Mrs Jane West - Headteacher, welcomes you to Orchard Infant School

On behalf of our school community I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome you to Orchard Infant School and our school website. My name is Jane West and I am very proud to be the head teacher of this outstanding school.

Our school is truly blessed by our wonderful local community; a highly skilled team of Governors, who both challenge and support the everyday work of school, a phenomenal OISA (Orchard Infant School Association) who organise a variety of fundraisers throughout the year and a superb parent body who are keen to support their children in school! I am proud of our excellent staff team, who all work their hardest to ensure that children are well supported, but also challenged to take risks, which helps them to both achieve and flourish and prepare them for a future yet unknown.

 Orchard Infant School is a really wonderful place to be a learner! We have an incredibly motivating and exciting curriculum of which we are very proud. In Year R its all about inspiring children through our motivating Orchard Infant school Integrated Curriculum under the skillful direction of the class teacher which ignites their curiosity, instigates enquiry and where their learning journey begins!

In Year 1 and 2, our Integrated Curriculum is exciting, engaging, meaningful and really hooks children into learning with clear purposeful outcomes of learning within each project! Children line up at Orchard Airways to take the plane ride to Auckland, New Zealand where they will study the physical and cultural geography, taking note of the seas and continents as they fly over! Trips and visitors in school are always part of making the learning memorable; Exotic Dave, Titanic guides, Testwood Lakes. Have we tempted you to see more? Please take a look at our website under “Learning”, listen to our subject videos statements and photos that reflect our exciting projects where we learn progressive and carefully sequenced knowledge and skills and our project portfolios that give you another insight of just how exciting learning is at Orchard Infant School.

Our projects are regularly evaluated and reviewed so that we keep the freshness in the learning experiences that continue to deepen and develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding of each of the subject areas!

 We also invest in high quality PE provision , including opportunities to play competitive sport, peripatetic music tuition for all in addition to our schools curriculum for music. We offer a very wide range of exciting and different extracurricular activities during the day and after school.

We are a very special community that promotes a strong sense of “Family”. All staff have a deep passion for children’s education and understand the critical importance of health and wellbeing to ensure everyone feels valued, safe and appreciated as individuals in order that we can all work towards excellence. We all care deeply about our children and each other.  We have high aspirations for everyone in our community and truly want the very, very best for each and every one of our children.

Our children are truly inspirational; they are polite, well-mannered and over the three years they are with us, develop a deep understanding of what it means to be truly resilient! Children say.. It’s not that I can’t do it.. It’s just that I can’t do it …yet!! Children’s happiness and wellbeing is at the core of our philosophy and we know this is key to their attainment and achievement. Every day I witness children running into their classrooms across the playground, eager to get into class and soak up all the learning experiences that school has to offer!  Over the years, our children consistently attain highly above the national average in reading, writing and maths.

As a research-driven community, we relish the opportunities that the wider community can offer to continue to strengthen and enrich what educational opportunities we offer to children in our school. There is so much more to say about the school.. but I will now let you browse the website and see for yourselves what a wonderful learning community it is with amazing children at its heart!

 Jane West