares for everyone, valuing the talents and skills of each and every individual. Our vision is built on a foundation of Christian values, guiding our pupils to become confident, independent and compassionate young people.
Through providing quality learning experiences and having huge expectations we aim to inspire life-long learners who reach their full potential. Our purpose is to create children whom are equipped with the tools to thrive.
Our Christian ethos is supported by our Values for Life programme, which we have worked hard with our local Church to develop. We see our Values for Life as dovetailing with British Values and an aid to developing a well-rounded child capable of playing a responsible and effective part in modern Britain. We focus on a different Value each term; children in Key Stage 2 will focus on that Value as their first homework of each term so that families are involved. Each Value is celebrated and explained in class circle time and religious education lessons; it is then referred to at each collective worship throughout the term. The hall has a Values display made up of children’s work and an award for following these values is given out each Friday in sharing assembly. This is underpinned by our core behaviours/values, which are Courage, Compassion, Respect and Responsibility; these form the basis of our approach to Behaviour for Learning and are detailed in full in the Behaviour for Learning Policy.
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