School in Focus - celebrating success in schools

West Minster First School, Sheerness

The lapwings which have become West Minster Primary's insignia have recently abandoned the area — put off, suggests head teacher Alan Bayford, by the steady drying out of the school's field. However, there is nothing melancholic about this Isle of Sheppey first school despite the challenges it faces serving one of the most economically disadvantaged communities in the UK. It is a vibrant, optimistic place, currently playing host to the head quarters of the Sheerness Sure Start Partnership and boasting an on-site parents' and toddlers' unit. Under Bayford's visionary leadership West Minster has become a crucial community hub, pioneering the sort of collaborative multi-agency work regarded as necessary for delivering significant long-term benefits including better support for parents and raised pupil achievement.

It would be easy for an average-sized primary in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey to appear very remote. There's something about crossing the bridge from the mainland that suggests you are destined for somewhere unusual, cut off. It is an impression that's confirmed later on in conversation with head teacher Alan Bayford who emphasises the frequency with which the island is literally detached, particularly in the summer, due to passing water traffic requiring the raising of part of the current road link to let them through.  

The fact that Mr Bayford's School, West Minster Primary, faces severe problems has everything to do with the distinct difficulties facing the broad community on Sheppey. 'There has been a prevailing combination of low confidence and limited aspirations here,'he explains, 'made much worse by unemployment and extraordinarily high levels of live births to mothers under 17.' The island has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the UK (and Europe). In fact, says Mr Bayford, this has been a local phenomenon for over 100 years.  

The most recent Panda report shows that the school has SEN rates of 35.8%, more than double the national average. 'Free school meal entitlement is probably over 50%,' says Mr Bayford. 

Faced with such challenges, on taking up his role at West Minster in 1996 Mr Bayford quickly realised that his remit would have to be far broader than the immediate school population if he was to improve achievement significantly among his pupils. 'It was clear that any intervention we made would have to be aimed at the long term,' he comments, 'involving a broad range of other agencies and winning over the community. The local people are the greatest resource there is for bringing about change.' 

Mr Bayford recognised how only by catering to the needs of parents and the youngest children and making the school a non-threatening hub for a range of community services could some of the problems he and his staff faced be tackled, including poor behaviour and limited aspirations. To this end he secured funding from the Single Regeneration Budget to set up Weenie Westminsters, a resource centre on the school grounds for parents and infants and toddlers. This quickly became established, offering parents a meeting place and access to a range of workshops and expertise: everything from basic parenting lessons to health information. 

The SRB money ran out in 2002. Cue Sure Start, which has now taken the Weenie Westminster Centre under its wing with funding due to run until 2010. Not that Bayford has taken this as his moment to step back. Far from it! He now supplements his onerous school duties with many hours of additional work as Sheerness Sure Start Chairman. 'For schools faced with high levels of social deprivation in their catchment, Sure Start is a gift,' says Mr Bayford. It's a view echoed by Sheerness Sure Start programme director John Fowler. 'Somewhere like this conventional education can only ever be a part of the solution,' he says. 'Achieving substantial improvements can only be done through collaboration.'  

And Sure Start has certainly continued the work of the Weenie Westminsters in this portion of the Island, offering sessions on everything from 'baby bounce and rhyme', breastfeeding and access to play and specialist equipment. 'Again,' says Mr Bayford, 'we will not be reaping the full benefit of this work for many years, perhaps only when our children emerge as better informed and more confident parents themselves. But there is significant change happening: parents are becoming more vociferous and demanding of all sorts of services. In the end, children can only be expected to succeed if they have their basic needs catered to. They need to be happy and secure if they are to achieve,' he adds. 'It may be a cliché, but the children here are loved and enjoy coming to school, and this is already reaping enormous benefits, encouraging a greater spirit of adventurousness and openness,'  

This spirit is in evidence everywhere at West Minster. It's there on the walls in the shape of the special art days in which all the children work together on seasonal themes and which provide a gentle and creative return to school at the beginning of each term. It's there in the eager faces of Devon, Tiffany (both 8) and Molly (7), eager to demonstrate the West Minster's eco-warrior status: the panda and tiger bins for different kinds of rubbish collection and the wormery where food waste is converted into fertiliser for the many plants that have turned the school's central quadrangle into a haven.  

It is also there in the increasing richness of the curriculum, in which music and languages figure significantly. The latter particularly, thanks to the presence of Marie-Hélène Lingwood, a native French speaker and one of the school's teaching assistant, who has been encouraged to embed French informally across the curriculum, from Maths to PE. It is an innovative scheme and one that is due to expand into a broad French programme from reception through to Year 4. 

The care is much in evidence too, not only in the everyday interactions in class or corridor between pupils and children, but also thanks to the buddies scheme sponsored by the local Medway ports. This pairs up properly vetted adults with children in particular need of good role models in their lives during regular lunchtime school-based meetings. And it is just one of the support systems in place. In the future, the school is to create an onsite nursery too, a further resource that will place West Minster at the heart of the community. 

'And to top it all,' adds Mr Bayford, 'work is advancing on the first permanent road link between Sheppey and the mainland.'