Freegrounds Infant School in Southhampton has achieved the Inclusive School Award.
Positive and Proactive Year
This was the first time this IQM Assessor had visited Freegrounds Infant School (FIS), but it was clear from the outset it had been a very positive and proactive year for this warm and welcoming school. The enthusiastic and cohesive Senior Leadership Team (SLT) spoke openly and passionately about their school community. It was clear the ethos is one where everyone is encouraged to look beyond the surface to truly see individual children, parents, and staff.
This authentically inclusive, personalised approach acknowledges and responds to individual experiences and perceptions and is embraced by all. This is nicely summarised in the Protected Characteristics document that states: “We work to ensure that our children understand that: There are no outsiders at Freegrounds Infant School; Everyone is different; We celebrate our differences; We are all equal in our differences”.
Passion and Ambition
The SLT have an obvious passion, and ambition, for genuine inclusion and encouraging self-development. Their aspirations are high for all, whilst acknowledging that “nobody’s perfect”. This humility is modelled and allows staff and children alike to feel safe. During the Covid-19 restrictions, swift and decisive action could be taken because, as staff commented, “We know Nikki, the Headteacher, would keep us safe”. Only in an authentic environment such as this would you find the staff WhatsApp group to include members of the leadership team. Moreover, it is this transparency that means staff feel secure about visitors coming into their classrooms and are willing to video their lessons to share and learn from as a team. This openness is admirable and palpable.
It is obvious that the staff and children at Freegrounds feel contented, cared for, and want to be here. Attendance figures as a whole are above national figures, with SEN, PP and EAL only slightly short of this figure. Pupils overwhelmingly report that they enjoy being at school, feel safe and are supported well.
Wellbeing is seen as a priority and the SLT were extremely clear this is something they need to continue to develop and expand upon. This is why leaders and other staff will be focusing on this area for the next year and are accessing high-quality training to support them in this role. They know and understand their staff and children.
They recognise that small but meaningful actions can make a huge difference in the daily experience of individuals. For example, alongside some helpful wellbeing displays in the staff room, there was also a whole section devoted to looking after basic needs. The ‘Need for a Feed’ box offers soups and other items for those who forgot their lunch. The ‘Hydration Station’ offers a wide variety of hot and cold drinks. The ‘Wellbeing Box’ is essentially a treat box. This is an initiative that encourages staff to give, receive and care for one another as a team.
Comprehensive Induction
Staff are offered comprehensive induction. This includes essentials such as planning, systems, and routines as well as direct support with knowledge of the children and year group requirements. Staff also accessed transition days and times to meet with their new team to establish relationships.
The current Assistant Head/Maths Lead was inducted into their role progressively and effectively. Fulfilling a temporary Acting Assistant Head role provided them with the opportunity to access MPQSL training and to develop a working knowledge of the role requirements. Consequently, they developed the confidence to take on the role permanently. They now provide mentoring to leaders of the foundation subjects and regularly attend EYFS cluster meetings.
Further to this, close links have been forged with the Maths Leader at the junior school. This allows for a collegiate approach to supporting learners, particularly those that are working below Age-Related Expectations (ARE) and those exceeding ARE. This also provides an opportunity to reflect on potential cohort gaps in learning as children progress and for this to inform action planning at the infant level. They are now looking to reinvigorate a previously initiated buddying system between infant and junior subject leaders.
Innovative and Open Approach
The school has an innovative and open approach to professional development. Staff engage in JPD (Joint Professional Development) whereby year-group teams pick a subject to focus on. They use lesson recording technology (IRIS) to reflect on their own practice as well as share and collaborate as a team. The team then devise team targets. This they say helps to de-personalise improvement points and focus on improvements.
There are also Subject Leadership Days whereby leaders can use the lesson recordings as part of their monitoring, support with next steps, and develop action plans. This can be particularly helpful when supporting someone who is new to the role. Several of the staff, new to their role, were particularly grateful for the mentoring support they have received. Whether this is advice on managing workload, buddying systems, or providing ‘practice runs’ for presenting to the governors.
School governors access training and support to carry out their roles effectively. They also attend meetings of the Full Governing Body each term. These meetings are well attended and show the dedication of its members. Sub-committee meetings are also carried out during these meetings. The governors actively engage with events and regularly visit the school. The Chair is in school weekly, hosts school tours and leads training around trauma.
Holistic and Engaging
The children at Freegrounds Infant School enjoy a holistic and engaging curriculum that inspires positive attitudes towards their learning. The curriculum page of the website introduces Wellbeing, Rights Respecting Schools, SMSC and British Values and Protected Characteristics before further introducing academic aspects of teaching and learning. This indicates that the school sees these concepts as the foundation to secure learning and development.
During the assessment visit, children proudly pointed out their work, explaining what they were doing and why. They understood how to interact with the resources provided to them appropriately, meaning that these skills had been explicitly taught and independence encouraged. For example, one child explained how they could create words from magnetic letters to match the flashcards on display. Similarly, when groups of children were approached and asked about their activities, they were able to share and explain the work they were doing as well as direct me to related work they had previously completed.
Freegrounds is a bright, airy, purpose-built infant setting. The corridors and classrooms are well-organised and tidy with bright, eye-catching displays that are both celebratory and interactive.
There is a continuity of resources and displays in classes, providing predictability and reassurance for the children. Thoughtful displays showing children’s self-portraits and photos of their varied family groupings further serve to promote a sense of belonging.
Writing displays show work from all children, not just a select few. This is one of many subtle approaches taken by the school to promote the notion of equality of opportunity. As such, children from a wide range of abilities were keen to share their work and were visibly proud of their achievements.
Direct Links to the Local Community
Role-play areas provide direct links to the local community and familiar settings, such as the use of the Tesco logo throughout the class shop. Further to this, outdoor areas have been well-considered to ensure a variety of experiences for the children. Risk-taking and proprioceptive development is promoted through the large wooden building blocks and life-sized play bricks that the children cart around.
Vestibular stimulation is freely accessible through the balance spinning top and other balance activities. These provisions ensure that the environment is inclusive and allows children to practice skills at a developmentally appropriate level.
Calm spaces are available in all classes and small tents are offered in communal areas outside classes for children to access, sometimes with adult support to co-regulate. This provision supports children to develop an internal locus of control and an opportunity to develop self-regulation skills over time regardless of identified additional needs.
Similarly, there is a sense of predictability, brought about by clear routines and structures, which helps the children to feel contained and safe. The Classroom Organisation Non-Negotiables help to create a predictable environment and structures for the day, such as lunchtime procedures are clearly visible and understood by the children.
High Standards
Consistency of high standards is achieved through the Classroom Organisation Non-Negotiables. These underline the importance of a tidy and well-organised environment, celebrating individual achievements as well as providing equal access to prompts and learning resources.
Important key concepts are conveyed through these non-negotiables: Role-play areas are available in all classes. This means that all children are given the opportunity to practice and achieve developmental milestones when they are ready, without assumptions being made based on chronological age. The display of birthdays and names conveys a sense of belonging alongside reminders of shared values.
Children gain a sense of routine and predictability through the use of visual timetables. They are given the opportunity to develop their internal locus of control through access to the Calm Corners. Overarching is the sense of security children will undoubtedly feel as they move around and through the school, knowing what to expect and where they can access support.
There is a keen drive to promote purposeful outdoor learning. This is evident through the re-landscaping project but has clearly been something that has been developing over time. For example, children are able to access a play trail and welly trail as well as a grassy expanse for running. The playing field is shared with the junior school, with an ‘invisible’ divide. This provides a very tangible link between the two settings for the children which must provide reassurance for children in both settings.
High-quality Teaching
There is a clear understanding that high-quality teaching and learning is underpinned by engaging opportunities for first-hand experiences, collaborative activities and a focus on creativity, growth mindset, and development.
The children here are engaged, active, happy, and eager to share work and achievements on display and could explain what they needed to do for free flow tasks. For example, several children wanted the Assessor to look at their superhero-labelled pictures on display and had clearly enjoyed using potatoes to create their characters (à la Mr Potatohead). Practical experiences such as this, and the upcoming session creating character faces, allow children to represent their ideas in more than one way which is critical to deep learning – a sound pedagogy for working with young children.
School trips are meaningful, relevant and exciting. Consideration is given to contextualising experiences at school so that all children have equal opportunity to access the learning. All classes have a role play area. The children are immersed in these through the involvement of ‘real life’ modelling, such as that from a local estate agent who, not only demonstrates the process of buying a house but also invites the children to create an advertisement of their own home.
There is also a strong promotion of outdoor learning which is further being developed through the ongoing landscaping project. It was a delight to see children carefully stacking and unstacking large construction blocks and the like around the outdoor classroom areas on individual and group missions to build, create and make dynamic risk assessments for themselves.
Strength of Leadership
Over the past year, a key focus has been to develop the strength of leadership. Part of this has been to further strengthen monitoring systems which have enabled the whole school needs to be identified and responded to. Leaders have identified a further need to address children’s mental health and wellbeing needs. This became an IQM project focus and led to the introduction of the ‘Zones of Regulation.’ Further to this, leaders are mindful to ensure that all subject planning takes a longer-term view. For example, the English leader has recently developed long-term planning to ensure that medium-term plans dovetail, and gaps are identified.
The progress of children is routinely tracked by leaders and scrutinised to ensure that target groups are identified and supported in a timely manner. Moreover, the School Improvement Plan (SIP) places a strong emphasis on ensuring that quality first provision is secure and effective and underpins academic success.
Staff identify children in EYFS and Year 1 who are on track to make ARE at the end of Year 2. Children are identified as Indigo Group when they are no longer on track to meet ARE. Children who are on track to achieve Greater Depth (GD) at the end of Year 2 are identified as the Violet group. Interventions are then put in place to support these groups to make accelerated progress.
Pupil progress meetings provide opportunities for targeting additional support needs. Internal and external assessments are used to identify trends and leaders use this information to adapt approaches. The team are acutely aware of the importance of language acquisition and recognise the need to identify needs at an early stage.
In fact, the headteacher spoke about research evidence indicating that where language development milestones had not been achieved by the age of 5 years, there was a high chance of them being unemployed in adult life. This stark understanding has rallied the team to prioritise responding to the repercussions of Covid-19 restrictions on language development in many of the children.
For example, where exit scores in phonics were slightly below national averages, a new approach was taken that would increase engagement and would fit with the school’s ‘talk and do’ approach including cued articulation. Further to this, Pupil Premium funding has been used wisely to employ a highly experienced teacher who is able to run bespoke phonics sessions, and other complimentary tutoring sessions, to help provide equity of opportunity to vulnerable children.
FIS values pupil’s voice. It is clear that the children are comfortable speaking to and feeling listened to by staff. Moreover, the school demonstrates that they value children’s thoughts and ideas through their School Council and UNICEF ambassadors. Democratic decision-making, caring for one another, and personal responsibility sit at the heart of both student bodies.
For example, each class votes for two class representatives to be on the School Council. They then take part in a weekly meeting that culminates in agreed actions to share with their classes. Particularly notable is the involvement of the children in the school grounds redevelopment project.
Meaningful Connections
Parents, carers, and guardians are valued at Freegrounds Infant School. The school’s response to the Covid-19 restrictions bears testament to this. Here they were able to quickly galvanise staff to make phone calls that served more than a functional purpose. The school recognised this as an opportunity to develop authentic relationships with families.
Freegrounds staff are skilled at looking through a parental lens and recognising the strains they may be under. This is a huge strength of the team. Staff greeting children at the gates know the children’s names and their parents’ names. They build meaningful connections with those in their community allowing them to act swiftly to needs.
For example, they can offer support to families where there may be underlying medical or mental health needs impacting attendance rather than responding to this in an authoritarian manner. They have also been able to link up children’s families by nationality where they may otherwise have assumed no link was present based on the child’s first language. There was an overarching sense that parents feel that staff are accessible and approachable.
The school offers a wide variety of more traditional opportunities for parents and carers to come to school. These initiatives successfully create bridges between home and school and include coffee mornings (with guest speakers) and family celebration assemblies, as well as regular class parent lunches. These lunches appear particularly popular, possibly because eating food is a great equaliser, and will be less intimidating for some parents. During the assessment day, year 2 parents and carers had been invited in to have lunch with their children. A huge number had taken up the offer. It was clear that the children enjoyed having their loved ones with them.
During lunch, our Assessor spoke to several parents and carers. Feedback was positive from all. One particular parent spoke about their experience as newcomers to the area. They said that they had selected the school primarily based on the videos they watched on the school website. They said that they felt that the children were authentically happy and not scripted. They particularly liked the way that the staff introduced themselves as real people in their introductory videos.
The school carry out annual parent/carer questionnaires. The last of these was carried out at the end of the academic year. This was mainly completed by a small proportion of year R and 1 parents, most of whom felt that the school was well-led and managed.
The predominant view of parents was that they felt that children behaved well at FIS and that they were provided with a range of opportunities to find out about their child’s learning. These come in the form of formal parent consultations and open afternoons as well as less formal invites to join their children for lunch, such as on the day of assessment. These types of opportunities would also explain the large proportion of parents reporting that they felt comfortable about approaching the school with questions or concerns. Whilst not all parents had views on how well the school supports the needs of different children, of those who did comment the majority felt that the school did this well. One parent explained, “Any concerns are always responded to quickly. They take our ideas and act on them.”
Sense of Belonging
The need to ensure every child feels a sense of belonging is particularly relevant to a school such as this where 60% of the children attending are from out of the catchment area, often from deprived neighbourhoods. This often sits behind attention-seeking/connection-seeking behaviours, so it is essential for FIS that children are very quickly engaged with and embraced by the school family.
The children at Freegrounds Infant School are encouraged to actively participate in their wider community. Opportunities to link with the local community include trips to the local church for harvest or as part of RE sessions, visits from the priest and visits to a local Hindu temple. The school works closely with one church’s food bank through harvest donations and Christmas performance donations. Many of these were given as hampers to more vulnerable families identified by the school.
Some children are voted onto the School Council and these children will look at things such as fundraising for local and national charities, ways to help protect the environment and supporting the school community with their wellbeing. Similarly, children are chosen as Ambassadors for the Rights Respecting agenda and encouraged to think about how they can support their peers.
FISHES (Freegrounds Infant School Helpers and Extra Support) operates as a fundraising group for the school that organise a plethora of events to this end. Examples of fundraising activities include regular, well-attended, coffee mornings, discos, pre-loved uniform sales, quizzes, workshops, film nights, raffles, BBQs and fayres. They have had their own Facebook page for the past 8 years, so are well-established. They use this as a means to share events and details of upcoming fundraising events.
The most recent of these events has been the Christmas Fayre, run by volunteers, which has included games and a Santa’s grotto. They have also, occasionally, offered free tickets to events where the school identifies a need. This event alone raised £2500 for projects such as the pond and other outdoor developments.
Freegrounds Infant School attracts members of the community who regularly, and enthusiastically, volunteer their time to support in a number of ways. Not only are there family volunteers who come in to support children reading or to supervise school trips, but the school also benefits hugely from one volunteer’s extensive work on the beautiful displays around the school. Moreover, volunteers eagerly await the opportunity to judge the annual ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ show, or indeed to run a work experience session each year.
Developments to consider
• Carry out a detailed extracurricular take-up and monitoring audit, comparing different vulnerable groups. This will help to identify potential underrepresentation and plan provisions accordingly. This may also provide a valuable aid to smooth the transition for more vulnerable groups.
• Liaise with the junior school regarding the wraparound provision and whether small elements might be adapted to support working parents with home tasks such as reading to the children as a settling activity or even listening to them read.
• Use the self-evaluation criteria in the Parent, Carer and Guardian section of the IQM framework as a basis for further parent views questionnaires.
• Adapt language in school documentation and website communications to ‘Parent, Carer and Guardian’ or ‘family’ for events such as coffee mornings, lunches etc.
Relentlessly Supporting Individuals
Freegrounds Infant School takes a holistic approach to relentlessly supporting individuals to reach their full potential. Inclusivity is the natural modus operandi at the school, and it is clear, even before looking at policies, that staff constantly seek opportunities to build connections to and between the children, families, and wider community.
The children at Freegrounds are given a sense of belonging and appear relaxed and happy in this respectful and nurturing setting. Families and community members feel authentically part of this wider family. The culture is respectful and inclusive with individual qualities and achievements celebrated. Children are equipped with the fundamental tools they need to be successful in their future lives from the roots upwards.
Our Assessor concluded, “As a parent to a young child myself, I was inspired by your school and the passion you have for helping children to achieve their very best. Most of all, the warmth you show towards the children in your care is heart-warming. I would have no hesitation to place my child in your hands. May your coming year be as successful as the last as you focus, quite rightly, on the wellbeing of the children, staff, and wider community. Thank you for making me so welcome. “
Find out more about the IQM Inclusive School Award
If your school is interested in obtaining the IQM Inclusive School Award or you wish to talk to a member of the IQM team please telephone:
028 7127 7857 (9.00 am to 5.00 pm)
or email: [email protected] for further details.
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