Bitesize Beacon
The Coronavirus Pandemic changed the face of education. This page was originally created in Autumn 2020 and Spring 2021 to give parents and careers who were considering The Beacon as a choice for their child to start school in September 2021, but we realise much of the information in the short video clips may be of interest to other people too!
Please note these films were created before we opened to Nursery aged children.
Obviously we are now fully open and offering in-person visits.
Welcome video
Learning
Beach and Forest School
School Council
One Big Beacon Family
As one big Beacon family we ensure that we put the children at the heart of everything we do. Click here to hear about our staff first hand and here to meet our Beacon family team.
The Reception team
Our Reception team can't wait to meet you!
With creatively used indoor and outdoor space available (whatever the weather!), our reception children are engaged in a wide variety of enriching, creative and imaginative learning throughout the school day. Click here to find out more.
Clubs and extra activities
Our staff team bring a wealth of experience and talent to our school and offer the children an opportunity to learn and discover these through after school clubs. Click here to find out more.
Extended Schools
We recognise that for many families there is the need for wrap-around childcare. Therefore, we provide a breakfast club and after school club to help make the school day work for you. Our clubs are timed to fit in with the train timetable, so we’re open from 7.45am until 6pm for those who need it.
Click here for further information.
This year (2019 - 2020) we have been able to offer Holiday Club experiences for children for the first time. It’s something we hope to continue as they were much loved and well-attended. Mr Troman and Mr Wright ran these for us. We are also able to signpost other local holiday club opportunities.
What did we do in the first lockdown to support our children and families?
Whilst we really hope we won’t have to repeat the experience, you might be interested to have a look through our COVID archive as it will provide you with another insight into who we are and how we support our families.
Our vision
A love of reading
Computers and Online Safety
Music - a Y5 lesson!
Curriculum
Our vision is for ‘Living life in all its fullness' (John 10:10). We aim to work together with parents and carers to provide learning and play experiences which will engage children’s interests; inspire them to want to know more; motivate them to persevere with their learning and empower them to develop skills of independence.
Click here to find out more about our inspirational curriculum.
Assessment and reporting
We use a variety of ways to assess your child’s learning, emotional, social and mental health development to help us work closely with you to make sure we are meeting their needs. Click here for an overview of how we achieve this at the Beacon and here for our previous Ofsted report.
Special Educational Needs and Disability
Where a child has additional needs, it is absolutely crucial that there is a close partnership between home and school. Our promise to you is that we will listen carefully and work together to ensure that our system of regular ‘Assess, Plan, Do, Review’ cycle provides the personalised support and challenge your child needs to make great progress to meet their targets, whatever they may be. You can find out more about SEND and our SENDCO here.
PTFA
We have a friendly and enthusiastic PTFA who make an amazing effort to run events which not only raise money for the school but also bring our Beacon family closer together. There are always opportunities to help. Here is a link for more information.
Governing Board
All Governing Boards, no matter what type of schools or how many schools they govern, have three core functions:
· Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction.
· Holding the Headteacher to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils, and the performance management of staff, and
· Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure its money is well spent.
Here is some more information about how our school is governed and here is a link to meet our Governing Body.
Well-being
Specialist Teachers
Global links (Europe and Tanzania)
School Meals
All children in Reception, year 1 and year 2 at state schools in England automatically get free school meals. Here is some more information about what we offer.
School Uniform
Our uniform can be purchased locally. Click here for further details about what we wear in school.
English as an additional language
We ensure that every child has access to education and work closely with Advisory Teachers, translators and other external agencies to provide support to children and adults where English is not their first language. Here is some further information.
Music
We have a number of music specialist teachers on our staff team and the school owns our own class sets of brass instruments, several sets of different types of drums, a samba kit and ‘learner’ flutes and clarinets. We regularly borrow other class sets! All children leave being able to read treble clef and play (at least) one brass instrument, and often more to a performance standard. The video above is a Year 5 lesson within a few weeks of the children starting to learn brass.
PE and Dance
We believe living a healthy and active lifestyle is paramount to learning to live life in all its fullness. We ensure that opportunities are provided for movement and exercise throughout the day. Our expert Sports Coaches are all long-standing members of the Beacon Staff Team and provide high quality PE and Dance lessons to our children. Below are links to find out more about them.
Katie Murray - www.stepupanddance.co.uk/about-me/
Marc Troman - https://www.primary-sports.co.uk/
Life in school
Find out more about what school is like being reading our weekly newsletters. They can be found here.
Global Links
Life is of course very different now, but we are an outward-looking school. Our children will grow up to be citizens of a very different looking world and it’s important to us that they learn about and learn from countries, cultures and languages from across the world. Find out more about our links with schools in Spain, Greece, Italy and Slovenia and the trips we’ve made. Just before the first lockdown, we were informed that our bid to foster our link with a school in Tanzania had been accepted.
If you'd like to know more...
We believe in having an open dialogue with all our families at all times and there are many ways to contact us. Click here for our contact details or here to visit our Parents and Carers page.
Find out more about what our families say about us here. This document tells you a bit about what they find love about about The Beacon.