CHURCHFIELDS Primary School, based in Atworth and Monkton Farleigh, believes in constant improvement in its own teaching methods to achieve the best results for its 150 pupils.

Being a Church of England school, the primary sticks strongly to the tenets of Christianity to inform its approach to teaching.

Abiding by its three beliefs of respect, resourcefulness and resilience, the school gives an all-round education but with a prime focus on the basics of reading, writing and maths.

“It is really important that the children get a good grounding in the basic subjects and a well-rounded education and a good experience of them all.” said head teacher Simon Futcher, 42.

“We like to give them lots of opportunities to go out and learn what is going on in the world. We have what are called Wow Days.

“We choose topics that the children love such as chocolate or the Olympics and we use these days to inspire them.

“One day we had a circus person come into school and they taught the children tricks and then all the learning in that term came through this one Wow Day.”

The school is in the two locations after the two village schools amalgamated in 2006 as Monkton Farleigh was in danger of closing.

In its last Ofsted it was awarded a Good rating, with lead inspector Diane Wilkinson highlighting the outstanding behaviour of the pupils.

The report also said that pupils' personal development is outstanding and their behaviour is excellent, as are their attitudes to learning.

Mr Futcher, from Bristol, added: “One of the things that they said we should focus on was writing skills. We are developing that and believe we have made changes to the areas Ofsted said.

“We are doing a scheme called reading for writing. We use it to develop a love of writing and reading.

“The children have a copy of their own novel and a writing lesson follows from that book. They read a text collectively and explore with the teacher how to write.

“It is more motivating and inspiring for the pupils as they can stick to one book and its characters. It has improved the standard of writing across the school.”