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Headteacher’s Welcome
Hello and welcome to our Woodlands Primary School website.
At Woodlands, our pupils know that we care for them and that we want them to thrive: “I love how you get treated in this school. You always get listened to, no matter what.” (Y6 Pupil, June 2022)
We respect our children and we respect their individuality.
We actively strive to provide and promote a welcoming, nurturing and inclusive community with equality of opportunity for all, that ensures we, ‘Inspire to Aspire.’
We want our pupils to thrive together, appreciating the rich benefits of diversity whilst simultaneously valuing everyone’s uniqueness: “We share our similarities; celebrate our differences.” (M Scott Peck)
We invest heavily in building strong respectful relationships and developing character.
Through a careful balance of challenge and support, our children learn to persevere in all that they do, growing in confidence, independence and responsibility.
One of our fundamental duties, as I see it, is to help our children to believe that they can achieve and to aspire to the fullest, deepest possibilities- in learning and in life.
With this in mind, I have created a unique “Enrichment Passport” for each child called “11 by 11”. (Available from January 2023.) This is to build up their cultural capital- “the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that a pupil can draw upon and which demonstrates their cultural awareness, knowledge and competence”. Examples of the eleven activities/achievements include: learning to play a musical instrument; performing a play on stage; visiting an art gallery/exhibition; representing the school at a sporting event. These will be completed by the time each pupil leaves us in Year 6, aged 11 (hence the title).
Cultural capital has also been identified as one of the key ingredients a person will draw upon to be successful in their further education, in society generally and in their chosen career. We always look to our children’s futures, as well as to their here and now.
“Pupils speak with pride about their school. They really value the calm and supportive ethos.” (Debbie Tregellas, Regional School Improvement and Excellence Lead, 22.06.22)
One of the happiest and most rewarding parts of my role is to see the amazing, varied examples of quality learning that my pupils want to share with me, often on a very regular basis. Whether it’s Maths journaling showing how to carry out complex operations, reading creative descriptions about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, hearing how a Y5 pupil has had her musical composition selected to be played by an orchestra, being told how many Y1 children have moved up two Phonics groups in one go, or finding out about the success of our mixed football team at the Salisbury Schools Football Festival, I still get excited about what our children achieve, and the meaningful progress made-day in, day out.
Please come and see us for yourselves; I would be proud to show you around our engaging, child-centred school.
With very best wishes,
Matthew Kitley
Headteacher
Working together to improve school attendance: please follow this link for an extremely helpful guide- click here
At Woodlands we know that the cost of supporting your children through school can put pressure on household budgets.
The Salisbury Area Board has produced the attached leaflet in partnership with the city council, agencies and organisations in Salisbury to help with the cSchool website (cost of living support)ost of living crisis. – click here