A Warm Welcome to Barlaston First School’s Website
Welcome to Barlaston First School. It is my great pleasure to welcome you, as the head teacher of the school, to our website.
“Thank you! What an amazing school where the children are so happy and confident, and achieve well.”
This was a quote from a parent who said goodbye to our school recently, having had all three of her children educated through our caring and nurturing school.
We are a small village school in Staffordshire with approaching 160 pupils from ages 3-9 years. The children join our school nursery, then filter into our reception class, and leave at the end of year 4. Our children move to Christ Church Academy or Walton Priory Middle School, both in the nearby town of Stone. Our intake consists of children from Barlaston and Wedgwood villages, Stone, Blurton, Trentham, Meir Heath and further afield.
We also have our Little Dormouse Nursery, which is a housed in a brand new building and is simply beautiful! The nursery is led by a highly skilled early years teacher and is proving very popular. This is a very exciting addition to our lovely school and we are very proud of it!
On entering our school, many people comment on the warm welcome, the learning atmosphere and how happy our children are. This is a very accurate view of Barlaston First School and is mainly due to our ethos of “Let Your Light Shine.” This is taken from the book of Matthew and is at the root of all we do. Children and staff know there are many different ways to let your light shine. We do not just praise and focus on academic achievements, but on the development of skills for life, or life skills as the children know them e.g. honesty, manners and being a good friend. This enables our children to leave our school, knowing they have essential skills to develop and carry them through their life.
With the school only being small, there is a close family atmosphere where the staff know the pupils well and the children look after and help each other. There is an open door policy for pupils and parents, enabling communication to be key. We pride ourselves on this being a strength of our school.
We have close links with the village church with many traditional Christian celebrations taking place there, led by the children. We still enjoy many village traditions that we consider to be very important to our school e.g. maypole dancing and entering produce grown in the school garden in the village show. We consider these traditions to be essential in encouraging the pupils to take part in the wider community events and to feel part of the village.
The children learn through an exciting and enriched creative topic based curriculum. Outdoor learning features strongly, and we are very proud of our solar dome. We also have an amazing garden, and a spiritual garden area, camp fire site and many other lovely outdoor learning features. The children really enjoy their learning in school both indoors and out. They understand the need for rules and boundaries, and the need to be safe, whilst learning, thriving and enjoying school.
We are a happy school, which is growing in size due to popularity, and we thrive on providing an exciting learning environment where children can grow in confidence and knowledge, and above all, be happy.
We would love to show you around our school. We have an official open day/evening with early years staff available to answer questions and show you around our reception and nursery. This is usually held in October and will be advertised on our website. Should you wish to view the school, please contact the school office on 01782 372543 to book an appointment.
We look forward to meeting you.
Best wishes
John Gordon
Head teacher