About The School
Please read a welcome letter from the Chair of our Governing Body here.
You can view our Ofsted report here.
We are a happy and lively school with strong links to St Matthew’s Church. Our Christian values of responsibility, respect, kindness and honesty are integral to the school’s daily life. Children are taught how to express each of these values through stories from the Bible in Whole School Worship, Circle Time in class and through our School Rules. Our vision for all members of the St Matthew’s community is that everyone should fulfil their God-given potential.
At our recent Siams inspection the inspector reported:
“There is a tangible culture of kindness and focus on well being, treating everyone as a unique individual. This ensures all are nurtured within the school”.
“St Matthew’s is a school driven by the strong desire that everyone is supported to fulfil their God-given potential”.
“Carefully planned support for pupils, especially those considered to be vulnerable, ensures all have the opportunity to fulfil their potential”.
St Matthew’s has a committed, dedicated and experienced body of staff who work hard to ensure all pupils achieve their potential. We are a school with around 40% pupil premium children and 16% SEND and therefore closing the gaps for these children are a priority for the school.
We believe that the wellbeing of our children is crucial to their development, as such pastoral care is central to our everyday approach to teaching and learning. A caring and well organised team supports this in school, using a variety of resources, approaches and interventions. These include play therapy, Lego group therapy and 1:1 counselling, as well as close links to external agencies whom we call upon as needed.
Last year our school adopted Zones of Regulation, we feel that it is important that all our children learn the art of self regulation. By encouraging them to recognise how they are feeling and how they manage they feelings so they can look after their wellbeing and achieve their goals.
An equally important strand to our approach to children’s’ wellbeing is in our use of Forest School to develop the skills of resilience, perseverance and problem solving. All children experience sessions of Forest School activities in our small on site facility.
We are proud of our wider curriculum, our inclusive ethos, the huge enthusiasm our children have for learning, and the ways in which we seek to involve parents and carers in the life of the school are all very important to us.
We place a love of reading at the heart of our curriculum. We are really proud of our library, this beautiful space is an inspirational haven, which the children love to visit. This year we have introduced Sonar Curriculum mainly for our foundation subjects and we are currently customising our literacy curriculum within Sonar. We use White Rose to deliver the maths curriculum, encouraging deep understanding and confidence in our children’s knowledge. We challenge our teachers to plan in a creative way, drawing on their experience and that of their colleagues in order to teach the full curriculum in a rich and pupil centred way.
Integral to our curriculum is a strongly held belief that sport brings mental as well as physical benefits to children. To this end, we employ dedicated sports coaches. Since we started this initiative in 2013, St Matthew’s has enjoyed great success in a variety of sports. Our sports coaches deliver high quality lessons and run a range of after school clubs for children of all levels and abilities. Our teams have recently won Tunbridge Wells tournaments in Y1/2 Rapid Fire Cricket, Y5/6 Cricket Champions and Y3/4 Indoor Athletics Champions.
Music is also highly valued at the school; our choir performs both in school and in the local area and many children take individual lessons in a wide variety of instruments.
Due to the diverse demographics of the children at our school, we are always looking for ways to add or enhance these experiences and opportunities for all the children, this is an important part of what we do.
The school believes in the benefits of collaborating with other local schools to raise standards of teaching and learning and the sharing of best practice and ideas.
At St Matthew’s we are lucky to have a small Governing Body, which is proactive and committed in being both challenging and very supportive to the Headteacher and the leadership team. The Governing Body operate on the circle model of governance, which means there are only six meetings a year after school. During the year Governors monitor all areas of the School Improvement Plan including: finance, achievement & progress, leadership & management, behaviour & safety and early years. Members of the Governing Body also has individual responsibilities for safeguarding, pupil premium, SEND, attendance and health and safety.
Finally St Matthew’s is a church school with a strong sense of community, a diverse pupil population and dedicated staff and Governors, that strives to fulfil it’s God’s given potential.