WELCOME TO OUR SCHOOL!

Our school is in the heart of the Royal Signals Camp in Blandford, enjoying an extremely safe and friendly environment for the children and extensive grounds for sports and playtime.

We have completed a reorganisation to become a primary school catering for children aged 4 to 11. This is both an exciting and challenging time. It is giving us a chance to review what we offer and extend some of our provision to include things like French, music lessons and residential trips into the curriculum.

The long term plan for our school is set out in the five areas that we feel are important to consider, when creating conditions for optimal learning – the ethos, the community, the premises and environment, the management and the curriculum.

ETHOS

We believe our school should be a happy, caring and safe place, where our pupils and our staff can achieve their full potential by showing respect and understanding for each other. We want to ensure that children are offered challenging tasks within a climate where risk-taking is encouraged.

COMMUNITY

We aim to make our school an active part of the community and make the community play an active role in school. We want to work in partnership with other services on camp to provide the best service possible to the community. We want to provide an education that takes account of the context of life inside a military community.

ENVIRONMENT

The school environment should be safe, bright and welcoming. It should help towards building a positive climate. Both the indoor and outdoor environments should provide stimulating learning opportunities for our children. We aim to offer good resources throughout the school that will help our children to become independent learners.

MANAGEMENT

We want our school to have high quality learning and teaching and good leadership. We want to work closely with all stakeholders in the school. We want to be forward thinking in our approach and establish a positive team spirit.

CURRICULUM

We want our children to learn and achieve high standards through a broad and balanced curriculum. It should offer motivation and challenges, be delivered in creative ways and take account of the context of the school. We want our children to develop a thirst for learning and to encourage them to become independent in their learning.

The overall curriculum at the school is the responsibility of the Governing Body. At Downlands, the school curriculum policy has been developed through discussion by the staff and agreed by the Governing Body.

Helping children to develop as confident, enthusiastic and effective learners is a central purpose of primary education. We aim to provide a creative and flexible curriculum which helps all children achieve this. We feel that this creativity and flexibility is essential for children whose mobility is high. We must be able to react quickly to children’s needs to provide them with as much continuity as possible through their school life.

One of the key aspects of the curriculum at Downlands School is assessing an individual’s level and providing the next steps in their learning.

When the curriculum is planned at Downlands School all the children are taken into consideration and the work provided is matched to the ability and need of each of them. Some of this work is of a general nature and is carried out by the whole class at the same time. For specific pieces of work children will be grouped according to their needs and level of understanding. At other times children will be working on individual tasks that meet their own requirements.

Attention is given to ensure that the more able children are provided with an education that fully extends their skills and knowledge.

The staff of the school offer a range of extra-curriculum clubs for the children to participate in at lunch time and after school. These are currently available to children in year 2 and above.

Dorset has one admission date for all Reception children in the September at the start of the academic year. All children will attend part time in the Autumn term and be full time in the Spring and Summer terms. This is in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Local Education Authority. In the Autumn term they will finish at 1200 hrs. However, there are spaces available in Cygnets Pre-School and Blandford Camp Pre-School from 1200hrs -1500hrs at a cost of £7.50 per session. Pre booking is essential as spaces are limited.