Values, Vision, Ethos

Pickhurst has a strong family ethos and we are all committed to making our Academy an inspirational place of learning for our children. The staff, parents, governors and friends of the Pickhurst Infant Academy work together to provide the highest quality of education that will meet the needs of every child and enable them to achieve their personal best.

Our values are; Kindness, Resilience, Excellence, Creativity and Wellbeing. At Pickhurst Infant Academy we are committed to:

  • Empowering and challenging all children to have high expectations of themselves and to achieve their personal best.
  • Nurturing children’s emotional, social, mental and physical well-being and keeping them safe and secure
  • Celebrating the uniqueness of every child and valuing the contribution they make to the lives and learning of others.
  • Inspiring children to think creatively, to question, to solve problems and to discover for themselves.
  • Engendering in every child respect and responsibility for themselves others and the world in which they live.
  • Working in partnership with parents to enable every child to succeed and develop a lifelong love of learning.
  • Promoting healthy minds and bodies and a strong team spirit.

Teaching Philosophy

At Pickhurst Infant Academy we aim to provide inspiring and innovative teaching which challenges children to think, question, reflect and understand through high quality, purposeful and first hand experiences. 

Our teaching is founded on the belief that potential is open-ended and that children should be encouraged to have a ‘growth mindset’ and believe that there are no boundaries to their learning and achievement. Teachers encourage children's confidence, autonomy and risk-taking through their belief in them to succeed, which is supported by high expectations, choices in their learning and a secure learning environment.

Teachers at Pickhurst Infant Academy are role models through their own passion and openness to lifelong learning and improving. They represent our ideals of learning by embodying a spirit of learning themselves and developing their own practice through engagement with research, reflection and risk-taking.

Developing children's characteristics of effective learning is an inherent part of the curriculum and we encourage them to be resilient, grow in independence and begin to take responsibility for their own progress and learning.

We encourage children to be ‘active learners’ and see the classroom environment as the 'third educator'. They are encouraged to access open ended and supportive resources independently to scaffold, challenge, extend and develop ideas in their learning.

Children are given time to reflect on their own learning and learning of others with regular opportunities to develop their critical thinking skills, evaluating and improving their work.