St Elizabeth's Catholic Primary School

At St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Primary we aim to provide an excellent education where all children make progress.The children are encouraged to think for themselves and to acquire lifelong skills which will prepare them for life in a modern society. The development of the whole child is at the forefront of all our activities which means that we encourage academic achievement as well as their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. The teachers assess the children in their care, in order to plan with the needs of each child in mind, setting challenging but realistic targets so that children can make progress and achieve their potential.

We have embraced introduction of a new National Curriculum in September 2014. The school has worked on tailoring the new curriculum to incorporate the successful skills based curriculum that we use whilst ensuring that we are also delivering the statutory content of the National Curriculum.

We aim to be innovative in our practice to provide contextualised, stimulating learning opportunities which allow all our children to access learning. As part of the Wythenshawe Catholic Academy Trust we work closely with the other 3 schools sharing ideas and resources as well as being a very active part of our local catholic school cluster in Wythenshawe.

We ensure that children have a series of memorable learning experiences. This includes: visitors into school, themed dressing-up days, project work, an assembly or a recreated experience in school.We enable our pupils to succeed through challenging tasks and activities that encourage them to take risks. We develop their ability to think independently, enabling them to transfer their learning to all aspects of their life; preparing them for the future. We actively teach the skills needed to be a successful learner and reward these in our weekly ‘Gold Award’ assembly.

The national curriculum is just one element in the education of every child. There is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the national curriculum specifications. The national curriculum provides an outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum.

St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Primary School was founded by the Catholic Church to provide education for children of Catholic families. Whenever there are more applications than places available, priority will be given to Catholic children in accordance with the oversubscription criteria listed below. The school is conducted by its governing body as part of the Catholic Church in accordance with its trust deed and articles of association, and seeks at all times to be a witness to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

As a Catholic school, we aim to provide a Catholic education for all our pupils. At a Catholic school, Catholic doctrine and practice permeate every aspect of the school’s activity. It is essential that the Catholic character of the school’s education be fully supported by all families in the school. We therefore hope that all parents will give their full, unreserved and positive support for the aims and ethos of the school. This does not affect the right of an applicant who is not Catholic to apply for and be admitted to a place at the school in accordance with the admission arrangements.

The governing body is the admissions authority and has responsibility for admissions to this school. The local authority undertakes the co-ordination of admission arrangements during the normal admission round1 . The governing body has set its admission number at 30 pupils to be admitted to the reception year in the school year which begins in September, 2019. The governing body will, where logistically possible, admit twins and all siblings from multiple births where one of the children is the last child ranked within the school’s Published Admissions Number (“PAN”).

For children attending the school’s nursery, application to the reception class of the school must be made in the normal way, to the home local authority. Attendance at the school’s nursery does not automatically guarantee that a place will be offered at the school. The governing body reserves the right to withdraw the offer of a place or, where a child is already attending the school the place itself, where it is satisfied that the offer or place was obtained by deception.

The Department of Education have recently reinforced the need “to create and enforce a clear and rigorous expectation on all schools to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.”The Government set out its definition of British values in the 2011 ‘Prevent Strategy’, and these values have been reiterated by the Prime Minister this year. At St Elizabeth’s these values are reinforced regularly.