Annual Statement

Annual Governors Report

March 2016

This report outlines the work done by the governors and the school over the last year in fulfilling its responsibilities as laid out by government. It also a chance for the governors to celebrate the excellent work being done in the school and outline the future plans for the school.

 

Governance Arrangements.

In line with the new requirements of the Department for Education (DfE) the governing body was reconstituted and is now the made up as follows:

 

• One (1) local Authority Governor
• One (1) Staff Governor
• The Head Teacher
• Four (4) Parent Governors
• Five (5) Co-Opted governors

 

The governing body has also appointed two (2) associate governors. Associate governors do not have a vote on the governing body but do provide experience and expertise to the governing body. Currently we have One (1) vacancy for a Parent Governor. We have two (2) new governor appointments this year.

The whole governing body holds a full meeting each half term and the sub committees meet once a term.

 

There are three sub committees these are:

• Finance and Personnel committee
• Curriculum and Achievement committee
• Well-being and Safety committee
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The meeting dates and attendance at the meeting can be found on the school website.

Each governor has at least one specific role and is responsible for seeing how the school delivers in this area. This is done by visiting the school during the school day and meeting with a specific member of staff to discuss the area or interest. These visits are then written up and a report submitted to the governing body. Visits could be about sport, the curriculum, pupil welfare, celebrating different cultures or any part of school life.

 

Our School

We are a two form entry infant school with an associate nursery. We have about 224 pupils on the role, however this number does fluctuate especially in the nursery.

 

• 29% of the children qualify for pupil premium
• 31% do not have English as a first language
• 18% have some form of special educational needs.

 

The children are from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and this diversity is celebrated in the school.

Our last two OfSTED inspections have rated the school as good.

 

Results

Our children make good progress whilst at the school. However, their final attainment in Reading and Writing is not as good as we would like. The school is implementing various schemes to tackle this.

The school remains very strong in mathematics with our pupils achieving well over the national average in their KS1 assessments.

We are awaiting the official Osfted data for the 2015 KS1 results.

 

Changes in the last Year

We Welcomed Mrs Lesley Godwin as our new Headteacher in September 2016, after the previous Headteacher decided to move on to new challenges. Mrs Godwin had been part of the school leadership team before becoming an acting Headteacher at Mary Towerton School. We are very fortunate that she wished to return. She brings with her a good track record of school managements and the energy to move the school forward.

Hot school meals eventually arrived at the school and the take-up has been good. This provision is being monitored to ensure it provided good value.

As a result of comments made to the school in the Parents Questionnaire the school looked at and now provide afterschool activities up to 6pm for a limited number of children.

The school introduced Tapestry into reception this is an online system where parents can view their child’s progress. The school post pictures and comments for the children and parents can then sign in to see their child’s information and make comments. The feedback from parents has been very positive.

The school website has been revamped and is much more engaging. There is still work to be done, but it is the best place to see what is happening and going to happen in the school. The ability for the site to translate the pages in to various languages was one of the key factors the governors wanted.

 

Looking Forward

We will be introducing a Forest school in the summer term this year. This is where children are taken to local woodland and learn about the environment and develop new life skills. More information about this will be sent to parents nearer the time.

The nursery will have to adapt to cater for the free 30-hour provision for certain children as announced by the government.

We will be looking at the feasibility of taking 2 year olds in to the nursery in September 2017.