Sawtry Junior School Parents’ Information Evening

Raise achievement and improve the quality of teaching to be good or better by: Key priority One for improvement from OFSTED Sep 2012:

Ensuring a good match of work to pupil’s needs so that all pupils make the best possible progress Target: For the start of the Spring Term, learning outcomes in Maths And English will be differentiated and challenging. Ofsted Monitoring visit – 25/3/13: Teachers’ planning is more sharply focused on what pupils ‘must’, ‘should’ and ‘could’ achieve in each lesson…

Next steps: Continue to ensure that our Learning Outcomes are targeted accurately at the children and are suitably challenging. Extend this practice beyond Maths & English. Ensure that new staff become quickly familiar with our ‘Must, Should, Coulds’.

Providing activities that enthuse, motivate and challenge, which promote good behaviour and give pupils more opportunity to be responsible for their own learning and show initiative Target: Start of Spring term, to introduce the mechanisms to enable all lessons to be engaging. Ofsted Monitoring visit – 25/3/13: Teachers have also worked hard to plan activities that are both challenging and engaging, with greater emphasis on promoting pupils’ independence…

Next steps: Continue to find ways to make our teaching and learning exciting and fun by sharing ideas in planning meetings, observing each other’s teaching and other training. Continue to find out from the children what they enjoy, find interesting and find challenging. Make greater use of the community and environment around us to motivate pupils.

Maximising the involvement of teaching assistants during all stages of the lessons, especially introductions Target: End of January, all TAs will be well deployed at all stages of the lessons. Ofsted Monitoring visit – 25/3/13: …one benefit of this approach is teaching assistants have more opportunity to provide guidance for pupils when they are working in groups and pairs, and their support is more carefully planned.

Next steps: Continue to ensure that Teaching Assistants are fully aware of their role in each lesson and feed back the progress and difficulties to the teacher. Provide further training for the TAs to enhance their skills and develop their expertise.

Embedding the best practice in marking across the school so pupils are clear how to improve Target: By end of Jan, all marking will ensure that pupils are clear on how to improve and show progress in their work. Ofsted Monitoring visit – 25/3/13: Teachers have worked hard to improve marking, and are following the agreed policy. They make detailed comments about pupils’ work, linked to the specific learning objectives, and the pupils are expected to respond. In a short space of time, the results are impressive.

Next steps: Continue to ensure that our marking and feedback reaches the standards set and praised by Ofsted. Develop the same quality of marking in other subjects across the curriculum. Ensure that new staff become quickly familiar with our marking policy.

Improve Leadership and Management by: Key priority Two for improvement from OFSTED Sep 2012

Building upon the secure start made in a whole- school approach to behaviour management that is effective for all pupils and promotes high expectations amongst all staff Target: Reduce number of children on red by 25% by Feb half term. Four Terms of Staying on Green Number of incidents of children moving to red: Term 1: 86 Term 2: 72 Term 3: 51 Term 4: 60 (zero tolerance on swearing and rudeness towards adults introduced)

Next steps: Continue with the training and development of the ‘Restorative Approach’ to behaviour management. Hold an information evening for parents to share this approach with them. Continue with ‘R Time’ which teaches the children courtesy, respect and the ability to interact with different people. Continue to work with the Specialist Teaching Team to further reduce incidents of poor behaviour, particularly in persistent offenders.

Evolving the monitoring role of middle and subject leaders, and the governing body, to more systematically check the quality of the provision and the school’s work 1.Middle leaders (Maths & English) conduct planning scrutinies every Friday for the week ahead, feedback to staff and ask for improvements where necessary. 2.Middle leaders (Upper & Lower Team leaders) conduct pupil progress meetings with the teachers in their team to ensure strategies are in place for pupils not making desired progress. 3.Middle leaders conduct performance management meetings, followed by observations and book scrutinies to drive progress in teaching and learning. Target: By end of Jan, develop rigorous monitoring systems involving middle leaders and governors.

Next steps: Continue to monitor the planning, marking, teaching and learning of all staff, providing challenging targets with regular reviews. Provide further training for middle leaders to enhance their monitoring skills.

Establishing a greater range of ways to keep parents informed and gather their views 1.SATs information evening for Year 6 parents 2.Parent’s information evening 3.New ‘Best Work’ assemblies running through term 2 4.End of term parents’ open afternoon to visit their child’s class 5.Parent questionnaire on ‘Staying on Green’ 6.Parent feedback form at each event 7.‘Have your say’ sheet sent out 8.Improved systems for communicating spellings & homework developed after suggestions from parents 9.‘Structured conversations’ for parents of children who are underachieving Target: From Spring term onwards parents will feel involved with the school and able to contribute.

Next steps: Continue to listen to parents and, where possible, act on their suggestions for improvement. Continue to give opportunities for parents to air their views in a variety of ways. Ensure that parents feel welcome and able to talk to staff about concerns. Send out information at the beginning of each term about the topics and planned activities.

Focus: Continue and extend the good practice in planning, lesson delivery and marking. Continue to work on further improving the behaviour management in school, including low level disruption, unkindness and lack of respect, bad language, fighting, bullying. Continue to improve our two-way communication with parents. Work on improving handwriting and presentation in all year groups.

SAWTRY JUNIOR SCHOOL GOVERNING BODY

Key priority from Ofsted monitoring visit Nov 2012: The school should take immediate action to: Review the role and impact of the governing body so it can better monitor the school’s performance and effectively steer its strategic development. Ofsted monitoring visit – Mar 2013: Governors are confidently fulfilling their responsibilities… …flow of information… …enable the governing body to ask the right questions and hold the school to account.

An example… The School’s commitment: …all marking will ensure that pupils are clear on how to improve and show progress in their work. By: Continuing to ensure that our marking and feedback reaches the standards set and praised by Ofsted. Ensuring that new staff become quickly familiar with our marking policy.

…all marking will ensure that pupils are clear on how to improve and show progress in their work. Is there progress? Is it happening in the classroom? How do teachers know what to deliver? How does the leadership know teachers are delivering them? What standard has the Head set and why? Teacher’s views Parents/ carers and pupil views Teacher and pupil progress data Head teacher report

GB Strategic Role ‘Critical Friend’ Monitoring and Improvement Finance and Personnel Committee Salaries Chair Property and H&S Committee SEN and Curriculum Committee Safeguarding Head Teacher Performance Leadership Team Head Teacher Parents Community Engagement Working Parties Structure Review School Improvement and Monitoring Committee How we’re shaping up…

What we’ve done…  Recruited three more governors  Governor Action Plan in place to focus our efforts  Established a committee to provide a decision making body on improvement matters.  Committees are looking less at low-level school activities  Visits undertaken that looked at: Planning Pupil Progress Behaviour Management Motivation Finance Staffing Developing the termly operational plan  Initial audit on the Governing Body

What we’ve still to do…  Recruit more governors!  Undertake more training e.g for visits and to embed our role  Integrate more with the school  Reach out to parents/carers  Complete a full audit late next term  Establish more formal processes for visits and information/data collection  Make greater use of the Governor Advisory Scheme  Ensuring policies are current and relevant to school business

One year, three terms…we’re on track!