Judith Kerr Primary School

[allyfe]

I'm really hoping that any current parents at Judith Kerr can answer a load of questions I have about a new bilingual school.

Basically, we are considering sending our monolingual daughter to the Bromley Bilingual School opening in September. She would be entering year 1.

So, I was really hoping that any current parents at Judith Kerr could tell me how they have found it. Are you happy with it? What are the positives and negatives?

One of my concerns is that my monolingual daughter will very much be in the minority, so if anyone can tell me how they integrated monolingual children I'd be really interested to hear. Basically, I would massive appreciate anything you can tell me! Thanks!!

[LynnonRye]

Bump - we had an offer for a 2014 reception place, so I'd be really interested to learn about experiences of parents with children at the school. Thanks.

[Rightsaidfred]

I understand the headteacher has recently left quite suddenly and they are recruiting a new headteacher to start September 2014 - does anyone have any insight? Current parents?

[Chief Jeff]

We currently have a monolingual child in reception who's had a great year at Judith Kerr so far. It's a great school with a really friendly international feel. I would say at least a third of the children in the two reception classes are monolingual, and they have separate lessons in English when the bilingual kids are doing stuff in German. The monolingual children have learned German songs and counting in German, and a bit of vocab, but the majority of the teaching is in English.

I think the first headteacher left mainly because the school or she had underestimated the work required to get the school up and running. There's still a long way to go before the building and playground are fully ready, which is frustrating, but our child's teacher was telling us the children are better behaved and happier there than at her previous high-achieving well-equipped school. I may be wrong, but the only other trouble the school seems to be having is keeping the bilingual ethos alive while keeping the Department for Education / Ofsted happy in terms of the kids' achievement on the English side of things.

So, yeah, a good school so far - the interim head and the part-time consultant head seem to be doing an excellent job, and hopefully they can retain all their current staff over the summer and get a great head in too.

[Parkrunner]

Hi Chief Jeff, thanks for the insight. Am I understanding your post correctly - that aside from some nursery rhymes, children that arrive at JKPS monolingual are essentially only being taught in English and only children that arrive bilingual are being taught bilingually? I've spent the last week feeling very disappointed we didn't get JKPS (our first choice) for our monolingual son as I really wanted him to learn German and have the gift of bilingualism, but from your post it sounds like we may not be missing out so much after all...?

[Sol]

When I went to the open day they said Reception children are taught mainly in English and introduce slowly to German language; once they go to year 1 and from then onwards the whole curriculum is taught in both German and English.

[LynnonRye]

My understanding was that they are taught in both languages from reception, but at a relaxed pace. I found the reception teaching plan on the website and have attached a copy. I was worried about the head leaving as she was a fantastic presence at the open day, but I'm going to give it a chance as I was really impressed when we visited.