Here is a round-up of the primary awards granted so far in the spring term of 2024. Each successful application has to satisfy our award criteria which you can find here. We wish all the schools every success with their wonderful projects and are very pleased to have helped them "make a big difference with a little money".
| School | Location | Subject Focus | Award Details |
| Moss Bury | Stevenage | STEM | A class pack of Crumble Controlers, one Sphero robot and six Beebot floor robots with docking station for computing lessons and to extend their computing club offer to KS1 and LKS2. The equipment will help children of all ages to grasp programing and also be used cross curricularly eg in geography to create routes on a map, in D+T for controlling models such as a fun fair and in science for circuits. |
| Wymondley JMI | Hitchin | Multi Focus | A 65" interactive touchscreen to enable the school hall to be used for teaching throughout the week as well as for assemblies. The hall is increasingly needed as a teaching space to allow splitting of mixed-age classes for certain subjects and the teaching of specific groups. The whiteboard facilities such as slideshows, interactive quizzes, casting pupil screens and audio-visual presentations will create a new effective teaching space quickly and cheaply. |
| St. Margaret Clitherow | Stevenage | English | The Pathways to Write programme for the whole school to develop vocabulary, reading and writing using the mastery approach. With clear lesson plans, presentations and resources all linked to high quality texts, the programme ensures appropriate challenge to all levels and will help the school bring the their writing attainment in line with their reading and maths levels. |
| Hertingfordbury Cowper | Hertford | English | Dictionaries and a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books to help extend the children's vocabulary and improve spelling as well as integrating the texts into both the reading and writing curriculum. |
| Barley First | Royston | Multi | An outdoor library to extend their outdoor learning space for both literarcy and cross-curricular learning. The library will be used for interventions and outside of literacy classes to allow pupils to extend their reading and will be particularly useful for their cross-year reading buddy program and reading with the elderly from a local care home. |
| Barkway First | Royston | Multi | The same outdoor library as their sister-school, Barley (above) with a focus on younger children, building relationships and assisting transition with the local pre-school. The outdoor reading area would be a calm and safe space, particularly beneficial for interventions and their nurture group. |
| Buntingford First | Buntingford | PE | An exercise circuit route to give an exciting warm-up activity to PE lessons and for children to enjoy at break/lunch. The facility will also be beneficial for sensory/movement breaks for interventions and between lessons. There are multiple ways around the tracks to provide variety and it can be used competitively or to enhance team work. |
| Warren Dell | Watford | STEM | 6x BeeBot robots and 10x tablets. The BeeBots will make programming concepts more accessible to younger children in an exciting way and also develop teamwork and problem-solving skills. The tablets will facilitate personalised learning for their high proportion of SEND children to enhance and extend their classroom learning and also be used in homework clube and early/late sessions. |
| St. Andrews C/E | Hitchin | Foundation |
Jigsaw PSHE scheme (R - Y6) to ensure high quality and smoothly progressing PSHE provision across the school. The scheme includes comprehensive training, schemes of work, class and whole school resources to ensure consistency, progression and save teachers preparation time. |
| Sandon JMI | Sandon | STEM | A Crumble controller class pack, robotics add-on and 5x Rasperry Pi starter kits to support implementation of the new NCCE Teach Computing scheme with exciting and motivating equipment. Seeing the results of programming playing out in the real world will enhance the learning and development of many aspects of computational thinking such as logic, algorithm design and pattern recognition. Aimed at KS2 class activities, the equipment can be applied cross-curicularly and will also benefit their coding club. |
| Ashfield | Bushey | Multi | 7x visualisers to facilitate modelling work, scafflolding learning, live feedback and sharing good examples of pupil work. Used across many subjects, the visualisers will also be used to record work and learning for evidence, revision and even a class activities blog. |
| Oxhey Wood | Watford | English | A wide range of fiction and non-fiction books for the library for use during term-time and for the summer-club for children's independent reading and supported sessions. This will help develop a love of reading which is particularly needes as many of their children do not have many books at home. |
| St. Nicholas Elstree C/E | Elstree | English | 3x iPads primarily to help individuals and small groups progress their reading with online reading activities such as the online books and activities included in their phonics scheme. The school has a large proportion of SEND and EAL children and the use of technology for interactive activities will help both motivation and progression. |
| Nash Mills C/E | Hemel Hempstead | STEM | A pack of 16x Sphero Mini robots, equipment and activity cards to bring both basic and advanced coding to life for all ages. The robots can be programmed in many ways including using a joystick, block commands or learner's voice or facial expressions and will thus will also be accessible to SEND children. |
| Leverstock Green C/E | Hemel Hempstead | STEM | A whole school maaths day workshop including a parental session focussing on reasoning, problem solving and fluency with engaging, fun and challenging activities. There will be a starter assembly and then every class will benefit from a session followed by a parents' workshop to enable them to help their children with maths homework and learning. |
| Saffron Green | Borehamwood | English | Initial annual subscription to the Read/Write Inc. phonics scheme which will train teachers in the delivery of phonics as well as allow pupils to access individualised phonics work from home to consolidate and progress their learning. This will help a large number of struggling pupils reach and hopefully exceed expected reading levels and, if successful, can be funded in future years from the school's literacy budget. |
| Watton at Stone | Hertford | Outdoor Learning | Training and certification for Level 3 Forest School Leadership and Forest School equipment. The trained teacher will then cascade her knowledge and skills down to other staff to develop their skills in teaching many outdoor learning activities/topics such as integration with curriculum topics (science, maths, art etc), risk management, ecosystem and environmental as well as the important skills of teamwork, resilience and self-confidence. |
| Camp | St. Albans | English | A selection of Collins' Big Cat phonics book packs addressing various reading levels to add to their library of phonetic based reading books. The books will be used throughout the school, especially helping pupil premium children and will give a wider variety of new and exciting texts to keep children motivated and facilitate smooth progression through the levels. |
| Thorn Grove | Bishops Stortford | Outdoor Learning | Outdoor investigation equipment including a pond explorer class set, 6x underwater viewers, 10x viewing chambers and a weather station with colour display and multi-sensor. This equipment will be used to bring specific curriculum subjects and topics to life in e.g. in science and geography as well as increasing interest through practical work and skills such as investigation, measuring and teamwork. |
| Hartsbourne | Bushey | STEM | 5x Data Loggers and charging tray to help implement the Teach Computing framework and increase the level of challenge for children in their gathering, analysing and presenting data activities. The devices gather data from various sources/sensors and will help develop skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving as well as providing stimulating, practical activities for computing and science topics. |
| Merryfield | Borehamwood | English | A range of expertly curated book packs focussing on diversity and inclusion for this school which is in the most deprived LSOA in Hertfordshire and in the most deprived 10% nationally. The school community is incredibly diverse in terms of languages spoken, minority groups and looked-after children and these new and focussed books will help all the children to feel included and understood. |
| Gade Valley | Hemel Hempstead | English | Picture books for EYFS/KS1 and Accelerated Reader book packs covering lower and middle years to help improve pupil's fluency, vocabulary and comprehension as well as increasing motivation to read new and exciting books. The Accelerated Reader system features an online comprehension test for each title with results being stored and analysed to advise whether children are ready to move up through the carefully assigned levels. |