Granton Primary School

Granton Primary School is a 3-form entry state-maintained primary school educating 615 pupils. It is larger than average-sized primary school with a diverse pupil population. There are 36 languages spoken by pupils and staff.

The school regards itself as an ‘extended family’; every child and member of staff feels cared for in what is an inspirational community. Through its unique, inclusive, family ethos, Granton pupils are encouraged to be thoughtful and responsible young people with high self-esteem and with the motivation, skills and knowledge to succeed in life.

A national study on schools who are successful in closing the gap wrote about the school in 2017:  At Granton there is very strong distributed leadership and clarity about the roles and responsibilities of leaders and the areas they are accountable for.  School improvement is a whole team effort.  The headteacher and senior leaders, a large group, all understand their key roles thoroughly and each is familiar with everybody else’s job. The school’s systems are so established and consistently applied that staff no longer have to focus on them but can concentrate instead on powerful and innovative teaching. The leadership team draw on individual strengths and expertise to create a common approach that benefits from their collective knowledge.

The school places great emphasis on reducing teachers’ workload. The school has reduced the amount of monitoring, for example, lesson observation is linked to performance management cycles and leaders are careful to link up observations with another purpose.  Monitoring of the learning environment and pupils’ work is also carried out regularly by Phase leads, who check pupils’ progress and set challenging targets for achievement. Teachers use these aspirational targets to modify how they teach their classes and to identify pupils who need extra support.  The school is aiming to be paperless so demand for documentation from teachers is low. There is a bespoke training programme for NQTS and the professional development available to staff is second to none.

There are excellent transport links close to the school. The school site is a 10-minute walk from either Streatham Common or Mitcham Eastfields Railway station.