Head Teacher's Welcome

Welcome to our school web site.  We hope that you will enjoy browsing through these pages and discover that our school is a vibrant and happy place, where children and staff work really hard and have lots of fun at the same time. 

We are very proud of our school and all that we have achieved so far.   We were the first school in Bradford to achieve Fair Trade status and amongst the first few schools nationally to gain the ‘Leading Parent Partnership Award’. We have recently been awarded  ‘Investors in Pupils’.

At Heaton St. Barnabas’ School we are committed to providing a very broad curriculum to cater for the needs and personal interests of all our children. In addition to wanting all children to achieve their academic potential, we particularly want to give lots of opportunities for the children to discover their special talents. 

In addition to the statutory curriculum we provide many opportunities for sports and the arts both within and outside the school day. We have a large school garden enabling children to work with the natural environment.  All children learn to play musical instruments free of charge as part of their music lessons from the age of 7. At the moment this includes recorders in year 3 and woodwind or brass in year 4. Children who do well in the first year of instrumental lessons are supported to continue in subsequent years.  In addition to these free lessons violin, guitar and keyboard lessons are available at a reasonable cost from peripatetic teachers and children are able to audition for a choir.
 
Children begin to learn to speak French or Spanish from year 3 to year 6. We provide opportunities for children to travel abroad as often as we can. We take children from years 5 and 6 to France every 2 years and we have recently taken small groups of year 6 children to Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Poland.

Children in years 3 to 6 are encouraged to go on residential visits in this country every year, in addition to many day visits to local places of interest to support their work in school.  This year we are taking a party of 48 children to London for an overnight visit.
Over the course of the year children are able to participate in a range of sports clubs after school including football, basket ball, cricket, rounders, net ball, orienteering, dance and multi-skills. Our older children are offered a course in cycling proficiency.  Other clubs include cookery, art and crafts.

Our pupil council is well established and works hard to ensure that the children are fully involved in decision making in school. We have trained peer mentors who are a group of children who have undergone special training to help to resolve problems between children in the playground. Our ECO team help to ensure that we are doing our best to take care of the environment in school and in the wider world, and our Fair Trade team ensures that we continually do our best to support communities who are not as fortunate as ourselves. 

If you are visiting our web site with a view to applying for admission to our school for your child, or you are considering applying to join our staff, I strongly encourage you to contact school and arrange a visit to experience the atmosphere in school for yourself.

Within the web pages you should find a selection of articles and documents which give you a good flavour of our school.  If you do not find what you are looking for, please contact the school office where the staff will be pleased to assist you.

Mrs Gillian Evans  M.A.
Head Teacher