Welcome to Acton Park Primary School - Croeso y Ysgol Gynradd Parc Acton.
As the new headteacher at Acton Park Primary School, I would like to welcome you. We hope you find our new e-prospectus useful.
Acton Park is a popular and successful school where pupils thrive! We are situated at the heart of the Acton Community and border onto the beautiful Acton Park. We provide a happy and exciting place for pupils to learn and offer warmth and security where respect for one another is encouraged. We are an inclusive school and serve our community well.
Acton Park Primary School is blessed with wonderful grounds including an expansive field environment and many outdoor spaces within which children can learn.
Our dedicated teaching staff have developed an exciting curriculum offer and pupils achieve well, making good progress both academically and socially. Learning is purposeful and develops pupils' knowledge and skills as they journey through the school - developing as independent learners who learn to think and question for themselves!
If you are currently looking for a school for your children I would encourage you to come and see us! A member of our senior team would be happy to show you round!
Sincerely,
J. Roberts
Acton Park Primary School, Box Lane. Wrexham. LL12 8BT. 01978 318950.
Our School Day
Children are admitted into school the term after their third birthday. Our school provides nursery education for two and a half hours per day (currently 8:55am until 11:25am). Our nursery staff provide engaging, hands-on, experiential learning experiences for the children in a fun and engaging environment. Following their session, many of our children enjoy attending our wrap-around provision, where they can play, explore and experiment alongside their friends in a safe, creative and nurturing environment.
Throughout their Infant years, children engage in practical, hands-on activities alongside formal learning. They enjoy learning individual letter sounds and blends before progressing onto writing words, sentences and, when developmentally ready, writing within a range of different forms and for different purposes. Children explore numbers and shapes in their environment and will begin to reason and investigate with maths. Children are encouraged to challenge their own learning and find different ways to solve problems. We enjoy teaching children about their locality and heritage and the importance of being a global citizen.
Junior aged children (aged 7-11) develop their skills in a broad range of contexts. They make further links within and across the areas of learning and experiences and their knowledge and skills are challenged within practical and formal problem solving, reasoning and strategy both in familiar and unfamiliar contexts. Children are taught to become increasingly independent in their learning and in their choices and we enjoy making enhancements to our curriculum with our trips, visitors to school and through residential visits.
School session times
To support our families, we offer a flexible start to our school day. Our doors open at 8:45am and children are welcome to come into school between 8:45am and 8:55am.
- 8:55am - Start of our school day
- 11:25am - Nursery session ends
- 3:00pm - School finishes for children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
- 3:15pm - School finishes for children in Years' 3-6
Wrap-Around care
To support working families, we offer full wrap-around care. Our day begins at 7:30am with pre-school childcare; breakfast, games and fun for all primary aged children. Our breakfast club begins at 8:10am and all children are welcome to attend to enjoy breakfast and social time with their friends.
At the end of the school day, children are welcome to attend the after-school club which operates from 3pm until 6pm. Please use the link on our school website to find further information about our after-school care, Playgroup provision (aged 2 upwards) and Holiday club or contact the manager of the provision, Carla Davies, on 01978 447071.
Attendance and Punctuality
There is a proven link between attendance and attainment at school. The significance of school attendance must not and cannot be underestimated, particularly for those children and young people who show signs of disaffection or unhappiness. Promoting positive behaviour and excellent attendance is the responsibility of the whole school and wider community. All children should be at school, on time, every day the school is open, unless the reason for absence is unavoidable such as illness.
Schools have a legal duty to publish attendance figures and to promote attendance. Equally, parents have a legal duty and responsibility to ensure that their children attend school on a regular basis. If your child is absent, the school must be notified as quickly as possible. Messages can be sent via email or left on the school absence line. In the case of infectious diseases, children should remain at home for the given time as advised by your GP or the school. Absence without an acceptable reason will be regarded as unauthorised. Medical appointments should be made out of school hours. If this is unavoidable, the appointment must be reported to the school prior to the appointment day.
In cases of persistent absence and poor punctuality the Headteacher is required to inform the Local Authority Education Welfare Service. In some cases, the Local Authority will impose a fine on parents for their child’s non-attendance at school.
Curriculum Design and Organisation
‘Nothing is so essential as universal access to, and acquisition of, the experiences, knowledge and skills that our children people need for employment, lifelong learning and active citizenship. A school’s curriculum is everything a learner experiences in pursuit of the four purposes. It is not simply what we teach, but how we teach and crucially, why we teach it.’ Curriculum for Wales
The Curriculum for Wales offers schools the opportunity to design, develop and deliver a curriculum that is bespoke to the school, its pupils and its community. At Acton Park Primary School we adopt an inquiry-based approach to our curriculum - one that encourages children to explore, ask questions, solve problems, share ideas and discover meaning. It is a model that emphasises the importance of the learning process and one that develops independent, creative, critical thinkers. Our curriculum is dynamic in that it develops the Four Purposes and Values for Life through a broad range of experiences and opportunities, and purposeful in that it is systematically designed to allow progressive development of children’s knowledge and skills, offering opportunities to continually apply these.
Provision for Children with Additional Learning Needs
A person has additional learning needs (ALN) if he or she has a learning difficulty or disability which calls for additional learning provision. This is whether the learning difficulty or disability arises from a medical condition or otherwise.
This would be if they:
- have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age
- have a disability which prevents or makes it more difficult for them to make use of facilities provided for others of the same age in mainstream maintained school.
At Acton Park Primary School, we are committed to working together to support all pupils to help meet their needs and reach their full potential. There are 3 levels of support:
- Universal provision
- Targeted universal provision
- Individual development plan
Forest School
At Acton Park, we have worked hard to create a Forest School environment that will cater for all of our children’s needs. We are also very fortunate that our school borders onto Acton Park which will allows for additional visits and activities.
The ethos of Forest School stems from Denmark, when in 1993 a group of students from the UK visited and observed the positive impacts Forest School had on the children attending. Since then, the recognition of Forest Schools and the important contribution they can bring to a child’s learning and development has rapidly grown.
Much research has been carried out into the impact Forest School has on a child. A study in 2006 by The Forestry Commission Wales identified the following benefits of attending Forest School:
- Improved social skills
- Improved self-esteem and self confidence
- Improved physical (fine and gross) motor skills
- Improved motivation and concentration
- Contribute to the development of language and communication skills
- Contribute to learners’ knowledge and understanding of the world around them.
Religion, Values and Ethics
Religion, values and ethics is taught throughout the school from Nursery to Year 6 and is nondenominational in character.
Religion, values and ethics (RVE) education enables children to experience and understand their rights. These include their human rights to freedom of religion thought and conscience (Articles 14 of the UNCRC), their rights to cultural participation (Articles 15 and 31 of the UNCRC) and their right to their own identity (Articles 2, 7 and 30 of the UNCRC).
At Acton, we teach RVE through:
- Explicit teaching of world beliefs
- Exploring ideas through “Big Questions"
- Encouraging all pupils to see links with real world events
- Reflection on our world and how we can make a difference
- Opportunities to study local and global contexts
- Developing critical thinking skills
- Age appropriate worship time and reflection
- Stories, school events and visitors
Relationships and Sexual Education
The purpose of school RSE, located within a broader, carefully planned programme of personal, social and health education (PSHE), is gradually and appropriately to prepare children and young people for adult life and positive relationships. It supports them through their physical, emotional and moral development, and helps them to understand themselves, respect others and sustain healthy relationships of all kinds.
We see SRE as laying the foundation for factual knowledge. It prepares children for the changes at puberty, physically, emotionally and socially. It helps develop the child’s skills in being able to apply information, and creates opportunities for reflecting on attitudes and values that may affect their decisions and choices in later years.
In primary years, RSE is largely about relationships and the need to focus on friendship, growing and changing, and the building of self-esteem.
Welsh
Acton Park Primary is an English Medium school, however we are very proud of our Welsh roots and take every opportunity to celebrate our heritage. We use incidental Welsh around school at every opportunity and encourage pupils to use Welsh phrases in lessons and around on the playground. We also incorporate Welsh heritage in our learning topics for example in art we look at Welsh artists as well as holding an annual Eisteddfod complete with awarding the prestigious 'Chair' and house 'cup'.
Sporting Provision
The school has two halls which are well equipped with PE equipment and we also use the tarmac playgrounds and large field for outdoor games. There are a wide range of sports activities undertaken during the year. These include swimming, netball, hockey, tag rugby, football, tennis, athletics, rounders, basketball and cricket. Pupils get opportunities to represent the school in some of these activities and to visit sporting venues and to use their specialist facilities.
Any child taking part in sporting activities represents the school and this has equal status to academic achievement. It also fosters team spirit and the development of skills. We aim to give children of all abilities the opportunity to participate in events and choose identified children to be part of our school teams for competitive events. We hold an annual sports day.
Extra-Curricular Activities
We offer an exciting and broad range of sporting and non-sporting extra curricular activities for our children. Previously our Reception children have enjoyed mini-fit and lego club and our older children have participated in French, football, Kwik-cricket and netball. Our clubs change regularly and we try to offer a diverse range to suit the needs of our learners.
Health and Safety
We aim to ensure that children are safe and secure at all times. The school adheres to the guidelines outlined by Wrexham Council regarding Health and Safety in Education. Any health and safety concerns are to be reported to the Headteacher. Visitors MUST report to the school office where they will be asked to sign in and wear identification badges if working in and around the school. Parents should not enter the school via classroom doors but report to the school office. All staff have a DBS check, this includes contract workers. The school car park is for the use of staff. In addition, blue badge holders are permitted to park in the car park.
The school site is secure throughout the school day. It is monitored by CCTV cameras, 24 hours a day. Please note that dogs are not allowed on the school site. The school has a strict no smoking policy on the whole site. Any person using inappropriate language within the school grounds will be requested to leave. Pupils are not allowed to use the play area or equipment left outside classrooms at the beginning and end of the school day.
Equal Opportunities
Acton Park Primary School Primary School is committed to equality and promoting diversity. We have adopted and work hard to adhere to all of the Wrexham guidelines and policies for equal opportunities. Copies of our policies can be found on our school website.
Complaints Procedure
The Local Authority has a complaints procedure as required by the Education Reform Act. It describes how anyone with a complaint can exercise his or her right to have a complaint processed within the legal framework of the Act. The arrangements cover complaints made by parents and others in respect of duties or exercise of powers by the LA or Governing Body. The document is available and will be given, if desired, to any person wishing to make a complaint under the specified arrangements.
All complaints in the first instance should be addressed to the Headteacher. If the complaint pertains to the Headteacher, this should be made to the Chair of Governors. Should the school and complaint fail to reach a resolution, LA and Welsh Government guidelines and procedures will be followed. However, it is usually possible for queries and problems regarding all aspects of school life to be dealt with effectively by good home/school communication.