Village primary school named top in Norfolk

Staff and pupils from Alburgh with Denton Primary School are celebrating after being named the top performing Norfolk primary school for their year six tests.

Arlburgh with Denton Primary School are celebrating being named top performing school in Nortfolk for their year six test results. - Credit: Nick Butcher

The key stage two figures for reading, writing and maths were released by the Department for Education and show how schoolchildren are performing at the age of 11.

The village school, which has 98 pupils on roll, has climbed from 85pc of youngsters in 2012 achieving the expected level four to 100pc across every area in 2014.

Alburgh with Denton has also been named one of the 250 top attaining primary schools in the country.

Headteacher Joel Crawley said he was delighted with the results: “We did very well in 2013 and came ninth in the league tables so we were very pleased with that, but these results are even better.“You are never 100pc confident about what you are going to get, but we did have a range of things in place that I believe have paid dividends.”

Mr Crawley said the ethos of the school was to teach children to be good learners so that those skills could be applied to subjects such as maths and English.

“We have a list of the top 10 learning behaviours, which we put in place this time last year such as confidence, perseverance and resilience and we teach the pupils what they mean and how to use them in their work. So in a maths lesson we will tell them they have to be independent and use their resilience to solve a tricky problem and it becomes a mind set when it comes to tests.”

Mr Crawley said the inclusion of Forest Schools has also helped the less academically gifted to be able to shine by combining team work with responsibility and learning how to apply it in the classroom. By the age of 11 each child should be achieving 27 points in tests, with the national average standing at 28. At Alburgh and Denton children are reaching 31.5 points.

Mr Crawley said: “Children are expected to collect about three points a year so we are about a year ahead than what is expected. Education can get a bit of a bashing, but it’s nice to see we are doing good things and achieving well as a small school with great support from our community and teachers.

“I’d like the school to maintain its integrity. It’s not about all about chasing results, but developing learners and we are aiming to continue what we are doing, which is our best.””