Berkley First School

BERKLEY VA Church of England First School have had an exciting 2017 with WOW! days, clubs and receiving dyslexia-friendly status.

Headteacher Steve Kirby said, “I am delighted to be given the opportunity to say a few words to promote my school, Berkley VA Church of England First School, having been appointed as headteacher in September 2016.

“As a church school, we are very fortunate to have St Mary’s Church adjacent to the school so that we can hold regular services there. Every Monday we hold a celebratory assembly in church, where we celebrate successes and each class takes it in turns to share good work. On Fridays we hold our own service where the children sing, the Year 4’s play the recorders, we pray, Mrs Burgess plays the organ and three outside speakers take it in turns to talk to the children.

“We hold regular Wow! days when the children receive a different diet, such as our recent art day, or the kindness day, or visiting authors, or trips out, such as to the Apple store and Bath Children’s Festival.

“We also encourage the children to enter competitions, such as writing competitions – indeed, a number of our children have been fortunate to see their work in print. We run many clubs, from the breakfast club before school each morning to after-school clubs such as an art club, writing club, gardening club, multi-skills, to name but a few.

“Berkley has very much a family feel to it, where our mantra is “Each child is my child.” All stakeholders work together for the good of the children i.e. the governors, pupils, parents and staff, all of whom contribute to the school development plan. Currently we are working on providing as much challenge as possible for all children. Our more-able pupils are working with a Berkley teacher and a county literacy adviser to produce three Berkley school magazines.

“We have also improved the level of communication with parents this year, so we now organise two parents’ evenings, two drop-in sessions, a progress report at Christmas and a full report at the end of the year.  We also invite parents into the classroom in the summer term and we run a number of parental workshops including maths, phonics and a SATs session. The head also holds parental surgeries once a month.

“Earlier this term we received dyslexia-friendly status.

“Please see our new, improved website to learn more about our school and take a virtual tour of the school, which our school council filmed and produced.