Pupil Personal Development
Dear Parents/Carers,
Welcome to the Pupil Personal Development page of our website. We hope this new area provides you with all the information you need to see what else we offer at Briar Hill Primary School to allow the children here to learn key skills which they will use everyday.
The first section includes an overview of who our Head Boy and Head Girl is for 2024-2025 and our Curriculum Pupil Development which is shown clearly in our recent Flagship status IQM award. Next is our Junior Leadership Team; there are a number of different teams including Active Ambition and The Eco Committee. Finally is our Enrichment Lunchtime Activities including Parliament and Careers Club.
If you would like your child to get involved in any of these clubs, please message your child's class teacher.
Recent Pupil Personal Development Days
Briar Hill's World Environment Day - June 2024
Briar Hill's Got Talent PowerPoint - June 2024
National Inventors Month - May 2024
EID Assembly - April 2024
British Science Week - March 2024
KS2 Letter to Parents - March 2024
Women's History Month - March 2024
Lent - March 2024
Head Boy and Girl (including deputies)
Head Boy - TBC
Head Girl - TBC
Deputy Head Boy - TBC
Deputy Head Girl – TBC
Curriculum Pupil Development (IQM)
'The staff at Briar Hill are the curriculum drivers across the Trust. The Headteacher is the Teaching and Learning Leader. She and her Leadership Team are sensitive and emotionally intelligent. They have not only raised standards but they have built a school which cares deeply about every individual here and within their locality. They understand that a truly inclusive school benefits everybody.'
Please visit our news listing to see the full report.
Briar Hill Primary School - Briar Hill's IQM Flagship Status Retained
briar hill primary school review jan 2022.pdf
Pastoral Pupil Development
Assistant Headteacher, Pastoral Lead and SENCo: Mr Ian Hickman
Attendance and Behaviour Lead: Miss Bay Cameron-Leslie
Senior Safeguarding Lead and Assistant SENCo: Mrs Janice Marshall
Care Team Lead: Mr Crozier
At Briar Hill, the heart of our ethos centres on the characteristics of effective learning. These are:
- enabling equality
- enabling the 4Cs of P4C (care, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking)
- enabling identity and emotional intelligence
- enabling growth mindset
- enabling challenge and curiosity
We work relentlessly to nurture our pupils to unlock and achieve their full potential and raise their aspirations. We are determined that during the children’s time spent at Briar Hill, they will leave as confident members of society, who are ready to enter secondary school with a strong moral compass, a real sense of resilience and to be armed with the key transferable skills and knowledge that will allow them to succeed in an ever changing world.
Our Pastoral team offer a range of support and nurture through school based and co-ordinated intervention to help individual pupils to improve their social, emotional and behavioural skills. As a result of this practice, Briar Hill Primary School has been praised locally and nationally through awards such as IQM Flagship and the Rose of Northamptonshire.
Enrichment Pupil Development
Pupils have the opportunity to choose from a range of extra-curricular activities.
Enrichment is a key driver for both Briar Hill Primary and our academy sponsor – David Ross Education Trust. We provide a broad range of enrichment opportunities - focussed around Sports, the Arts and Culture - as we firmly believe that these opportunities have a number of benefits for our pupils, both academically and personally by broadening their life experiences.
As a David Ross Education Trust academy, we believe that enrichment can help to raise academic standards, enhance performance and teach life skills that will equip our pupils for an ever-changing world.
Primary enrichment gives students the chance to participate in activities that supplement learning and enable them to broaden their skills and experiences, identify talent and enhance it.
Activities include visual and performing arts, including dance, drama and music. There is also a focus on art, sport, outward bound and developing life skills. Our twitter feed below showcases some of the wonderful enrichment opportunities recently and please click here to see some examples of enrichment before Lockdown.
Here is an example of some of the excellent Enrichment opportunities with some Year 6 children contributing in the Primary Music Festival 2024
House System - Introduced by the House Captains
The house system is an integral part of Briar Hill and is predominately utilised during inter-school competitions, which occur every half term, each with a different focus.
Our children are proud to be part of their house teams. Every child and member of staff is allocated to one of four houses, which they then support. Our houses teams are grouped vertically which enables children to socialise and engage with peers and staff beyond their everyday environment. It is an essential part of school life as it facilitates a growing community spirit and enables children to participate collectively, involving children from all year groups who are contributing to something bigger than themselves.
It was important for the house teams to be named after relevant, diverse and inspiring individuals, from different backgrounds within Great Britain. Therefore, the houses are all named after four successful British Artists. These artists each have a different discipline within art, they are: Gormley, Hockney, Banksy, Wiltshire.
The House captains each year are members of Year 6.
Junior Leadership Team
Parliament
At Briar Hill Primary School, we feel that listening to the voices of the children is vital to help us to improve and develop. Our school parliament is democratically voted in each year and we hold regular meetings to allow the children to discuss key issues, including which charities we will raise money for, how we will do this and other projects that the children would like us to carry out, as a school. In addition, we have been fortunate to have a few visitors to our school, including the Northampton South MP.
CLL Ambassador
‘I am really passionate about all the CLL subjects and want others to be successful in Writing, Reading and French.
I really enjoy writing as when I write, I find it clears my mind if I have too many thoughts. My teachers give me lots of opportunities to write in school across our fantastic curriculum.
I am a very keen reader and am so grateful for the wonderful texts we study in Talk for Reading, the texts in the library and the reading material school share on Google Classroom too. Reading helps me learn about the world around me and takes me on lots if journeys.
Learning different languages is a fantastic skill and it will benefit me and all of the other children in school, in their futures. We have learned French and Latin which has really helped me understand the English Language too as I know where some of the words originate from.
As CLL Ambassador, I want to help other pupils and give them the best opportunities in the subject areas.’
STEM Ambassador
‘I love STEM and am passionate about all of the subjects. In Maths, I love the four operations and find the way that my teachers support me in maths really helpful. They use a range of resources that support me to develop and learn - while providing me with a maths concrete resources pencil-case.
In Science, I especially love the different working scientifically opportunities we are given and my favourite units are electricity and light. I am a keen Scientist and like lots of the enrichment that we are given.
In Technology, I enjoy using lots of different equipment and learning new skills of how to use them to create a product. I have really enjoyed the food technology we have done in school too - including all the other opportunities given.
I really love Computing and using the different software we have in our school such as coding and radio software. I have learned many skills in my lessons and during other whole school event days as well.
As STEM Ambassador, I want to help other pupils and give them the best opportunities in the subject areas.’
Humanities Ambassador
‘I am really passionate about History, Geography and RE, which is why I thoroughly enjoy Humanities.
In History, I really enjoy and love learning about different periods of time. I think it is important to learn about the history of the world and using a range of resources makes it fun and engaging for us too. Through learning History, we can consider the present to the future more. The curriculum at our school really looks at a wide range of historical periods, events and key figures too.
In RE, I feel it is really important to learn about different faiths and cultures because this allows us to understand the community, and the wider society that we live in. The RE curriculum is really interesting and we have had many discussions and visits from different people and looked at different aspects of religions and cultures.
In Geography, I love learning about the different locations around the world and comparing them to my home town, here in England. Learning about Geography also helps us to greater understand how humans have impacted the world as well as how nature changes over time.
As Humanities Ambassador, I want to help other pupils and give them the best opportunities in the subject areas.’
Arts Ambassador
‘I am really passionate about Arts across our school and am really proud of the fantastic learning that takes place.
I really enjoy Art as when I am sketching, painting or using a range of mediums, I find it makes me feel free. In Art, you can draw, paint or make anything, no matter what your idea, and you can really let your imagination run wild. The Art opportunities we have been given in our school are fantastic and you can see this through the gallery and many other areas of our school too.
Learning different genres of Music is really important as Music is such a big part of people’s lives, cultures and traditions. Music really allows you to express yourself and we have had some fantastic enrichment opportunities from DRET over the years.
As Art ambassador, I want to help other pupils and give them the best opportunities in the subject areas.’
Active Ambition Crew
Hello, we are the Active Ambition Crew, made up of Year 5 and 6 pupils at Briar Hill Primary School.
We all have a passion for sport and helping children to participate in games that they want to play in both Key Stage 1 and 2 at our school.
In Key Stage 1, our focus is on building the skills that the children have learned in PE lessons so we often run sessions like skipping, races, throwing and catching, balancing and speed bounce challenges and we use a range of equipment to support this.
In Key Stage 2, our focus is more games based and run activities with Mr Mair focusing on Football, Basketball and Netball. We also ensure that we have equipment such as hula hoops and soft balls to practice activities that enable us to improve our skills in PE.
We really enjoy being able to run these activities for the children at our school.
The Eco Committee - ECO Ambassadors
Hello, we are the Eco Committee at Briar Hill Primary.
We love Eco and are passionate about this subject.
We are very proud that in June 2020 our school achieved Green Flag Eco status. This is the highest award in the Eco Schools programme.
As a committee it is our role to carry out the annual Eco Schools Environmental Review. We lead the school on the three Eco Topics of Litter, Waste and Energy.
Throughout the year we take the lead in Eco Projects
- Switch Off Fortnight- throughout the year we promote Last Out Light Off, so no energy is wasted at our school
- The Big School Birdwatch- we keep the bird feeders in our woods stocked up
- Waste- we promote the use of the recycling bins in our year groups
- Litter- we encourage no littering in our school grounds and take part in litter picks
- Caring for our Environment- we take the lead in gardening in our school grounds
As ECO Ambassadors, we want to help other pupils to be more environmentally aware and make a difference at Briar Hill.
Young and Sport Leaders
At Briar Hill Primary School we believe it is important that our pupils develop strong leadership skills and are able to 'have a voice' in their school community. As a P4C school, we encourage and teach our children to show respect and choose their words carefully when expressing opinions.
To achieve this, every class will engage in debates and children are given opportunities to participate in leadership roles through ambassador roles or in the classroom roles.
We also have a number of sport leaders at Briar Hill Primary School who devise different zones in the playground for children of all ages to participate in sports and physical activities during breaktimes and lunchtimes.
Wellbeing Champions
Hello, we are the Wellbeing Champions at Briar Hill Primary. Below are the reasons we think Wellbeing Champions are important at Briar Hill.
Wellbeing Champions help people by trying to make them happy and cheer them up when they are feeling down. They also look out for everyone in their class.
A Wellbeing Champion makes sure people are safe and happy in school.
Wellbeing Champions are important because they keep people happy by being kind and nice. We want everyone to be happy in school.
Being a Wellbeing Champion is important because you should always be kind and try to help others and I want to do that.
A Wellbeing Champion is kind and nice to everyone. They listen to everyone in their class and try to help. If I saw someone who needed support I would get them to tell an adult if they felt unhappy.
If there weren’t any Wellbeing Champions then there would be less people to check that everyone was happy and enjoying school.
It is important to take care of the people in the school. If I see people unhappy then I try to help them out.
When people are worried you can go and play with them and ask if they are okay. It is about caring for others and showing others how to be kind.
If someone isn’t happy or feels unwelcome then it is my role as a wellbeing champion to help with.
Because if people are sad you need to help them. That is my role in my class.
If anyone feels down, someone needs to cheer them up and support them. This can be done by talking to them or advising them to tell an adult. That is why we have Wellbeing Champions.
I think it is important that we have a wellbeing champion because everyone has feelings and if toy bottle up your feelings you can feel overwhelmed.
Multi-Faith Team
Hello, we are the Multi-Faith team, made up of children from across the whole school at Briar Hill Primary School.
We all celebrate different religions or faiths and our aim is to promote and celebrate our diversity within our school.
We are ambassadors of our faiths and religions and have taken part in a living museum and have acted as the teacher in the classroom when it comes to the teaching of our religion at school.
Our aim is to work with Mrs Peters in continuing to promote and raise the profile of our different faiths and religions at our school.
Reading Champions
Hello, we are the Reading Champions team, made up of children from across the whole school at Briar Hill Primary School.
It is our pleasure to help with the library to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the library. We also help develop a sense of responsibility, achievement and self-esteem in children. We constantly promote a love of reading across our school, and beyond. We make sure that across the school, children are encouraged to read and are encouraging others to read. We love being able to support younger readers and to support the Reading Rocks celebration of reading at home. We also enjoy welcoming parents and carers into school and supporting them in the library.
EAL Champions
Hello, we are the EAL Champions, made up of children from across the whole school at Briar Hill Primary School.
We all celebrate different languages and nationalities and our aim is to promote and celebrate our diversity within our school.
We are ambassadors of our languages and our nationalities and have created a welcome pack for children who join our school and do not speak English as their first language.
Our aim is to work with Mr Crozier in continuing to promote and raise the profile of our different languages and nationalities at our school.
Topical Talk – Debating national and local matters
As a school, we are keen to support children to become confident in discussing and debating national and local matters, particularly encouraging children to be confident and understand how to take part in debates. We use the Topical Talk activities to support this.
Road Safety Officers
As a school, we have recently had a member of the local Police force come in and speak to us about the importance of Road Safety. Following this, we are currently creating a team of Junior Road Safety Officers to support our community in being safe nearby and on local roads.
TT Rockstars Crew
Along with weekly TT Rockstar lunchtime sessions. Regular competitions and challenges take place throughout the school year both nationally and within the David Ross Education Trust. Children in LKS2 monitor and attend meetings to promote these competitions around school.
