Schools and colleges

Chingford Headteacher named Headteacher of the Year

9 Nov: Chingford Hall Primary School Headteacher Pat Davies was named the Pearson Teaching Awards Headteacher of the Year last month at a star-studded ceremony.

The ‘gold Plato’ award is a national honour that this year received 22,000 teacher nominations. The news of the award was initially broken to Pat by television presenter Alex Jones and her dance partner from Strictly Come Dancing, James Jordan, when they visited the school last month.

Pat was nominated by a pupil and endorsed by colleagues, including Deputy Head Mary Vicentuan, who said, “Pat's commitment to every child achieving to the best of their abilities and ensuring that they can showcase both their academic and social strengths of character and personalities inspires her staff, parents, governors and the pupils to want to do the same.“

Pat took over at Chingford Hall four years ago as a consultant head, but stayed on permanently and turned the school around. Back in 2007 only 38 per cent of year six pupils were achieving level four in literacy, and just 54 per cent were hitting the target in maths.

Since then it has been named as one of England's most improved primary schools and is now in the top one per cent of most improved primaries. All year six pupils have achieved level four or above for the past two years; this year 75 per cent got level five in English and maths. Pat is now also a consultant head at Whittingham Primary School, Walthamstow.

It’s fantastic that one of our teachers has received such a prestigious honour

Cllr Marie Pye, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, told Waltham Forest News.

Really good Headteachers like Pat make a huge difference to society. They shape young people’s lives and aspirations and they give children opportunities to achieve in life. It might sound corny, but it’s true – a good Headteacher can make all the difference and in Pat we have one of the best.

For more information visit www.teachingawards.com. Free internet access is available at all libraries in the borough.

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Babcock 4S

Babcock 4S works with Children and Young People Services to provide school improvement services to Waltham Forest schools and early years settings.

As part of their contract with the Council, they manage:

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School Improvement Services for schools in Waltham Forest are based at:

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