Our Vision & Values
At Harris Primary Academy Merton we believe that everybody has the right to feel safe, happy and respected.
We understand that every member of our school community has the same rights:
- everyone has the right to be safe
- everyone has a right to be treated with dignity and respect
- everyone has a right to feel happy
- the staff have a right to teach
- the children have a right to learn
- everyone has a responsibility to behave so that others can feel safe and learn
All adults in the academy are responsible for modelling high standards of behaviour in their dealings with children, parents and other members of staff. All children are treated fairly, but we also acknowledge individual needs. We expect all of our children to work to the best of their abilities and to allow others to do the same. Our expectations underpin our academy ethos:
Safe and secure
Children need to feel safe and secure in order to flourish in both their academic and personal potential. Our intent is for children to leave HPAM as kind, considerate and empathetic individuals. Spiritual, moral, and cultural education is taught explicitly throughout our RE and PSHEC curriculum but also implicitly in the way that staff model positive relationships, patience, kindness, and conflict management. We work hard to have a culture of support so that the children have opportunities to share their successes and their concerns with staff who go above and beyond to help.
Sense of belonging
We have a real sense of community that enables every single member of our school community to have a sense of belonging, whether you are a child, a parent or a staff member. We cherish the unity of belonging to our Merton family whilst also celebrating the diversity that our family is made up of. Our setting means that we can adapt our provision to meet the specific needs of our children. Working closely with other local schools means that our children can also feel part of the wider Harris family.
Independent
We foster in all of our children an intrinsic love of learning which is developed through a range of techniques – open ended tasks, peer mentoring, classrooms set up to encourage independence, problem solving sessions, outdoor adventurous activity days and enrichment activities both in and our of school. Having a focus on enriching and accurate vocabulary in all subjects enables a better understanding of concepts, ideas and supports the children in being able to articulate clearly what they have learnt in each subject. We do this by expanding their cultural capital and breadth of their vocabulary.
Empowered
We want our curriculum to open our children’s eyes and aspire to some of the cultural and academic legacies of our local area and the global community. Our curriculum must allow children to compete and achieve at the highest level and achieve equality of opportunities. Because of this, our curriculum places an unapologetic emphasis on the importance of ensuring that our children are confidently literate and numerate, as these skills underpin all learning.
Confident
At its heart, our curriculum aims to foster and develop children who are confident to start the next stages of their educational journey. Confident in themselves as individuals, and in their abilities as resilient learners, interested in the world around them, and able to question the things that they see. Well-rounded in that they have been exposed and introduced to a curriculum that has breadth and depth and can made links and connections with the world around them.
Able to fail
At HPAM, we teach a mastery curriculum which means that the children are constantly working to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding, rather than achieving a certain criteria. We have a shared acknowledgement that being able to fail is vital to children’s success later in life. Our curriculum shares with our children content and opportunities that taken them beyond their daily immediate surroundings and offers them experiences across a wealth of different subjects, developing talents and igniting their own individual interests.
