"A friendly family school located in a delightful wooded area of Crowthorne. Benefiting from a large playing field, outdoor learning areas, a secluded courtyard, a large hall with stage, two libraries and an up to date ICT suite."

Read our latest Ofsted report.
Available to download from the Ofsted website Here

Dear Parent,

I am immensely proud to be Headteacher of our small, family orientated school. As a Head I do, of course, strive for academic excellence, but I firmly believe that school should be more than that. It should be about discovery and opportunity, about respect, reliability and resilience. Our children are hardworking and enthusiastic about their learning but they are also friendly and caring and value other peoples achievements as well as their own. We are very much a team at Hatch Ride – parents, governors and staff working together to give the children the best chances we can.

Do come and visit us at Hatch Ride – I just love the chance to show off my school

Tracy Frackelton
Headteacher

Mission Statement

Promoting personal excellence by providing a challenging education in a safe, caring and inclusive environment where each child can achieve their full potential and become life-long learners

Developing our school

 In 2002 Hatch Ride had a positive and successful OFSTED. You can read the whole report here. 

What have we achieved since then?
We have worked hard on addressing the three areas that OFSTED identified as needing improvement:

Implementing the Foundation Stage for children in Reception Class
Attention has been given to the Foundation Stage to ensure that the curriculum is appropriate to the children. Mid term planning has been written in line with the new guidelines. The day has been reorganised to give a greater balance between teacher led and self-directed activities. The classroom has been reorganised to represent the six areas of learning identified by the Foundation Stage. New resources have been purchased to provide a broader experience for the children. Staff have been on courses to help with implementing the programme and have observed Wokingham’s Foundation Stage Advanced Skills Teacher. Visits have been made to feeder nurseries to help with the transition from nursery to Hatch Ride for the pupil. Steps have been put in place to help with the identification of any special educational needs.  We now provide our pupils with an excellent start to their primary education.

Assessment of pupils’ progress
Following the appointment of an Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) for assessment in September 2002, the school has worked hard to ensure that a rigorous assessment system is in place. Formative assessments are made and recorded by class teachers on a day to day basis. The class teacher uses this information to plan future work. Teachers track and monitor pupil’s progress regularly to ensure that children are making the necessary progress and to inform them of any pupils that may need additional support.

Presentation of pupils’ work
A new handwriting scheme for the Infants has been introduced, which means that children will learn to join up from year 1. A Presentation Policy has been drafted which identifies a consistent approach for the pupils presentation of work.

 We have also been working on developing other areas of the school. These include:

• School grounds – the central courtyard has been transformed from an overgrown, under-used pond area in to a new exciting outdoor learning area as part of our plan to use more of our grounds for learning. This project is evidence of the excellent support received from our parents.
• Curriculum weeks – we have introduced weeks dedicated to one particular curriculum area, so far we have had a book week, an arts week and a science day.
• Music – we now have a large and popular school choir which has represented the school on many occasions. We are also now one of the few primary schools in the area to have its own orchestra.
• Sport – a successful netball squad play against other schools, we also have had cricket and football teams represent the school and our athletic squad have won the Small School Sports cup for the third time in a row!

Our strengths continue to be:

• Care we provide our pupils
• Behaviour of pupils is excellent, not only within school but on school trips and visiting other schools.
• Value Added – In July 2004 our value added score for our SATs results placed us in the top 5% of schools in the country, this follows a similar score the year before.
• PTA – our hard working PTA continue to support the school in many successful fund raining events. Some of the many highlights include a circus, the popular Family Fun Day and winning the Schools Carnival Parade competition.

TOUR

The school consists of 7 teaching classrooms, which includes a dedicated Reception area. There are also other rooms available for small group work. The Reception class has access to a dedicated, contained outdoor play area that is partially covered. There is a wide selection of play-learning equipment, including water and sand trays.  Every class has an interactive whiteboard which allows teachers to bring learning to life through the use of the Internet and ICT.

The school has two dedicated library areas, an Infant library close to the infant classes and a larger school library.

A librarian is employed so that children can change their books regularly. All the books are on a computerised database that allows for quick searching for books and monitoring of children's lending.

The hall at Hatch Ride is jointly owned by the school and the local parish council. It contains two badminton courts and PE wall equipment. PE, drama, dance and other subjects that require a large space are taught in the hall. The hall is also used for assemblies and school plays. The stage area is used by Pendennis Nursery but is also used for major school productions.

Hatch Ride is lucky in having a room just for the teaching of music. The room is well equipped with a variety of tuned and percussion instruments, including a full drum kit.

The ICT suite contains 15 computers some of which are connected to scanners. The ICT suite is networked so that children can access their work on any school computer. Colour and black and white printers are also networked. Other ICT equipment available for use by the children: 2 mini-suites of computers dedicated to the teaching of maths Interactive whiteboards in all classrooms Digital cameras for all classrooms Digital video camera Control Technology equipment Programmable Roamers for the teaching of computer control Environmental Monitoring kits 2 laptops for portable use Computerised weather station The courtyard has recently been fully refurbished to provide an interactive outdoor learning classroom. As well as being decorated with children's art work, their are planting areas for growing activities, a shaded platform for drama, story telling and small group work and an outdoor weather station that links to the school ICT suite In the summer children can work outside in an enjoyable and motivating environment. Children have access to wonderful playground facilities. As well as tarmac area that can accommodate two netball pitches, the playground neighbours a small enclosed wooded area that contains various wooden  play equipment.     In the summer, children can play our huge field.

Prospectus

Click Here to request a printed copy of our prospectus The school, located on the north eastern outskirts of Crowthorne, was opened in 1973 to serve the growing local population, though increasingly our improving standards and achievements have attracted pupils from further afield, including both Bracknell and Wokingham.   The parish of “Wokingham Without” assisted financially when the school was built and there has been a Joint Use agreement ever since.  For the school this means that we have a magnificent hall, with a stage, that is the envy of the neighbourhood. The hall particularly encourages development of musical and dramatic skills, which contributes greatly to our childrens’ self-confidence, and we are particularly proud of the very high standards consistently achieved in our school productions.   The school enjoys the benefit of wonderful grounds virtually surrounded by trees, offering a natural environment and the opportunity to use the area as a natural learning resource. We have a “Developing our School Grounds” working party; our most recent project having been to develop our central courtyard area as an outdoor classroom, with which to provide the children with a wonderful opportunity to study nature at first hand! We have a huge playing field, used for games, athletics and recreation. The large playground which houses the adventure play equipment is dedicated to school use during school time but made available to the local community out of school hours. We are fortunate to have a lovely light, airy school building. On-going improvements has resulted in nine individual classrooms, a library and an ICT suite.  A recent addition to the teaching facilities has been an outdoor learning area for the Foundation Stage.  This provides a secure, fenced area for the children in the Reception class and Year 1 to use wheeled vehicles and have access to sand and water at all times of the year.  We try to keep class sizes low, especially our infant age groups, so that children can receive the individual attention vital at an early age and thus make greater educational progress.  As the children progress through the school, they are actively encouraged to be self-proficient, in charge of their own learning but are given as many opportunities as possible to extend learning. Hatch Ride is a very caring, happy school, dedicated to the promotion of a well-balanced curriculum and highest quality of educational experiences. Our philosophy is one of partnership with you and your child in a friendly atmosphere where you can be assured that your child will learn and develop to the best of his or her ability.

EXTRAS