Gilsland Church of England Primary School is a Church of England Controlled School with Foundation Status. We pride ourselves on our ethos of providing a safe, caring environment as well as providing high quality education for every pupil. We evoke a true family atmosphere encouraging close links with parents, the local community and with the village church of St. Mary Magdalene in Gilsland.

Gilsland School opened in 1874 to serve the village community. We are fortunate to have the school log book dating back to that time as well as a number of photographs of past pupils.

Nowadays the school serves the communities of Gilsland, Low Row and Denton as well as wider afield.
The school is situated in a unique location in an area of outstanding beauty. It’s buildings lies adjacent to Hadrian’s Wall, an area steeped in thousands of years of history.

Aims

“We strive to provide an excellent standard of education for all pupils that enable each individual to recognise and achieve their full potential
with an emphasis on tolerance and respect for others within the context of Christian beliefs and values.”

We will do this by:

• Delivering high quality teaching to promote effective independent learners with increased motivation
• Providing a broad and balanced curriculum with the opportunity to access extra curricular activities
  
• Developing happy, healthy and well- balanced individuals
  Providing a rich learning environment
  
• Ensuring equal opportunities to meet individual and special needs of all pupils
  
• Enabling children to recognise their place in both the local community and the wider, multicultural society
  
• Teaching Christian values and nurturing a caring ethos
  
• Promoting self-discipline and understanding appropriate behaviour
  
• Welcoming parents to work closely with the school to reinforce learning, and encourage them to play an active role in their child’s education
  
• Targeting funds wisely and effectively to provide the best possible provision
  
• Enabling continuing professional development and thereby improving leadership capabilities of all staff and governor

Aims

Gilsland Church of England Primary School is a happy, secure, friendly and welcoming school, with a true family atmosphere, in which all staff and pupils are positive, caring and optimistic - and they smile! The staff, governors and pupils alike enjoy what they do and do it very well. Our school community has high expectations, both in terms of achievement and behaviour, and everyone is expected to do their best and to use their special gifts and talents, at their own particular level. At Gilsland Church of England Primary School , all members of the school family and the contributions they make to the school are greatly valued. Courtesy and politeness is expected at all times, and people are always acknowledged and thanked for what they do. ‘Care’, ‘tolerance’, ‘trust’ and ‘respect’ are very important to us.

Our Headteacher’s vision and goal is to achieve:
“Excellence in teaching and learning, achieved through an enjoyable and professional whole community team effort, which recognises and values the uniqueness and achievement of every child, and respects the dignity of all.”

Our September 2007 Ofsted Inspection states:
“Pupils’ personal development and well-being are good and one of the school’s strengths. The pupils are happy and secure; they say that they get on well together and there is never any bullying.”
“Teachers have high expectations of the pupils and the learning activities are graded in difficulty to meet pupils’ different needs in the mixed-age classes. Such lessons give pupils opportunities to learn through doing and through working collaboratively.”

We are an outstanding team and we are all very proud of our school.