A HARLOW primary school is celebrating its best ever SATs results – boosting its score by 30% since forming a partnership with an outstanding secondary.

Staff, pupils and parents at Freshwaters Primary Academy, in School Lane, are thrilled with the huge leap in its achievements after joining the Burnt Mill Co-operative Academy Trust (BMAT) at the start of the academic year.

Pupils are expected to have reached level four by the end of Year 6.

The school this week recorded an impressive 83% of children have reached that level in their reading, writing and maths. For the first time, 41% of pupils also exceeded that by achieving level five in reading, while a couple of pupils managed to score level six – a standard expected of children a year older.

Last year, just 59% reached their target in reading, 56% in writing and 56% in maths.

Marios Solomonides, head of school, said: “Children are generally expected to improve by two levels, but we have seen lots of our pupils make accelerated progress up three levels during their time at Freshwaters.

“We have achieved this leap in achievement by putting excellent teachers in front of our Year 6 pupils. They have really focused on each individual child. That is the BMAT way, to look at each child and to identify as early as possible when and where they may need help to achieve their best. There’s no secret to it, it was about looking at what they needed to learn and then teaching them it. If a child did not know something, we looked at whether it was because they had not been taught it or that they needed to be taught it in a different way to help them to understand.

“There is nothing different about our children; this was not just a particularly bright group. It has been about our expectations being higher and we have full belief we will achieve like this again next year.”
The school is not content with just getting it right with Year 6 and now wants to transfer those teaching methods to the rest of the school.

Mr Solomonides said: “Our challenge now is to apply those principles we have learnt with all other year groups.

“It is not just our Year 6 teachers who got our pupils to this level. It is about everyone within our community having an impact on the children, from learning support assistants to catering staff and parents. Our children have to feel happy, positive and cared for to achieve and that’s the responsibility of our whole school community. It has been lovely to see staff from across the school showing an interest in how the Year 6 group did, whether they taught them or not. That, to me, shows everyone feels a part of what we are doing, even if they do not sit in a classroom with the children.”