Community Links

“At Packington we want to do our best and work together.”

 

Our community links are an important part of life at Packington and we have established strong links with our local community as well as with communities further afield both nationally and globally.

 

The Village Community

The school is a vital part of the village community.  We participate in a number of village events and traditions such as May Day, the Horticultural Show, The Jubilee Celebrations and Church Services and we have a regular page in the village magazine “The Packington Post”. 

We are also keen to learn from our local community and aim to incorporate this in our teaching and learning. 

One of our main aims during our ‘Year of Respect’ was to promote respect across the school, our wider community and globally.  Part of the project involved the pupils in working with members of the local community to develop an understanding of what respect means.  Pupils interviewed villagers and used their joint ideas to produce a community prayer. 

We have also welcomed the History Group into school to help us find out about a cedar tree that had to be felled in the school car park and welcomed them to our celebrations to bless our bell sculpture carved from the wood of the tree.

Links with Local Schools

We belong to a number of school networks (ALC and Unity) and have developed close ties with a number of local schools.  We regularly undertake residential visits with All Saints CE Primary, Newbold CE Primary and Worthington Primary.

 

We have worked with Newbold CE Primary to develop a joint maths and technology project, the aim being to widen opportunities for pupils to apply mathematic skills to real life problems.  One activity involved an enterprise challenge day – “The Xmaths Pie Challenge”, where pupils had to work in mixed groups from both schools to produce a quantity of mince pies and sell them for the most money.  The pupils were given a set amount of money, had to consider their recipe, purchase the ingredients and hire equipment, make the pies, develop a marketing strategy and sell the pies – all within one day!  It was a great success as you can see from one pupil’s comment:

 

“It was good fun, you had to work as a team as there was a lot to do.  We all took different jobs but we worked together to work out what we needed to spend and what we needed to charge.  We decided not to be too expensive as we want the parents to buy our mince pies.”

 

Links with Other Visitors

We are very lucky to have links with a number of local groups who regularly visit school as outlined below:

  • The Packington and Normanton Open the Book Team and the Ashby Open the Book Team.  Both teams visit school regularly to read and re-tell Bible stories in an interactive and thought provoking way.   
  • Ashby Youth for Christ visit school to take collective worship.
  • Ashby Rotarians.  We are very lucky to have Mr Chris Hobson from the Ashby Rotarians who works with our Eco Committee to help us become an eco friendly school.   He helps with our action plan and regularly organises for a group of Rotarians to visit school to help tidy our pond area.

 

Links Further Afield

Over the years we have developed links with other schools and institutions and currently have links with the following:

  • Bushara Primary School Rwanda.
  • Charnwood High School, Ivanhoe Technology College, Woodcote Primary, Newbold CE Primary, Ashby CE Primary to develop our global partnership work with a group of Rwandan schools in the Nygatare District of Rwanda.
  • We have strong links with Derby University, both for host teaching students and to participate in staff development and pupil enrichment work.  This year we have worked closely with the university and the National Forest Partnership to widen opportunities for outdoor learning.
  • Linden Primary School (Leicester City).  Linden is a large city school with a diverse cultural background and we have undertaken a number of reciprocal visits with each other.
  • The National Forest Partnership.   Over the last few years we have worked together on a number of environmental projects involving our local communities and particularly the National Forest.  Pupils have been involved in tree planting, including helping to plant the Para-Olympic with Princess Anne and Ellie Symmonds (Para-Olympic Swimmer) and recently worked with Artist Peter Massey to make a Roman floor mosaic for the Jubilee Wood Visitor’s Centre.

 

We have also had links with the following:

  • Mitsova Skole – The Czech Republic
  • Angelsey Primary – Burton upon Trent
  • Schools in France – via a French Teacher
  • A school in Germany

 

 

 

Packington dot info - Packington Post website for the village of Packington in Leicestershire England

Click here to find out more about

what goes on in our village.

 

 

 

UNITY

Packington has been part of the Small School’s Network for many years now.  There are over 20 Leicestershire schools in the network who work together because they have shared values and aims.  The group have provided a wide range of enrichment activities for pupils and training and development opportunities for staff.  In working together we have been able to maximise our resources, extend our capacity and improve our provision whilst maintaining our small school ethos. 

The network offers an outstanding range of opportunities for pupils to work with pupils in other local schools including choral events, environmental days, cross country, art competitions, chess, football, netball and cricket tournaments, tennis training, science and technology workshops as well as multi sports and a teddy bears picnic.  Indeed the activities continue to expand year on year.

Staff in the schools are also provided with opportunities to work together with recent examples involving writing moderation, phonics training and the development of higher level maths skills.

Currently the group are undergoing a change and this year have formalised their working relationship by becoming a school partnership company.  This will enable us to expand our work to develop more school to school support and procurement opportunities.  We have re- named ourselves Unity to represent our commitment to work together.

Unity - Our Aims and Values

Our Aims –

  • Provide quality, exciting and educational activities for all our children.
  • Provide quality CPD for all staff.
  • Procure certain services to ensure good value for money.
  • All take a responsibility towards the success of the group.

Our Values –

  • To have confident, resilient, literate, numerate and open minded children who are able to achieve their potential and are well prepared for their future. They should be able to leave primary school with happy memories, be aware of their strengths and have a strong sense of community. We will have prepared them to deal with many situations and given them a sense of pride in themselves and their achievements.

 

  • To have hard working, highly skilled, passionate, child centred staff that feel valued, are independent but supportive of one another. They should embrace challenge and change and be encouraged to be innovative whilst pursuing excellence. They should be committed to continual improvement both of themselves and of the schools that they work in, whilst also having a work life balance that ensures loyalty.

 

  • As schools we are committed to partnership working, promoting excellence and celebrating our successes. We will be inclusive and aim high as a group as we will be strongest together. We will be at the heart of our communities offering support, challenge and enrichment for our staff and children.

 

Ashby Learning Community (ALC)

Working with other schools to share ideas and support is important to Packington.  It enables us to extend our resources, share and develop expertise and helps us to get involved in exciting and innovative projects.  As a result Packington is part of several networks of schools and one valuable group that we belong to is the Ashby Learning Community (formerly the Ashby Family of Schools Development Group).  The ALC is made up of 14 local primary schools, 1 high and 1 upper school:

 

Albert Village Primary

Ashby CE Primary

Blackfordby CE Primary

Donisthorpe Primary

Griffydam Primary

Hilltop Primary

Newbold Coleorton CE Primary

Moira Primary

Oakthorpe primary

Viscount Beaumonts  CE Primary

Willesley Primary

Woodcote Primary

Worthington primary

Ivanhoe Technology College

Ashby School

 

 

The Aim of the ALC

Achieving excellence for all, through collaborative and co-operative learning:

  • to provide the best possible learning opportunities cross-phase, to achieve excellent outcomes
  • to raise aspirations for the whole learning community – parents, pupils, staff, governors
  • to work together with honesty and integrity, to provide mutual support and challenge for each other.