Boltons Church of England Primary School is situated in the village of Bolton Low Houses. We are approximately a 30 minute drive from a number of major towns – Penrith, Workington, Keswick and Carlisle. The school day runs from 8:30am until 3pm, but our After School Club operates from 3pm until 5:30pm, Monday- Thursday. The total number of hours in school over a typical week is 32.5. School staff also run out of hours clubs Monday- Thursday between 3pm and 4pm. Pupils can arrive on site from 8:15am every day and a member of staff is always at the gate to greet them and see them safely into school.

Every school day starts with Collective Worship after registration at 8:30am; parents are welcome to join us for all of our assemblies and our Friday achievement assembly is especially popular. Lessons start at 8:45am and we break for lunch at midday. KS1 pupils have morning break at 10:30am and KS2 at 10:45am. The pupils in KS1 also have  short afternoon break at 2:25pm.

The school currently has 77 pupils on roll split between four teaching groups. Each class teacher produces a termly curriculum letter which describes in more detail what pupils are studying each term. All classes have daily lessons in Maths and English and Science is taught three times per week in all KS2 classes. History, Geography, French, Music, PSHE, Art and Design and Technology are taught in half termly blocks. All classes have two hours per week of PE, one hour of music, one hour of computing and children from Year 3 upwards are taught French.

RE is taught weekly in all classes by class teachers and Collective Worship is a daily event. We have good links with our local church, All Saints at Boltongate and continually strive to strengthen these further.  Our vicar, Revd Stephen Banks, or one of his colleagues, joins us one day each week to lead Collective Worship. Every half term we also hold an assembly planned and led by pupils, to which all parents are invited, and these are always well attended.

We have recently purchased additional ipads for the school and the children love using these within lessons and in after school clubs.

Earlier this year we asked our pupils to describe the sort of school they would like and to choose their most important Christian values. The children were very definite about what values are important to them and why. We also used what the children told us to produce our Christian Vision statement.

We operate a Buddy system where pupils in Year 6 are assigned new pupils in Reception class to look after; they look after them throughout their first year and strong bonds quickly form between these pupils.

The School Council is a very important part of our school and we ask them to help us write and review some school policies; choose charities to support; produce regular articles for the Parish magazine; choose how to spend money raised and generally take responsibility for areas in school. Last year we raised money for MacMillan, the Air Ambulance, The British Legion Poppy Appeal and Watchtree. We also donated items of food to our local Foodbank. Our Year 3/4 Bright Stars donated the proceeds from their social enterprise project to Watchtree.

Last year two classes (Year 2 and Year 6) took part in the Archbishop’s Young Leader’s Award; an initiative that encouraged the children to be courageous advocates and to think about what they can give back to our local community. As part of this we also delivered garden pot plants to some local residents and we received some lovely thank you letters from them.

This year we achieved the gold award for our PE provision.

Here at Boltons we take safeguarding of all our pupils very seriously. The open, honest, supportive and caring approach we take aims to ensure that pupil welfare and well-being are understood to be of the utmost importance to all who use and visit our school. The designated lead (DSL) for safeguarding is Mrs Pitcher, Mrs Sarah Jennison is the deputy designated safeguarding lead and Mr Dawson is our designated governor for safeguarding. Any concerns are dealt with swiftly.

More information about safeguarding can be found in the child protection policy on our policy page.