Manor Oak is a small – half a form entry – school situated in Bromley, one of the leafy outer London boroughs.  However it is not a typical Bromley school.  It is sited in the middle of a large housing estate where there are enormous social problems and the traveller children from the local permanent site feed into the school 40% of the school’s population are travellers.  70% of the children have free school meals and there is 30% mobility.  

The school had been bumping along uncertainly until things came to a head in December 1998 when it was put into Special Measures.  In retrospect this was the best thing to happen to us – not that anyone who has experienced the rigour of H.M.I. visits and post Ofsted depression will at first glance agree with me.  

We were fortunate to have a new head seconded to us the term before Ofsted who pulled a team of teachers and assistants together who worked the school through this difficult period.  Our H.M.I. Inspector and L.E.A. Advisor were vital in the support and encouragement they gave the school at this challenging time.  

In 2000 we were offered a lifeline – the opportunity to become the first Fresh Start Primary School.  The whole staff discussed this and agreed it was our chance to turn the school around – mainly because of the money that came with it.  This money enabled us to pay and retain the high quality, dedicated staff that were needed in order to move the school on.  It also enabled us to fund S.F.A.  

We had been working with the Literacy Strategy and liked the structure but the problem for us was the huge range of abilities in most classes and the inability to show progress because our children make much smaller steps of achievement.  

S.F.A. has been a revelation.  At our next Ofsted we showed how every child had progressed and were able to quantify the number of “steps” as well as National Curriculum Levels.  S.F.A. was commended as one of the strengths of the school.  

There have been many success stories but the two I want to concentrate on show the impact of S.F.A. at both ends of the school.  

The problem with any new initiative is that inevitably the older children do not reap the same rewards as they have not been through the whole system.  We had two older boys, who were incidentally both travellers, and when we started S.F.A. in May 2001 were in Year 5.  Jake moved to us in Year 5 in September 2001 and Moses had been with us throughout his schooling.  Both boys had problems with literacy.  Jake in September 2001 was at 1c (11-15) and Moses 1b (26-31).  In July 2003 both Jake and Moses were at 3a and both gained Level Three in their S.A.T.s tests.  S.F.A. gave them the tools to initially decode and then to infer and comprehend.  This amazing progress doesn’t feature in any league tables but for the school and these boys it has given them at least a chance of succeeding at secondary school.  

S.F.A. operates in our nursery and since September 2001 we have seen children arriving in Reception equipped with phonic skills who are either already reading or ready to read.  Now this may not seem so extraordinary in some schools but many of our children come with such poor language skills with a large proportion having illiterate parents.

We made a decision as a school that in Reception we would split the 90 minutes of S.F.A. throughout the day so that the children could access the Foundation cross curriculum that they need.  This has been very successful with the September intake children with their phonics, having the opportunity to progress rapidly – led by a very experienced classroom assistant while the class teacher kept the rest of the class. 

Having just assessed these children ready to group them for September we have three children at (11-15); one at (16-20); three at (21-25); one at (26-31); one at (32-37) and one little girl who has finished the phonics assessment.

I’m looking forward to a healthy bunch of Level Threes at KS1 and Level Fives at KS2.  

This success can be documented but for us S.F.A. has offered our children many more skills which officially cannot be “graded”.  Their levels of speaking and listening are extraordinary and visitors comment about their interaction during lessons.  The impact of S.F.A. on behaviour in the school has been very noticeable as children are used to having varied opportunities to discuss and listen to others.  S.F.A. strategies are now in all our other subjects and I could not imagine teaching in a non S.F.A. school.  Most importantly S.F.A. has allowed most of our children to realise their potential.

Mary O'Mahony
Manor Oak Primary School