At Deanesfield, we are committed to providing our children with the essential knowledge and skills needed to be able to live fulfilled lives. This commitment has now been acknowledged four times by the Primary Quality Mark Agency and we were awarded our fifth Primary Quality Mark for our work in the basic skills of English and Mathematics in 2019. Each award is valid for three years.

Staff work hard in partnership with children and  parents and carers to ensure our children master these basic skills. Carefully planned teaching, drawing on children's strengths and providing support for those areas in need of development, along with appropriately challenging targets, high expectations and our increasing efforts to provide useful information for parents and carers so that they can support children's learning even better at home, mean that children are successful in developing the tools needed to achieve great things in the future.

Achieving the quality mark involves the school in evaluating all the work it does in order to put forward a portfolio of evidence which is scrutinised by an external assessor. The assessor visits the school to discuss our approach to the teaching and learning in English and mathematics with senior staff. The assessor tours the school to see how well the children are learning and to assess the learning environments, such as our classrooms, libraries and computer facilities. He or she also takes into account the amount, quality and appropriateness of our resources.

Our last assessor was very impressed with what he saw and made a special comment about the high quality information we provide to parents and carers through regular meetings, workshops and talks. He was impressed that much of the information available is shared with parents and carers here on our website.

As usual, and always most encouragingly, our children's hard work and determination to master the basic skills was commented on. We are so proud of how hard they work and of all their achievements and look forward to another successful award very soon!