Town Close House

Children in the age range 7-13 (Years 3 – 8) need the opportunity to experience a wide variety of academic, practical and physical activities so that they can develop an extensive range of basic skills and so that they can discover gradually where their talents lie. To this end the Prep Department curriculum is designed to be broad and balanced. Generous amounts of time are given over to physical and practical activities, whilst also ensuring that high standards are maintained in academic subjects.

On entry to the Prep Department, pupils in Year 3 (ages 7-8) continue to receive much of their education from their own form teacher, as this provides an important supportive environment, but they also benefit from the expertise of specialist subject teachers in French, DT, ICT, Music, PE and Games.

By the time they reach Year 5 (ages 9-10) pupils are receiving all of their education from specialist subject teachers, which we believe is an important factor in maintaining the high standards which were identified in our most recent inspection report. In order to continue to provide an appropriate level of pastoral care, each pupil in Years 5-8 is assigned to a small Tutor Group and they remain with the same tutor for the duration of their time at Town Close, thus ensuring a consistent overview of their educational progress during that time (the tutor for Year 3 & 4 pupils is their form teacher).

The dominant mechanism for the tutor to monitor a pupil’s progress is through the House Card. Each pupil carries this card to all of their lessons and teachers give out house points for positive contributions to lessons, good work, helpful behaviour etc. The teachers can also record less positive aspects of a pupil’s contributions to lessons. As well as providing the tutor with an overview of a pupil’s work and behaviour, the points are added up each week and contribute to the house points total of one of the four houses to which each pupil belongs.

It is at the beginning of Year 5 that streaming of pupils by ability takes place. Being non-selective is an important feature of the ethos of the School and streaming allows us to cater for the wide range of abilities inherent in such a policy. The streams are subject to regular review as it is certainly true that pupils make different amounts of academic progress at different times. (We set for Mathematics from Year 3 as we recognise that levels of ability in this subject can sometimes be quite different from other subjects.)

On entering Year 7, pupils begin to follow the Common Entrance Syllabus. This course is assessed through exams at the end of Year 8 in English, Maths, Science, French, Latin, History, Geography and Religious Studies and serves as an entrance exam for most of the wide variety of boarding and day schools to which pupils move on once their time at Town Close is over. (In recent years the boarding schools have included: Eton, Greshams, Framlingham, Oundle, Oakham Radley, Rugby, Uppingham and Wymondham College. The day schools have included Langley, the Norwich School and the Norwich High School for Girls.) Many of these schools, particularly the boarding schools, offer academic scholarships and it is for this reason that a small extra stream is included in Year 8 for academic subjects, enabling us to provide the high level of focussed teaching needed for pupils to tackle these demanding exams proficiently. These schools also offer scholarships in practical and sporting activities so it is important that the curriculum continues to provide ample scope for study in these subjects.

Internal school exams are set twice a year, the number of these exams increasing gradually as pupils move through the School so that, eventually, they have sufficient experience to cope with exams in all the Common Entrance subjects. Parents receive a detailed report twice a year and are invited to a Parents’ Consultation Evening in the term when they don’t receive a report (parents are welcome to come in at any other time to discuss their child’s progress on an individual basis.) Effort grades are sent out twice a term so that parents can gauge the level of effort that their child is making.

These grades are necessarily subjective, but they are important because they give an indication of a child’s attitude to their studies.

In the long term, attitude is more important than any particular measure of attainment at any point of a pupil’s Prep School career; a pupil with a positive attitude to studies will make small regular increments of progress, regardless of where they happen to be on the ‘ladder’ of attainment at particular points in time. Eventually they will find that the small steps lead to high levels of attainment, but this may require patience.

The School is characterised by an understanding of this point and, above and beyond the details of the organisation of the curriculum, is dedicated to promoting a positive approach to learning along with the associated skills of perseverance, concentration and independent thinking and study skills.

For more detailed information about particular subjects please have a look at the individual subject sections on the website.