Patcham Junior School

Special Educational Needs

17.4% of our pupils are currently on the Special Educational Needs register. The nature of need includes specific learning difficulties, autistic spectrum condition, moderate learning difficulties, hearing impairment, physical disability, emotional and behavioural difficulties and speech and language disorders.

Socio-economic backgrounds

Our pupils are mainly British, although the diversity within our school community is growing, with 16.27% from other cultural backgrounds. These children are from a range of groups, including white Asian, Caribbean and Bangladeshi, but there are no significantly large ethnic minority groups. There is significantly less ethnic diversity within our school community than is the case nationally.

The majority of our families (57.5%) are recorded as having “no religion”. The major faith group is Christian with 25.5% of the pupil population. We also have families who are part of most other major faiths, including Islam and Buddhism.

4.7% of our pupils have a first language other than English, with a further 0.5% having a “home” language other than English.

Currently 13.9% of our children are on Free School Meals, which is significantly below national averages, but rising in number.

14.7% of pupils are currently eligible to for Pupil Premium funding. The number of pupils eligible has risen each year for the past five, but this remains below the national average.

Attendance for the past three years has been consistently above local and national figures and has continued to improve. There is no significant variance in attendance between groups, although this is something we monitor carefully.

We have a number of children who are looked after or in guardianship arrangements compared with other similar schools and work closely with the virtual school to ensure these pupils are well supported and making good progress.

Children come from a variety of different backgrounds and may have gay siblings, uncles, godparents, parents or carers. Celebrating and acknowledging different families is crucial to make all children feel welcome and enable them to learn how to value those who are different or come from different backgrounds and families.

Please follow the links below to find further information on how we comply with the Equality Act 2010.

Equality Act 2010

Advancing equality of opportunity

The work we have done recently on improving the achievement of boys has been very successful and for the past three years boys have attained significantly above the LA average in all areas. For example, in 2019, the number of boys achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths was 15.9% above the LA average. The boys achieve in line with the girls in nearly every measure. We carefully monitor issues of gender and achievement in order to identify trends and target support.

Due to the low numbers of children in each cohort with protected characteristics it is difficult to identify specific trends. Children with an ethnicity other than white British tend to do as well, if not better than children who are white British and year on year have achieved much higher than the school average attainment.

The school is mindful of national data that shows that children who have protected characteristics are likely to face greater challenges at school.

For example, Stonewall, the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity’s research shows:

“Homophobic bullying has a profoundly damaging impact on young people’s school experience. One in three (32 per cent) gay pupils experiencing bullying change their future educational plans because of it and three in five say it impacts directly on their school work.”

Fostering good relations

Equality forms a central part of many of our assembly themes. We celebrate key equalities ‘dates’ such as black history month, Women’s History and disability week. This is often through visiting speakers, or events and activities. We cover stories and celebrations from all major faiths and ensure that there is a balance across the year. We also challenge gender stereotyping.

We regularly raise money for a range of charities, which are chosen by our school council. We seek to cover local, national and international charities. 

We organise playtimes and lunchtimes very carefully to ensure children can play and have fun safely. We are part of the playtime buddy scheme run by safetynet.