Standards and Quality Report
Context of the school
Athelstaneford Primary is a small rural school at the heart of its community. It serves the village of Athelstaneford and the surrounding areas. It is a traditional stone building which has seen extension and refurbishment. The building comprises of three classrooms, a nursery and a hall which encompasses a small kitchen and serves as the dinner hall, GP space and music room. We have the use of the village hall for PE as well as being able to use the outdoors in the playground on a tarmacked pitch or on the grass pitch at the park. We make very good use of our outdoor facilities and the surrounding area to provide meaningful learning opportunities across the curriculum. The school roll is currently 59 in P1-P7 with a nursery complement of 20. The increase in school roll during 2016-17 and a large P1 intake resulted in the re-organisation from two classes to three in August 2017. The current structure is Nursery (mornings only), P1/2, P2/3/4 and P5/6/7. The school team consists of a Head Teacher, Principal Teacher (part time), class teachers who are all parttime, nursery teacher, nursery nurse, an NQT, school administrator, 2 part-time classroom assistants and 2 additional needs auxiliaries, visiting specialists in PE, music and French. In August 2106 an Acting HT took up post, the PT was new in post moving from the nursery into the school. This post was on a part-time basis. The Acting HT would be sharing the P1-3 class with the PT. A new parttime teacher took up post to share the P4-7 class with the existing teacher. There was a supply teacher in the nursery and a new nursery nurse who came to the school on a compulsory transfer. There was also the addition of a SNA into the nursery setting. A permanent teacher was appointed to the nursery and took up post in October 2016. It was very clear that with this number of changes and new staff to this small school, following a number of years of changes in headship and staff, that building confidence, trust and stability within the team and with parents was going to be a huge priority. The refurbishment of the building that had required the contents of classes and resources to be packed up had never been fully unpacked and re-organised. Consequently with new staff who did not know what the school had to offer in terms of resources to support learning it was clear this would have to be tackled. The Parent Council and Fundraising Committee are hugely supportive and play an active part in working with staff and pupils to complement the work of the school. They organise regular fundraising events that involve the whole community.
How good is our leadership and approach to improvement? 1.3
Leadership of change
All staff are hugely committed to all learners in the school and have high expectations for them to achieve the best they can. They have a clear picture of the social, economic and cultural context of our community and use this knowledge to plan appropriately for the learning experiences. Teachers are committed to professional learning and this is directly linked to the priorities at national, local and school level. They are reflective in their learning and are committed to the values embedded in the standards. They undertake and keep up to date with mandatory training such as Child Protection.
Teachers have responsibility for leading on and developing specific areas linked to the improvement plan such as 1+2, Attachment, Making Thinking Visible, Eco and Reading. They are also responsive to a need as they identify it and will take ownership to strive for improvement. During this session there has been a focus on developing the Making Thinking Visible approach in all classes. All staff had an input on attachment. This was followed up with the opportunity for staff to attend twilight training which was taken up by support and teaching staff. The eco committee has been led by a member of support staff and parent volunteers. The PT took responsibility for supporting the new nursery team with regular meetings to discuss, review and plan as appropriate. Staff also led pupil parliament groups which met regularly to develop identified targets. These were decided last session by using a Making Thinking Visible routine into which the children contributed. The groups took on work to develop loose parts play in the playground, organise fundraising events and a Health and Wellbeing group. While the school has a vision it became apparent throughout the session that is in need of review in order that the whole school community has ownership of it, having had a voice in shaping it. This will be one of our school priorities for session 17~18. The ethos of the school is strong and regularly commented upon by visitors. There is a strong feeling of respect for all across our school community and this is demonstrated through collaborative working across all classes, a supportive parent forum and strong relationships in the staff team which has developed well throughout the session. We have strong links with the local community and work with many individuals to support learning in areas such as the John Muir Award and the Celebration of St Andrews Day. The results of the SEE survey 2016 indicated that those children did not know what SHANARRI meant and this was addressed through the pupil parliament HWB group. The staff engagement survey 2017 indicated that almost all felt valued and motivated in their work. Some staff had concerns about the management of change, workload and resources. These areas were addressed as part of the self-evaluation process. The many staff and HT changes in recent years has had an impact on the team however there is now a strong feeling of stability and a sense of being able to move forward. Re-organisation of resources in order to make them easily and readily accessible was made possible due to the good-will of staff and funding from the parent council. This has certainly had a positive impact and staff feel better equipped in terms of the available resources. With an entirely part-time staff workload was an issue in terms of getting an appropriate balance for all. We have worked very hard to ensure that in this coming session these issues have been addressed and there is a balance of how and when our development work sessions are timetabled and how staff will contribute to this. Future Developments Review and development of Vision, Values and Aims which are relevant and appropriate to Athelstaneford in 2017. Engagement by staff with the East Lothian curriculum frameworks to inform planning and assessment. To ensure that professional learning undertaken by staff is relevant and supports national, local and school priorities. Share the work of the school with our families and community. To undertake work to develop as a Rights Respecting School. To undertake training required to administer and effectively use data from SNSA.
How good is the quality of care and education we offer? 2.3
Learning teaching and assessment
In Athelstaneford the learning environment is one that is built on a positive culture and ethos. All staff have positive, nurturing relationships with the pupils and this is evident in the respect that is clearly shown for everyone. There is a strong sense of trust between pupils and staff. Teachers and children plan together in order to ensure that learning is appropriate and challenging for all. Expectations of what learners can achieve are high with targets being clear. Teachers plan yearly, medium term and daily and track coverage for each year group to ensure progression. This is extremely important to manage consistency and progress within the multi-composite class. There were inconsistent approaches to planning, once again due to staff and leadership changes, and an agreement was made to use an interim planning format until the introduction of the curriculum frameworks. A consistent tracking folder was introduced for each class. As a result staff felt more confident in ensuring that appropriate information was being gathered and could be easily shared. We make excellent use of our outdoor space and wider community for learning. We engage with members of the wider community to support our learning make best use of their knowledge and expertise.
Learners’ achievements are recognised at whole school assemblies as well as more informally within the classroom. A next step is how we ensure that all pupils are being recognised for wider achievements and how we would track them and make connections to skills for life, learning and work. Achievements in school are recognised in a number of ways in the classroom. The pupil council worked to develop a more positive approach to recognising positive achievements. Children can receive text messages home, positive postcards, HT referrals and stickers. At assembly a ‘Star of the Week’ from each class is celebrated with focus being the four capacities. Learners are actively involved in the life of the school taking on roles of responsibility such as house captains, JRSO’s, pupil council, pupil parliament and supporting parent council fundraising events. Teachers plan for assessment and have a more robust approach to gathering evidence with the introduction of an assessment folder for each child. Teachers have been engaging with and using the benchmarks as part of the assessment process. The PT has undertaken developing this so that it also includes pupils recording next steps in learning. Pupils receive feedback about their learning and next steps are discussed with them. Teachers are becoming more informed about how to make effective use of data. Regular meetings between teaching staff and SMT to discuss learners progress and how to address and support any who have barriers which are preventing them progress as expected. We undertook moderation activities in literacy and numeracy alongside colleagues in some of our cluster schools. This was useful to be able to engage with a larger group of teachers.
Future Developments
Review of our planning process to be supported by the introduction of curriculum frameworks. Further development of the gathering of assessment evidence and the pupil assessment folder. Moderation activities with cluster colleagues with a focus on moderation at the planning stage. A focus on developing teaching of numeracy. Staff to be confident when using and interpreting a range of data including the SNSA.
How good are we at ensuring the best possible outcomes for all our learners? 3.1 3.2
Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion Raising attainment and achievement
Staff are well informed and have a good understanding of the children’s well-being and rights. This is evident in the classrooms. The HWB pupil parliament group undertook the sharing of the well-being indicators with all pupils, planning learning opportunities in vertical groups. Staff create positive, nurturing environments for their pupils to learn in and have developed a strong culture of trust where they can seek out support. Staff communicate regularly with parents to ensure they are informed about and can share in their children’s learning, progress and next steps. This is done through one to one consultations, written reports and open mornings. They are readily available to meet with or have a telephone conversation and discuss any issues and concerns that may arise out-with these planned times. Teachers keep parents informed about the planned learning in the classroom and school through termly highlights sheets and the school website. Engagement by parents of the website could be better and some staff are keen to consider other ways of using digital technology to communicate with parents such as twitter. The SAI process is used to effectively support a number of children and families in school. An action plan is made to target the identified needs of those learners and shared with the appropriate members of staff. Where necessary an IEP is put in place to support all those involved with each individual. Regular meetings to review and update the plan are held. In our school there is a great strength in the way we meet and have dialogue to discuss learner’s progress. Each teacher considers and records barriers to learning that all children face. These along with tracking documents are discussed at regular tracking meetings with SMT. Dialogue between colleagues is regular and is used to support each other. Teachers are skilled in gathering evidence for assessment through a variety of ways. It is recorded in daily evaluations and observations, using formative and summative strategies. Moderation activities have been positive in helping to inform teachers to make achievement of a level judgements. All children have had the opportunity to attend neurojuice, drama, art and multisports after school and lunch clubs. This is subsidised by the parent council and cost is not a barrier to any family. The uptake is high and all children who have wanted to have taken part have done so. Primary 7 pupils take part in a cluster residential experience and all who wanted to attend did. Funding was successfully achieved in order to support this. A more consistent approach to assessing writing was introduced this year and staff felt more confident in tracking progress. This approach along with engagement with the benchmarks has resulted in more consistency and clearer targets for pupils. It is felt that a similar consistent approach for reading would be useful. The PT developed a progressive phonics programme for P1 and P2. This would be introduced in session 2017-18 with some reorganisation of support staff to enable smaller group work. Teachers use other approved assessments to measure progress in reading in the upper stages and spelling. One class teacher has taken on and significantly improved the use of AR with positive results. There had been very little engagement with the number counts approach to teaching numeracy and the HT was the only member of staff with any training. It was identified as a priority and all staff attended the relevant training afternoon and day offered during the session and some staff visited other schools to talk with staff and observe good practise. This is our main priority in session 17-18 with 3 teachers applying to take part in number academies. Staff are very willing and keen to adopt methods and practises in their classrooms and have begun to do so through their own personal reading and some input at CAT sessions. A very successful world of work week and mini enterprise projects saw excellent use people in our wider community to share their experiences.
Transition in Athelstaneford in vital and has been successful in preparing our young people for High School and entering into P.1. Information is shared with pupils and parents about the programme of events. We work closely with secondary staff, nursery colleagues and partnership establishments to ensure that transition is smooth and enjoyable for all.
Future Developments
3 teachers to attend number academies. HT trained in new CPM format and recording which will be disseminated as appropriate. Develop tracking to be more streamlined but offering more information. Use of PEF funding to offer additional teacher support for SfL.
What is our capacity for continuous improvement? 1.1
Self-evaluation for improvement
Staff engage well with self-evaluation understanding it is an integral part in our approach to improvement. We have used a range of tools and approaches to gather evidence and feedback to inform how we will move forward in our nexts steps for improvement. Throughout the year we planned in time and reflected on progress of the SIP and also QI’s from HGIOUS. We identified ares of strength and what our priorties for improvement would be. We carry out this work throughout the year at staff meetings and in-service days. We have done our best to do this with as many staff present as possible but is challenging due to part time hours worked by all. Staff are always given the opportunity to contribute in other ways if not present. Through our pupil parliament and pupil council the learners have the opportunity to share their thoughts on areas for develoment within our school and have an active role in taking those forward. Our parents were consulted at the open mornings and through the parent council. There is definitely capacity to involve parents and partners more regularly and in different ways and this will be addressed in session 17-18. Staff have worked exceptionally hard to overcome the challenges they have faced in recent years with the staffing changes which resulted in lack of consistent direction and approaches. Their motivation and commitment to improvement and willingness to take on the development of specific areas has resulted in clear priorities and direction of travel.
Improved and more varied opportunities for parents to contribute the the self evaluation process. Improve communcation with parents and the wider community through the use of social media platforms such as twitter. Enganement with curriculum frameworks and SNSA
Level Q.I. 1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement Q.I. 1.3 Leadership of change Q.I. 2.3 Learning teaching and assessment Q.I. 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion Q.I. 3.2 Raising attainment and achievement