An Enriched Education at The Premier Academy
The Premier Academy is proud to deliver a bespoke, comprehensive curriculum which enhances and extends the core national curriculum. A key aspect of this is delivered through our outstanding music department, which is described in glorious detail, so make sure to read all about it here.
Woven within all other subjects, you will find a plethora of exciting enrichment experiences, with teachers creatively and collaboratively extending their teaching through off-site visits and on-site visitors to provide real-life experiences and guidance.
Promoting children’s understanding of the world and how to be good citizens features heavily in our provision: we have a well-established and effective behaviour management system which recognises that children can make choices which can have negative impacts on themselves and/or others and that learning from a mistake and not repeating it is the desired outcome. Hence, behaviour management is calm, controlled, restorative and highly effective. Relationships are strong.
We accept and actively seek out opportunities linked to developing children’s knowledge of keeping themselves safe, such as: online safety talks, knife crime workshops, rail safety presentations and a range of NSPCC workshops and assemblies pitched appropriately to age and cognition.
Healthy lifestyles are also a key focus, with all children receiving a subsidised hot meal at lunchtime and a mid morning fruit and yogurt choice for snack. Water consumption is managed and therefore monitored through provision of a water bottle to every child; the water bottle stays in school and is washed each day and refilled throughout the day. We also ensure a minimum of two hours of quality PE each week. We have a PE specialist teacher who teaches each class weekly and guides teachers to provide a quality second lesson. Children wear their PE kit for the duration of a PE day with no wasted time on changing. PE doesn’t stop on wet days as we have a large 3 badminton court sized PE Hall.
October 2022 – May 2023 saw all children in Years 1-6 participating in a programme of 6 lifestyle workshops delivered in school by the MoreLife team. They also offer an outreach service to families and a number of our families took advantage of this to make improvements.
Our children know they are valued, and they pull together as a community. We focus on core values and develop these further through our appointment of prefects, school councillors and our house system: we have between 10% and 50% of each year group holding positions of responsibility which allows them to practise and develop leadership and team working skills in the classroom and on the playground. Or indeed, in the case of our Park Rangers, at the local parks and Premierville, our onsite outdoor learning village, with insect hotels, a pond and a variety of activity huts and sensory experiences for all ages. Appointing child leaders also provides an important forum for sharing and debating ideas and solutions to problems.
This focus on community values extends to our families, and this is embodied in our annual Cultural Diversity week, where children study and share information about different cultures and countries, giving them opportunities to talk about their own and family members’ experiences and beliefs. Celebration is a key focus, and festivals and important cultural dates are recognised annually. We were proud to host a Ukrainian Culture Day in February 2023, with our Ukraine families at its centre, and an article about the day was published in First News. The Global Science Opera has also led to excellent links to schools in other countries, with regular video calls being made with them to share and compare experiences.
Our programme of off-site visits to the local area and beyond enhances children’s understanding of the opportunities available to them, be it half day, full day or residential. We aim for three visits out per child per year and make these as accessible as possible through the use of our two TPA minibuses and subsidised costs. By the time they leave TPA, most children will have experienced a huge range of visits including snow sledging and horse-riding, and many will have experienced a residential activity trip.
Linked strongly to our music department provision is our commitment to children as performers; all children sing weekly and are provided with opportunities to perform on our large stage to both child and adult audiences. The build-up of each class’s annual performance to their families affords lots of practice, and children’s confidence and self-belief unfolds before our eyes.
Our Spanish department is specialist and innovative. We have a dedicated, exciting and comprehensive Spanish website for children to access in school and at home, with games and challenges and links to coding opportunities. You can find it here. Our younger children are taught Spanish through Dance in our state of the art dance studio with a blended approach to the core development of language, motor control and musicality.