LONDON'S BEST PRIMARY SCHOOL?
Apr 5 2010
Some people covet a Prada handbag or the latest Bentley but, sad though it may seem, I often suffer from school envy and last week I visited Holy Trinity and St Silas, a primary school in Camden Town, which would make any parent a little green.
This small inner-city faith school doesn’t have too many advantages when it comes to ‘cultural capital’. Two thirds of its pupils live in the nearby estates, many are from immigrant Bangladeshi or Somalian families, the majority arrive in reception with skills well below what you’d expect of the term ‘north London child’. By the time they leave, however - indeed long before - their results are in the top one per cent nationally.
The school, however, is certainly no formulaic exam factory. On the contrary, Holy Trinity has forced even Ofsted to expand its vocabulary. ‘Superb, rigorous, exceptional, talented, meticulous and remarkable’ aren‘t adjectives which generally feature in reports, but the analysis of Holy Trinity is littered with them.
And with justification. Annie Williams, the school’s glamorous head (who sacrificed a life on the boards for a life in front of one) has created a ’team’ and a curriculum which reflects her vision of what a truly creative education should be about. Art and music and drama are at the core of every schoolday and the medicinal ‘literacy hour’ has been transformed into 120 richly filled minutes of poetry, story and song.
On the day I visited, I watched one group which needed extra teaching support listen spellbound as a young male teacher played the flute and told a story. It was better than CBeebies- and the kids knew it. Not for a minute did the attentive faces stray from the magician in front of them.
Holy Trinity is a school where the phrase ‘dumbing down’ has never been heard of. The school performs an annual whole-school Shakespeare production ( now part of a local primary-school Shakespeare festival) and every child goes on school trips to the ballet, the opera and the theatre. The well-qualified staff (three have MAs, two are trained lawyers, one is bi-lingual) teach French from reception, play in the school jazz band and put on an annual panto.
Any parent in the country would be thankful for a school like this on their doorstep. It’s bound to cause a little envy, however, in those who don’t have one.