University of Cambridge Primary School

UC-Primary School
Children at the University of Cambridge Primary School (credit: UCPS)

The University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS) is the sole primary education University Training School in the UK.

Evidence, principles and recommendations from significant research into primary education at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education underpin the UCPS research-informed model for primary school education.

Despite being recently established, the UCPS model has already been mobilised beyond the school as a tool for achieving wider impact on policy, research and practice regionally, nationally and internationally.

This impact includes informing approaches to school design and learning spaces in the UK; leading approaches to system change via collaborations for school improvement; influencing educational curriculum policy; influencing the school sector’s understanding and enactment of research-informed professional knowledge, innovative pedagogies and practice; and influencing teachers’ professional learning and development.

Pedagogically, the UCPS model incorporates the benefits of classroom dialogue: the way that teachers and students talk productively to maximise student learning. The Faculty and UCPS dialogic resources have had strong international uptake, with at least 360 educators now using it in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan and Spain.

University of Cambridge Primary School

“Collaborative working in school, with the University and an increasing number of other schools, locally, nationally and internationally [has generated] a flourishing learning community.”

– Ofsted