STATE PRIMARY SCHOOL OF THE YEAR
State Primary School of the Year: StStephen’s Primary, East Ham
Almost every child at St Stephen’s in Newham has English as a second language and a fifth are on free school meals, yet the school has returned record-breaking results
Judith O’Reilly
November 19 2017, 12:01am,The Sunday Times
The 10-year-old boy fidgeted in the chair next to her. Head teacher NeenaLall, didn’t need to consult her notes to know what they’d say. Written off by his previous school.Fostered, vulnerable, angry at his situation, easily distracted.A trouble-maker who kept the wrong kind of company, with a poor record of attendance and a worse record of attainment.And brimful to the top with potential and charm.
No. St Stephen’s wasn’t writing off this child today or any other day.
Lall reached for the day-by-day diary she had ordered for her pupil from Amazon. A picture of the New York skyline on the cover.A small lock and key. She slid it across the polished table and towards the boy.
“For you,” shesaid. “I want you to write down everything you’re thinking and decide what you are going to say out loud. Write down when you’re feeling angry, or, however it is you’re feeling. Whenever you need to. What do you think?”
The boy sat up in his chair. His large brown eyes on her face. His small hand pulled the diary towards him. He smiled.
Lall said: “At that time, he was a very troubled young man, but he was also a very sharp and intelligent young man. He touched base with me regularly. He knuckled under, he focused, and he flourished.
“We gave him the opportunity to be deputy head boy and he rose to that challenge. It was clear we believed in him and that he mattered.”
Turning lives around. Helping children who start school significantly behind where they should be “blossom” into global citizens.Looking to a future for them of top universities and career success. Little wonder then, that there are four applications for every place in the Newham school. That the intake is – aside from siblings and children in care – effectively from a catchment area of two to three streets around the school.
St Stephen’s likes to turn out confident, respectful, modern British citizens, says head teacher NeenaLallAKIRA SUEMORI/THE SUNDAY TIMES
Lall is clear the school’s success is inextricably intertwined with its vision. She said: “Everything we do here comes from our vision that every a St Stephen’s child blossoms into a confident, respectful, modern British citizen prepared to be an aspirational contributor in the global community.”
At first sight, it is a tough ask. Despite Newham’s rising employment and income levels, children at St Stephen’s nursery start well behind where they should be. The number of pupils on free school meals is 22%, compared with a national average of 14.5%. Even more significantly, an astonishing 38 languages are spoken in the school and 96% of children don’t have English as their first language. The most popular languages spoken being Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati.
And yet, last year the children attained a scaled score of 114 in the government’s new key stage 2 assessments for maths (where 100 is the expected level of achievement). In reading, the level was 111, while in spelling, grammar and punctuation it was 115. Taken together, the combined score of 340 across all three assessments was the best of any primary school in England – and better than every independent prep school in the country to boot.
No state primary school has achieved this feat before, helping to make St Stephen’sour State Primary School of the Year.
The tougher Sats were the first to test the new “knowledge-based” national curriculum which has been taught in schools since 2014. (Previously attainment was measured in levels.)
In turn, this has led to a change in how Parent Power has ranked primary schools. We now measure the achievements of all children in primary schools and not just those who achieved the old level 5, indicative of ability about two years above the children’s actual age.
Lall herself has been at the school since 2000, was deputy for eight years and has been head since 2011. She attributes the children’s achievements to a potent mix of catching children early; nailing down basic skills; a culture of aspiration; and great, dedicated staffing.
St Stephen’s becomes an academy in January and is actively looking for other schools to work with. There are 540 pupils in the primary and the school is also helped by its federation with St Stephen’s Nursery School (180 pupils) and a children’s centre, which operate from the same site.
All homework throughout the school is centred on achieving or securing basic skillsAKIRA SUEMORI/THE SUNDAY TIMES
Not only are there maintained nursery classes and extended daycare for working parents, but there’s support for expectant and new mothers. Two midwifery clinics operate out of the site with eight midwives, while toddler groups and health visitors educate and support parents through booklets, guidance, workshops and home visits on how to talk, engage and play with a child, as well as providing advice on how to make a child ready for school.
As Lall said: “We were finding some of our parents needed support in parenting – in bringing children up and teaching them what needs to be done. This way, we bring them in and get them used to the St Stephen’s way early. It all contributes to our success.”
Some inner-city schools struggle with children with challenging behaviours, sometimes because of neglect or family breakdown or parental attitudes to learning. St Stephen’s has a different problem – over-nurturing.
“In India, Pakistan and Bangladesh the systems and culture of bringing up children are very different to here,” Lall said. “With my Punjabi Sikh heritage I can see the pitfalls. Parents can find it difficult to say no and they can be quite over-nurturing.”
Parents are encouraged to let the child be more independent, for instance, feeding themselves earlier as opposed to still being fed at three or four years old.
Once expectations shift in terms of what a child can do for themselves, parents embrace the change. “They are surprised children can become independent so early, but the parents want to learn. They are very supportive and they want the best for their children.”
There are four applications for every place at St Stephen’sAKIRA SUEMORI/THE SUNDAY TIMES
Lall herself was educated independently and she’s determined that her pupils have the same quality of education as any child in an independent school. Last year, she and her chairman of governors toured Eton, Harrow, Oundle in Northamptonshire, Brighton College, and Forest School in northeast London to judge the education on offer and were quick to import the high expectations considered a norm in the independent sector.
At St Stephen’s this culture of aspiration means children routinely work a year above the national curriculum. For instance, by the end of year 3, the seven-year-olds know all their times tables up to 12 forwards, backwards, and can tell you what numbers you would multiply together to get a particular total. Pupils at St Stephen’s used to be aged 10 before they were expected to demonstrate that level of numerical proficiency.
“I thought – why can’t every child get the education I got, regardless of whether they can pay for it?” said Lall.
“We were identifying some of our children as real high-flyers so we went into these independent schools, and they told us ‘we work two years ahead of the national curriculum’.
“We already had that kind of thinking, so we thought if children in those schools could do that, why couldn’t children in our school.”
A necessary requirement of that achievement is securing the basics early on, which give teachers a solid foundation for further work. “The government push on basic skills has really supported the work we do,” said Lall.
St Stephen’s children also benefit from trips to the ballet, theatre and art galleriesAKIRA SUEMORI/THE SUNDAY TIMES
“Once you’ve got your bread-and-butter in terms of number fluency, times tables, handwriting, phonics and reading, you can do higher problem-solving, deciphering of text, deeper meaning and inference. But in the past, we were finding we were still doing basic skills higher up the school.”
All homework throughout the school is centred on achieving or securing basic skills. It’s an approach that paid dividends with the new key stage 2 tests which included the first year of an arithmetic paper – one of three maths tests in total.
“I said to the year 6 teachers that our expectation is that every child gets 100% in that arithmetic paper, because there is no reason they shouldn’t. Once I lifted the teachers’ expectations, that is what happened – the majority of our children got 100%, and I’m very proud to say that.”
But it’s far from old-fashioned, classroom-based learning. St Stephen’s children also benefit from trips to the ballet, theatre and art galleries and residential events like a sleepover night at the Science Museum and a week working on a farm (the brainchild of children’s author Michael Morpurgo).
Securing the basic skills from the very start is also bolstered by a robust monitoring, tracking and support system which quickly identifies and addresses areas of concern for individual children. And Lall is also full of praise for the “highly effective, hardworking, intelligent staff” of 32 teachers (including two “superb” deputies) and 25-strong support team who all start work at seven or earlier in the morning and who leave at six at night when she chivvies them out the door. More than half the staff have been at the school for over eight years; some have been there for more than 20 years.
“Our mantra is – every child can. If they can’t, why can’t they? There are no excuses and every day counts.”