A letter from the head teacher

Thank you for looking at our school. You are probably looking at several, and you will have noticed that they all say much the same things. So let me tell you what we are actually trying to do, and what we are not.

Before I came here I taught in a school where I had forty-three children in my class. I could not tell you today which of those forty-three could read and which could not, and that is not a failure of memory. There were simply too many of them for me to know.

Everything about how this school is organised comes from that. We cap Lower Primary classes at twenty-two, and when a class reaches twenty-two we open another stream rather than putting in another desk — which costs us money we would rather not spend. We put two adults in every Lower Primary and Preschool room. We hear every child read aloud, in a group of six, three times a week. And at half term we check every child’s reading and write to you if it is behind.

That last part is the one that matters most, and it is the one you should hold us to. If your child is behind, you will hear it from us, in writing, in week six — not in a report card in December, and not at the BECE. We will then do something about it, at our cost, without you having to ask.

Here is what we do not promise. We do not promise that every child will be top of the class, or that every Basic 9 pupil will get into their first-choice senior high school. When we sit down with a Basic 9 family before school selection, we bring the mock results and we say plainly what is realistic. Some of those conversations are uncomfortable. We have them anyway, because a child who is placed at their fourth choice is in a far better position than a child who is not placed at all.

We also do not cane. No member of staff here may strike a child, for any reason, and that is a condition of employment rather than a preference. Children behave here because the rules are clear and applied the same way to everybody, and because they are known by name.

If any of that appeals to you, come and see us. Not on an open day — come on an ordinary Tuesday or Thursday morning, when the classes are in session and nobody has tidied up for you. Walk into the ICT laboratory and count the machines. Ask the Basic 3 teacher how many children are in her class today. Ask to see the safeguarding policy, and ask who the designated lead is. Ask for last year’s BECE results in full.

We will answer all of it. Any school worth your child’s next nine years will.