Red Lane Community Primary School

Red Lane School is situated on Red Lane in Breightmet. It occupies a large enclosed ‘campus’ which comprises of a childcare unit ‘Top Tots’ a school nursery and infants and then across the playground there is the primary school.
Personally I love the old fashioned set-​up of the separate Infants and Juniors as I feel it helps the younger children settle in and prevents them from feeling overwhelmed or intimidated by the older children.
The ‘Top-​Tots’ accepts children from as young as 6 weeks up until they start Reception class. There are also provisions for breakfast club and after-​school care. When your child is at a ‘pre-​school’ age you have the choice of sending them to the school nursery (compulsory 5 half days a week) with the option of having them in the ‘wrap-​around’ sessions of childcare for the other half of the day should you work or else you can do what we did and chose two morning and one afternoon pre-​school session in ‘wrap-​around’. Despite appearing separate the Nursery children and the wrap-​around session children do mix and mingle due to a semi– open plan setting.
The teaching staff are approachable, caring and professional and it’s always reassuring to hear them know all the children by name. However, one problem we encountered through only having three sessions a week is that our son missed out on two activities as although they happened on days he did attend they were organised on days he didn’t and nobody thought to tell us which was a bit upsetting and meant he felt left out.
When your child is at the age to enter reception class, they will start in one of two classes. however, unlike many other schools in the uk you will find that the children are expected to attend Full Time from day one, which to be brutally honest myself and my husband heavily disagreed with especially as we were led to believe this wouldn’t be so. I think there is a world of difference in the emotional maturity of a just turned four year old and a just turned five year old. Unfortunately the school were quite stubborn on their stance and only offered a special two weeks of half days to us alone which left us weighing up the pro’s and con’s of him being overwhelmed versus him feeling left out.
The Classrooms are attractive and full of activities (like a reading area, a craft area, role playing areas etc etc) and each class has a teacher and at least one teaching assistant, often more. They have adopted the Kinder Care learning system over the more widely known Jolly Phonics and so far it has proved very successful offering an all inclusive learning system through songs, games, activities and stories. It’s important that children enjoy school and are excited by it, something that the children of Red Lane school all appear to be.
The school has several outside play areas sections and zoned off all of which are bright and appealing for the children and stimulate play and activity.
The school follows a healthy eating ethos and there is also a ‘café’ daily where for a small fee your child will get a drink and some fruit.
I’ve yet to have experience of the Junior school part of Red Lane but I am confident through visiting the main building and attending an assembly that the school is child centered and produces happy, well adjusted, eager to learn and polite pupils with staff that obviously enjoy their work and are good at it.
Every member of staff I have come into contact with has been approachable, polite and friendly as are the pupils. I’m confident that this is a great school and am proud that my child is a pupil there.