Teachers at Thursby Primary School say a pioneering scheme has transformed the way they work.
The WELL project, Western Excellence in Learning and Leadership, is helping schools to improve outcomes for pupils, especially those facing disadvantage.
It is funded by Sellafield Ltd as part of its Social Impact Multiplied (SiX) programme, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Thursby assistant headteacher Dave Colombi said: “We’ve been on the WELL project for three years now and the impact and the difference it has made has been fantastic.”
One of the main priority areas for the school has been addressing gaps in speech, language and communication, particularly in nursery and reception.
All children are assessed at the end of reception, and the numbers reaching the required standard for both speech, language and communication (56%) and writing (59%) in July 2021 were the lowest for several years, largely as a consequence of the COVID pandemic.
This has significantly increased to 100% in speech, language and communication and 90% in writing for 2023.
The WELL project meant Thursby Primary School was able to implement Talk Boost – a catch-up programme for children who are struggling with talking and understanding words.
Early years teacher Surelle Butler said: “The Talk Boost project has had a huge effect on the children’s vocabulary. We had a lot of children who were not as confident speaking as we would expect. This project has given us the opportunity to work in smaller groups, modelling turn taking and conversation.”
The school has also introduced the Great Teaching Toolkit to improve and expand pupils’ vocabulary, in every year group and every area of the curriculum.
“We focus on pupils’ articulation of vocab,” Mr Colombi said, “which helps all the kids, including those of higher ability and in particular, disadvantaged children. It ensures they are using a word in the correct context; understanding it and applying it.
“The impact in the short term is children have a greater understanding of the vocab that they’re learning.
“In the medium term, they’ve got those foundations of vocab for moving on to the next year group. And long term, for staff it’s having that knowledge to be able to apply that for future year groups coming through the school.”
The school received a glowing report from Ofsted inspectors during their latest visit.
