PLATINUM OPAL SCHOOL
Following an audit from the Outside Play and Learning Team (OPAL), we were delighted to be awarded with the highest achievement and become a Platinum accredited OPAL school. OPAL is an award-winning, mentor supported school improvement programme that addresses all areas that schools must plan for if they want to strategically and sustainably improve the quality of their play opportunities. OPAL is the only programme of its kind and has been independently proven to improve the quality of play in British primary schools.
MUSIC MARK SCHOOL
Wiltshire Music Connect invited St Michael’s to become a Music Mark School in December 2023. Only schools that recognise the value of music education as a part of a broad and balanced curriculum and have a strategy for music in place providing for all children are nominated for this award. It enables our school to be given the support to continue to develop our musical education further.
TESTIMONIALS
“I recently encountered the staff at St Michael’s in Aldbourne, Wiltshire. It’s a gem of a school. The teacher team is experienced and highly skilled; the wonderful Headteacher, Jude Arkwright, and other senior leaders bring the energy, fuel the motivation and foster ever deeper expertise. They’re developing a coaching trios model where teachers observe and support each other and ask each other probing questions; they look at details – the forensics of how to run a room, to set a question, to construct environments where children flourish, to sequence learning in maths and in writing, to maximise time in the day. And it’s all done in a joyful way, not a heavy, laboured way. The teachers certainly work hard – there’s an intensity to what they do. But it pays off wonderfully and you feel that this is a place you’d want to be; as a teacher and as a child.” Tom Sherrington, Education Author and Consultant
“I was struck by how the children all knew what they were doing, the ways in which they were engaging with one another to make things and develop ideas. The environment enabled pupils to explore, talk, make things with an easy purposefulness that was very striking. The level of research, planning and thinking to develop this quality of provision is exceptional” Mary Myatt, Leading Educationalist
