Pear Tree Mead is a community school, taking children from 2 - 11 years.  Some children begin Pre-school from the age of 2 years old part time, whilst most children begin the Nursery class throughout the year, part time or full time from when they turn 3 years old.  The school was built in 1959 to serve the growing needs of Harlow New Town.  Many families originally came from London but have now been well established in the town for two or three generations.  The school has positive links with the local community, business links, an informed governing body who play a positive role in the management of the school and supportive parents.  In return, the school works closely with parents, providing them with quality information about their children’s progress and how they can help.  Parents are well represented on the local governing body, who understand the school’s needs well and are highly supportive.  We became a single converter academy (SAT) in September 2014 and joined PCLC MAT (Passmores Co-operative Learning Community Multi Academy Trust) in January 2024. 

 

Although an established primary school, we expanded the number of pupils in the school with the two main buildings colliding together with an extension moving our PAN from 45 to 60.  Originally two schools – separate infant and junior.  Consequently the school was in two buildings close together and has plenty of additional office, amenity and teaching spaces.  We had some building work to join the two buildings together.  The school is well resourced with a bank of laptop computers, tablets, Interactive White Boards in all classrooms and additional desktop computers.  All computers are networked and connected to the internet. The school has many developments both as part of the inside and outside environments over the last few years.

The first section of the school houses the Nursery and Reception classes.   The  Nursery has their own large, suitably refurbished rooms with its own kitchen, large practical and quiet areas, and two pleasant outdoor play areas.  The Nursery has a lovely developed the Early Year’s outdoor area (which is shared by the Reception and Nursery children) to provide mud kitchen, climbing area,  hard surface and canopied facilities.  A link was made between the two Reception classes to allow these two classes to work together and this has been refurbished too.  There is a children’s kitchen room, (where our breakfast club and treehouse club takes place) a large hall, a reception intervention room (the blossom room), an office used by the staff for PPA and the site manager’s office.  Classrooms have their own toilet and cloakroom facilities.

Our 2 year olds room (the Pre-school) is based in its own separate location.  It has its own entrance and outdoor area.  This sits alongside our ‘Hive’.  This is a dedicated room for our Nurture group, KS1 lunchtime club and send support areas.

The new section of the school houses the 4 KS1 classrooms, Staffroom, family room (for meetings and family support), a learning mentoring room, the Nest (for pupils to use to support emotional regulation and movement break)  KS1 intervention space and our new Library.  children use the library on a regular basis. 

The other side of the building accommodates children from Year 3 to 6.  There is a large hall and seven classrooms, three of which are upstairs.  All the classrooms have their own cloakrooms and toilets.  There is a disabled toilet which is directly accessible from the hall. This building also houses the office staff, main reception, head teacher’s office, leadership team offices, the send team, group teaching  / intervention areas and school meals kitchen.

There are extensive and pleasant grounds with a wildlife area, forest school, sandpit, digging area, allotment, a pond, picnic area, 2 shaded gazebos, outdoor classroom, outdoor gym, large playing fields and three playgrounds with new playground equipment.  We also have our own indoor, heated swimming pool.

We work closely with other schools, both secondary and primary, and are part of the Harlow Education Consortium as well as PCLC.  We have a committed team of parents who form our Friends of Pear Tree Mead Association and hold many fund-raising events.  We also run an adult helper scheme. 

If you would like to arrange a visit to look around the school, please contact the school office on 01279 836181 or email info@peartreemead.essex.sch.uk