Dear Parents and Carers,
Welcome to the first newsletter of this academic year. I hope that you and your children have settled well into their new classes and year groups. Welcome once again to all new parents to St Mary’s.
Parent/Teacher Meetings
Thank you if you attended a Parent/Teacher meeting either at Church Lane or at Rectory Gardens this week. Here, you will have learned more about what your child is being taught this term/year as well as learning about class timetables, routines of the school day and any expectations that teachers have of you and your child.
Post Ofsted Action Plan
Thank you if you came along to the meeting on Tuesday evening to discuss the school’s Ofsted report. A number of questions and some concerns were raised in response to the report as well as in response to what you heard from all of the speakers. These proved useful and will serve to help make our school ever better.
As promised, see below an outline of some of the key things that we have already done and will be doing to address the findings of the report:
- School staff have been provided with additional safeguarding training to ensure that they are fully up to date with their safeguarding duties.
- We have implemented a robust system for analysing and categorising all safeguarding and behaviour concerns.
- We regularly update all safeguarding records into our school’s on-line system within two days of any safeguarding meeting.
- We have been subject to a three day safeguarding audit of our school by an external adviser, with feedback reporting that our safeguarding practice is very strong.
- Working with our boys in Upper Key Stage 2 to ensure that they develop more respectful relationships, particularly with girls.
- Our school’s Positive Behaviour Policy has been reviewed and updated. This included changing our school’s systems and procedures to further improve behaviour in the playground.
- Children’s views about our school and their daily experiences are captured through meetings with senior leadership team members. This information is used to effect change as needed.
- We have provided additional phonics training for staff through the appointment of a specialist phonics teacher.
- The newly appointed lead for teaching and learning who will work alongside school staff, to help them better use assessment information to plan for next steps curriculum provision.
An evaluation of the impact of these actions will be regularly reviewed by the school’s senior leadership team.
You are now able to view the progress we are making in these areas by accessing the Post Ofsted Action Plan on our school website. Also, within the next few weeks, I will be having a School Progress Coffee Morning, where we will discuss our key priority areas for improvement as well as the progress we are making against Ofsted’s findings. The first of these is planned for Tuesday 4th October at 9.30am at Rectory Gardens site.
All of us at school are overwhelmed by the support we have received from so many of you; this has kept us going through very difficult times. We are so very grateful for your kind messages of words of support – thank you!
A reminder that our school will be closed this coming Monday 19th September given the announcement of a Bank Holiday for the Queen’s state funeral.
With warm wishes,
Calvin Henry
Headteacher
