OFSTED ACTION PLAN - letter to parents

19th October 2007,

Dear Parents,

Many thanks for the support and encouragement we have received during the time that Mr Tibbetts has been absent from school.  All the children are now well settled into their new classes and most parents were able to discuss their child’s progress with class teachers at Parents’ evenings. Therefore we feel that it is a good time to update you on what we have been doing to take on board the recommendations in the Ofsted report, and to inform you of planned developments for the rest of the year.

Standards in writing and numeracy were an area of concern and staff have had several training sessions with local authority advisors on implementing the new primary framework for literacy and numeracy.  For literacy this includes a greater emphasis on the teaching of phonics, which has been well publicised in the newspapers, as well as visual literacy.  Already many year groups are benefiting from a multimedia approach to the teaching of writing and year 6 are creating their own ‘photostories’ which use a mix of words, sound and images.

Every 6 – 8 weeks the staff have met for pupil progress meetings to ensure that all pupils are making satisfactory progress with their maths and literacy targets.  It is important that progress is measured by an agreed ‘yardstick’ and to this end an ‘evidence bank’ of work at agreed levels has been created in school.  To ensure that this is in line with judgements of pupil work in other schools year 6 staff met with representatives from four other local primary schools and the high school to compare and discuss pupils’ writing.  In addition to this the Early Years advisor has been into school to lead a series of staff sessions on writing in the foundation stage and on developing role play areas to encourage language skills - this is of particular importance for the boys.

There was some concern that boys are not achieving as well as girls, and although this is a national problem it is too important to ignore.  There was also concern that the curriculum should extend over subject boundaries to make learning more relevant and stimulating for the children.  We have set up staff working parties to cover both of these areas and are already working on some of the actions they suggest.  For instance making lessons more practical and competitive to engage the boys and making lessons more cross curricular: for instance in year 5 pupils recently made biscuits in D & T then practised instruction writing in literacy.

Recently we have appointed a staff member with a specific responsibility for ‘personalised learning’. Over time this will lead to the development of systems, which will encourage pupils to learn more independently and to take a pride in the targets they have achieved.

Many of these things are ongoing and we are planning to build on what we have already done.

To raise standards it is important that we focus on ensuring that children’s everyday classroom experience is as valuable as possible.  To this end we are fortunate to have the expertise of Mr Ayres, head teacher of St John’s School, Essington.  He will be working alongside our staff to ensure that all lessons are of a consistently high quality and that pupils are presented with work that challenges them to perform to the best of their ability at all times.

Staff are seeking to make their science lessons increasingly practical with an emphasis on investigations and skills to support the knowledge and vocabulary that are so essential in science.

We are seeking to teach children the basics of numeracy, literacy and science in exciting and relevant ways; hence we are involving pupils in our bids for Healthy Schools status and in the development of a School Travel plan.

It continues to be our intention that every pupil enjoys coming to school and finds the curriculum challenging and stimulating so that they can achieve their full potential.  Discussions with your children, school reports, parents’ evenings and occasional update letters should enable you to see the effects of the changes we are making.

Of course schools cannot operate in isolation and the support of parents, carers and the local community is essential.  We are very grateful to our PTFA who have recently provided us with games and equipment for both indoor and outdoor playtimes, and to the Bayleaf project and Hollybush garden centre who are funding our new quadrangle, which will provide pupils with learning opportunities from growing their own fruit and vegetables.  We know that parents are very keen to help their children at home but are sometimes puzzled by the new methods, particularly of maths, which are now taught in schools, therefore we are holding a  ‘Back to Basics’ evening at 7.00pm on November 7th for parents who would like to find out more. (Details to follow).

We hope that this gives you a flavour of the detailed plans we have in place to address the issues raised by the Ofsted team, so that all our pupils receive the very best education possible every day.

Yours sincerely,