Thorne King Edward Primary

‘I Can! You Can! We Can!’

Thorne King Edward Primary is a community primary school which serves an area of high deprivation. When I arrived at the school in January 2007 results had historically been below national average at the end of each Key Stage, and in the previous year no children had scored 78 points on the Foundation Stage Profile.

Following returning to school after the Christmas break, the children didn’t seem to be happy to return to school and low self-esteem was evident. The first thing we did was to try to reverse this situation developing a ‘can do’ culture, supported by implementing a number of merit award systems to help build selfesteem, the school’s slogan quickly became ‘I Can, You Can, We Can!’. The school’s Friday Afternoon Achievement Assembly became the most important event of the week. Our aim was to ensure the children wanted to be at school, were happy, were building confidence and achieving success.