INSPIRE, achieve, respect is the motto for Eveswell Primary School.

Located on Chepstow Road, the 1980s school building looks quite small when you first look at it, but it is separated into two sections, a primary school and a nursery.

There are 15 classrooms in both the primary school and nursery, with 18 teachers who work full or part time and around 510 pupils.

Head teacher Catherine Barnett, of Cardiff, has been head teacher at the primary school for 15 and a half years

She said the school prides itself on keeping track on the children’s wellbeing and ambitions and is always making sure to keep in touch with what the children want to learn and improve on.

“Education keeps changing so not only have we improved we have changed and kept up to date with current sort of education developments," she said.

“I think the school is usually one of the first to take on initiatives, especially if we think they would be successful and good for the children.”

Ms Barnett, who was previously a head teacher at two other schools, believes the diversity of the school is one of the best things about it.

“It’s a school that has continued to grow in terms of diversity and in terms of school population, members of staff, the kinds of curriculum that we provide have even become even more exciting.

“I think that what is important and nice to see that as well in other ways the children’s wellbeing, their confidence and their academic success has been improved.”

Children in the school have regular support from staff and fellow pupils, and are able to attend a daily breakfast club and various after school clubs.

The amount of pupils attending the breakfast club each morning ranges from a minimum of 50 to around 90.

A range of 24 to 25 after-school clubs are also available to the children throughout the year, which regularly change and include different sporting activities, drama, music, gardening, a web club and first aid classes.

“They particularly like first aid where they can bandage each other up,” Ms Barnett said.

“A lot of the suggestions for extra-curricular clubs come from the children, so if they take an interest in something or show a particular ability in something we try to put on an after-school club for it.

“The clubs are also on for different ages, some of them for the infant school children, so the youngest children might come to the film club or go to the gardening club.

“We also do Welsh dancing as well, we do that every year, and as the children get older they take part in rugby club and web club.

“We have a whole range, and nearly all the school at some age come to each club.”

Ms Barnett said she is also proud of the school’s motto, as it sums up the school.

“The motto: inspire, achieve, respect is one which the staff contributed to with all the important words about our school," she added.

“We sort of chose the ones that came up the most often amongst the staff when they suggested, and we looked at what our school was about and also took it to the children.

“They said yes to the word inspire in particular, because we hope that we inspire them but they hope to inspire us to develop ideas and take on board what they want.”

The children are regularly asked to think about what inspires them and how they can be inspirational to themselves and others as well.

Ms Barnett also said respect is something that is very important in the school, as the school is very diverse and has children from a variety of different backgrounds.

“We have a very diverse school population and we think everyone should be treated equally," she added.

“We want the children to learn about each other’s family circumstances, their backgrounds, their race or religion, and we really think this is an important school for everyone working together and celebrating difference.

“It’s one of our major strengths.”

The school has regular visitors that are introduced to the children, such as sports coaches and specialist coaches who come in to teach the children in both the nursery and the primary school.

“In nursery it’s mainly ball skills, but it brings a new dimension to the children, although they are very young, it’s quite good for them that they meet different people who can tailor to meet their needs and make it fun at the same time.

“So that gets them into their physical development.”

Recently, children took part in the Gwyl Plant Gwent Festival, which is a local Welsh dancing festival for schools around Gwent.

“We have been doing that for many many years. A number of schools take part and the children dance for around two years and learn the traditional Welsh country dances," she added.

“It’s nice because otherwise those things might disappear.”

The children also have specific fun days where the entire junior department plan activities for an afternoon, including games and stalls like hook a duck, sponge throwing and others.

The head teacher added: “The pupils do all the budgeting for the event, so they do the costings, the profit and so on and put on activities for each other so they can all have a different go at things.

“They raise a bit of money and then we use that money according to their suggestions, so sometimes they want to go on a trip, or get a visitor to school, and sometimes they want to give it away to charity, which is lovely.”

On talking about the results the school achieves, Ms Barnett said that it is equally important they have a wide range of experiences.

“They can achieve in different ways, and sometimes children have talents they don’t know about until you expose them to something,” said Ms Barnett.

“It’s important that we help them with their confidence and continue to put our motto into action.”