St Matthew's High Brooms CEP School

About the School

St Matthew's Headteacher from Emily Cheesman on Vimeo.

Please read a letter from the Chair of Governors

Our school is located in High Brooms, an area just north of the centre of Tunbridge Wells. We have approximately 450 children on roll, with Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 being two-form entry, and Key Stage 2 being three-form entry. The school serves the community of High Brooms and neighbouring areas of the town. 

St Matthews has a committed and dedicated body of staff who work hard to ensure all pupils achieve their potential. There is a strong wider leadership team who support the ongoing professional development of all members of staff. Leadership potential is recognised and nurtured, and in this way staff feel valued and are motivated to deliver an innovative curriculum to meet the needs of our children.

We believe that the wellbeing of our children is crucial to their development and therefore 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, Willow – our reading dog (!), Lego group therapy, and 1:1 counselling, as well as close links to external agencies who we call upon as needed. 

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 nearby woods, but in order to broaden the opportunities for our younger children, we have also created our own, small on-site facility.

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. We have a weekly visit from the church youth worker who leads worship and runs a lunchtime nurture group. Each year group experiences sessions of Godly Play, which enables them to develop their spiritual wellbeing and understanding.

We are proud of our broad, challenging and innovative 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 are a Power of Reading school, placing books at the heart of the curriculum. Recently we have upgraded our library, and this beautiful space is now an inspirational haven which the children love to visit. We have recently adopted the Maths No Problem scheme and are monitoring closely how the skills of our children are enhanced by this approach. The most recent enhancement to our curriculum is the purchase of an Empiribox subscription which we know will both excite and challenge the pupils as they develop their scientific knowledge and understanding.

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 as well as using external specialist providers. 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 Basketball, Athletics and Agility and are now competing at County level. 

Not many schools can boast of having an artist-in-residence, but at St Matthew’s we are fortunate to have the services of an inspired and inspiring artist, who visits each year group in rotation to lead art projects which link in directly to our key texts. 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. 

The school was a founding member of the Tunbridge Wells Primary School Collaborative Trust, a group of 17 schools who work actively together to raise standards of teaching and learning across the town, through collaboration and sharing of best practice and ideas. 

At St Matthews 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, with the addition of school visits conducted by monitoring pairs. Each pair is appointed to cover one of five areas: finance, achievement and progress, leadership and management, behaviour and safety and early years. The Governing Body also has individual governors responsible for safeguarding, pupil premium, SEND and health and safety.

Apply for this role

Before applying for this vacancy please ensure you have read all the relevant information and documents contained in this site. If you are ready to apply for this vacancy please click the "Apply Today" button which will direct you to our online application form.