Visit to Tollgate Primary School

The Duke visited Tollgate Primary School in Plaistow, a leading teaching school for East London, to open the new Teacher Training rooms that have been constructed to increase the capacity of their training programme. Tollgate leads an alliance of 24 schools across the London Boroughs of Newham, Barking and Dagenham, Haringey and Waltham Forest.

Tollgate is a large multicultural Primary School serving a significantly disadvantaged community in Plaistow, East London. 46 languages are represented in school from a wide range of 40 countries and over 50% of the children are eligible for free school meals.

In addition to having 500 pupils in school aged 3-11, Tollgate is also a resourced school for children with a severe and complex diagnosis of autism. They have 27 children fully integrated into the mainstream Primary school and are the only mainstream provider in the country to be accredited by the National Autistic Society.

HRH was arrived to find all the pupils in the playground waving flags and showing off banners that they had made. The Duke then met students and head teachers from other schools within the alliance and heard about how partnership across the group of schools benefits all the members.

After an unscheduled stop in the kitchen to say hello to the dinner ladies, “the people that really keep the place running”, The Duke was then guest at a special assembly where the pupils performed songs they had practiced for the occasion.

HRH was given a book of art created by the nursery class, which you can find in the gallery. There was also a surprise for Head Teacher Tom Canning, who was then presented with a special award by two students to mark the fact that he had been Head Teacher for ten years.

You can find out more about Tollgate Primary School on their website: http://www.tollgate.newham.sch.uk/