A school day
a six-year-old
can carry.
Ultimate Primary is a nursery and primary school in Ikeja, Lagos, for children aged three to eleven. Two streams a year group, no class above twenty-four, and one teacher who knows every child in the room by the second week.
Tuesday, Primary 3
Every parent asks the same question on a tour: what does she actually do all day? This is the answer, in the order it happens.
- Gate and greeting. A teacher stands at the gate, not a sign-in sheet. Late is noticed; so is a bad morning.
- Assembly, then reading. The first lesson of every day is reading, because it is the one that everything else waits on.
- Mathematics. Written work in the morning while attention is long, not after lunch when it is not.
- Break, outside. Forty minutes. Children who have run about learn better in the afternoon, and we would rather lose the period than the attention.
- Science or social studies. Taught in the room where the equipment is, which is why P3 keeps its own materials cupboard.
- Lunch, at tables, together. Hot food. Teachers eat with their class rather than supervising it.
- Yoruba, French, or music. Rotating, so no child spends a whole year being the one who is not good at the Tuesday subject.
- Clubs. Chess, choir, gardening, coding. Chosen by the child each term, not assigned.
- Home. Nothing to finish at the kitchen table before Primary 4, and never at the weekend.
What we are strict about
Plenty of things at a primary school are a matter of taste. Three are not, and these are ours.
- Reading before everything
- A child who cannot read fluently by Primary 3 spends the next nine years behind in every subject, not one. So reading is the first lesson of the day, every day, and every child is heard read aloud by an adult twice a week.
- Twenty-four, and we mean it
- We cap classes at twenty-four and open a second stream rather than admit the twenty-fifth. It is the most expensive promise on this page and the only one a parent can verify on a tour: count the desks.
- Common entrance is a consequence
- We prepare for the entrance examinations of the secondary schools our families choose, in Primary 5 and 6, in school hours. We do not run a Saturday coaching business, and we do not teach the paper for four years.
Come on a Tuesday
Tours run during lessons, not after school, because an empty school tells you nothing. You will see the classes as they are: noisy in the right places.
Admissions
Nursery 1 through Primary 6. Places open for the September intake from the second term; the year groups that fill first are Nursery 2 and Primary 1.
An assessment for Primary 2 and above is a morning in the class the child would join — not an examination.