Contextual Statement

Great Dalby Primary School, A County Primary School which currently has 124 children on roll aged between 4 and 11 years.

The catchment area for the school includes Great Dalby itself, Thorpe Satchville, Twyford and Burrough on the Hill. However, because of the excellent reputation of the school in the area, we have a significant number of children in school who live outside the catchment area, in villages such as Burton Lazars and Kirby Bellars and also Melton Mowbray.

We are a well resourced, friendly and open school, committed to working closely with parents and the community. The accommodation includes 3 good-sized classrooms in the main building and a double mobile classroom which was installed in September 2001 and has proved to be a great success and helped alleviate some of the pressure on classroom space. There is a well-resourced main library, in addition to classroom libraries, and a central hall which is used for gymnastics, indoor games, dance and drama, and also for assemblies. School meals are prepared on site in our own kitchen. The school site is on the edge of the village and enjoys views across open countryside. There is a good sized playing field and playground and also a wildlife area with a pond. The new playground area at the bottom end of the field is now in use and is already a popular addition to the school's facilities. Our thanks go to The Friends of Great Dalby School, who worked so hard to help raise the substantial funds necessary for this project.

We do our best to enable children at the school to develop their literacy and numeracy skills to the best of their ability. However, we also hope that by the time they leave the school they will have developed a wide range of interests, as well as open minds and hearts. We will have encouraged them to be caring people with an informed understanding and concern for the world around them. We value all ways of learning, including those which give access to artistic expression.

We also value a sense of common purpose and a willingness to talk and share with visitors the work we are doing. Both team effort and individual enterprise are encouraged so that children find and develop their own potential as well as leering the social and academic skills of working as a member of a group. The 'family' atmosphere in the school is often referred to. By this we mean that all of the adults who work with the children in any way, work closely together in the best interest of the children, and that children of all ages play together, with older children showing a genuine int erst in and care for all younger ones.

The school prides itself on the high quality of teaching and learning. In recent years Great Dalby School has won two School Achievement Awards. These are awarded to schools that have substantially improved their results or achieved better results than most schools in similar circumstances. It was also one of the first primary schools in Leicestershire to be re-awarded the Basic Skill Agency's Quality Mark for School Improvement.
We are particularly pleased to have been placed amongst the top one 100 performing schools in the county this year based on our 'valued added measure'. 'Value added' refers to amount of progress the children make between entering and leaving school. We were particularly pleased to receive a letter of congratulations from David Miliband MP, the Minister of State for School Standards.