Berwick Fields Primary School

About Us

Vision

We are striving to build an involved community; one that fosters the achievement of personal best and helps make a difference to others.

Mission

To engage members in innovative and meaningful learning experiences, within a welcoming and friendly atmosphere, and where care for the environment is demonstrated.

Berwick Fields opened in 2006 with 140 students. This grew to almost 200 by the end of the year. We currently have approximately 930 students from Prep- 6. Berwick Fields’ main aim is to foster qualities and skills in students which will enable them to adapt to change and become effective members of the community. Great emphasis is placed on caring for the students, staff and parents by providing an environment that is safe and secure and encourages, recognises and rewards achievement and effort.

Our school culture is underpinned by some core ideas, which help to foster our learning and working environment.

“Learning Community” principles are an integral part of the educational philosophy of our school and are underpinned by “Excellence in Education” tools and processes. Through this model we aim to enable students to become more responsible for their own learning, behaviour and interaction with each other and the community.

Our ‘Learning Community’ is built upon four distinct but connected areas that need to be in place to develop a healthy, productive environment. Health and Well Being involves ‘managing self and relations with others’. Community Development is about ‘enabling individuals and groups to act effectively in the world’. Essential Learning focuses on ‘understanding the world in which we live’. School Improvement endeavours to ‘improve the capacity of individuals, groups and the school to have a positive impact in the world’.

A comprehensive, contemporary curriculum is provided to meet the individual needs of all students and is implemented through an integrated approach, team teaching, cross age and peer tutoring.

Our school is a member of the Berwick South “Innovations and Excellence” Cluster. The focus of their work has been to develop ‘deep thinking’ skills in each student. When identifying the needs of the school community three areas were given a high priority. These are:

We intend to build these into the fabric of the school through implementing the following strategies:
The school will continue to explore the concept of “Community Building”, in particular, the potential of parents and community members/groups to enter into partnerships that will improve student learning.

Learning about, and being actively responsible for improving the environment, is an important part of our curriculum. Environmental Education is used as a practical way to develop, in each student, a strong sense of community and belonging.

Continuously striving for improvement, personally and professionally, is the norm for all school community members. Professional learning teams will be used to facilitate this.

At our school there is a consistent and positive approach to student behaviour which fosters a school climate where personal responsibility and self discipline are developed. The school is implementing preventative social skills programs such as “Bully Busters” and the “You Can Do It!” program. The link between experience, thinking, feeling and behaving will be reflected in the school’s formal and informal procedures. The school has state of the art facilities, wonderful grounds, great flexibility in terms of teaching/working spaces and is developing quality resources.