Welcome back to the Autumn term and a special welcome to all our new pupils and parents. We hope that the children are settling in well to their new classrooms and enjoying life at Sherston School. As a governing body we are keen to promote effective communication and involve parents & carers in our work at the school as much as possible. This is our first newsletter of this school year and we will be publishing one every term to keep you informed of our work and what is going on at the school.
Hello and Goodbye!
This term we have said goodbye to two of our members – Huw Bowles has stepped down as Community Governor and Sue Wild as Staff Governor. We would like to thank them both for all their input and commitment to the governing body over the last few years. We are delighted to welcome Colin MacLeod as the new Staff Governor and Simon Bird, who is replacing Huw on the finance committee as a Community Governor.
There have also been a number of changes to some of our committees – Isabelle Picken has taken over as Chair of Curriculum and Suzie Power & Sally Clayton will be looking after the PR Committee this term. A full list of the Governors and their responsibilities can be found on the right hand side of this blog in a document entitled “Who does What”. Our photos are also posted up on the governors’ noticeboard in the foyer. Do please check the noticeboard and visit the blog regularly for news & information about our work at the school, and of course do also post up any comments/feedback that you may have.
Governing Body Objectives
Objectives 2010 / 2011
We are pleased to report that we had a successful year and achieved a number of the objectives that we set at the beginning of the last school year. In particular, we completed the Early Years Canopy and our school meals daily uptake was consistently above 80 meals on average per day. Communication has been improved at the school with additional noticeboards in the foyer and regular newsletters. This is set to improve again this year with initiatives such as a new school website. We also made some progress with reviewing the role of Teaching Assistants at the school. Significant improvements were also made in the quality of assessment data and overall standard of teaching, however, as noted by OFSTED, these areas do require further work. If you would like to see a more detailed breakdown of our objectives from last year, please visit http://sherstongovs.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/objectives-2010-11-review.
Objectives 2011 / 2012
Our objectives as a Governing Body for this year are based on the feedback from OFSTED and the SIAS report, which are also linked to the targets that we have set in our School Development Plan (SDP). We have also considered your comments and feedback, for example in the parent survey last year, in helping us to set the SDP and objectives. We will be reporting on our progress in meeting these objectives in our newsletters throughout the year.
Staffing
1. To ensure that all teaching is rated at least ‘good’ by July 2012.
2. To formally define the responsibilities; membership; reporting format of the SMT and set its objectives for the forthcoming educational year.
3. To ensure that the overall standard of Teaching Assistants (TA) in the school is effective through the creation and implementation of a formal TA policy and training matrix.
Curriculum
1. To ensure that all staff are fully conversant with the School’s updated Able, Gifted and Talented (AG&T) policy and that they have the confidence and understanding to implement in relation to stretching the ‘more able’ pupils.
2. To ensure that the use of the outdoor classroom is maximized.
PR and Admissions
1. To maximize the school’s profile within Sherston and surrounding villages to help balance the larger number of leavers in 2012.
2. To help implement a new website for the school.
Finance
1. To ensure that budgetary constraints do not restrict the improvement in the standards of the School’s appearance.
2. To find an appropriate alternative to FMSiS to ensure that we are undertaking best practice.
SEN
1. To ensure that the School improves its communication with parents of SEN children.
2. To ensure that all staff receive comprehensive SEN training so that they are confident of maximizing a SEN children’s educational needs.
SIAS (objectives for the next 3 years)
1. In consultation with all stakeholders, to unpick and explore in detail the school’s Christian vision and values.
2. To aid pupils in their spiritual development through the establishment and use of reflective spaces in the school environment.
3. To create a more coherent values based plan for collective worship within which there are greater opportunities for pupil involvement in leadership and evaluation.
SIAS Inspection
We started the new academic year with another formal inspection – the Statutory Inspection of Anglican Schools (SIAS). It looks at the school’s distinctive Christian character, the impact of collective worship and the effectiveness of leadership and management of the school as a church school. Happily, the inspector found us to be ‘good’ in each category and was particularly encouraged by our Christian vision, our relationships between all members of the school community, our meaningful links with schools in other cultures and our leadership of RE. We would like to thank everyone involved for their hard work and input into the inspection, and especially all the staff who were directly involved with the preparation for the inspection.
We will continue to work hard with all members of the school community to further improve our status as a Church school and our new objectives for 2011 reflect this. We’re also very fortunate to welcome the support of Becky Fisher who is working for the Diocese to help the pupils and teachers of Sherston School in all aspects of Christian faith, worship and education.
School crossing & car parking
We have had a number of meetings this term with representatives from Wiltshire Council and the Highways Agency. We are very pleased to report that it has been agreed that new traffic calming measures will be introduced outside the school on Knockdown Road in the Spring Term. We will keep you informed of progress.
The new car parking arrangements at school do now seem to be working well – thank you for your continued co-operation. As you know, we consulted with the parish council on this issue and parents/carers were also invited to comment on the governors blog about the new parking and drop-off arrangements.
New school website – thank you for your feedback!
Views and ideas about the new school website are coming in thick and fast. Thank you to everyone who has added a ‘post-it’ to the graffiti board in the school foyer. We will be analyzing the responses of parents, pupils and staff over the next few weeks, to help us to decide on the design and layout for a new website. We hope to be able to make a final decision at our next meeting in November, with a view to launching a new school website next term. We’ll keep you posted on the blog and in our next newsletter!
Parent survey
Every year we send out a parent survey, and we’ll soon be sending out this year’s survey. Last year’s responses and feedback from the Headteacher are posted on our Blog – do have a look if you haven’t already done so. When you receive your survey, please do complete and return it – we’re aiming for a response rate of over 70% this year.
Open Day for Prospective Pupils
We will be holding an open afternoon at the school 1:30 – 2:30pm on Thursday 17th November. This is a new initiative where we will offer prospective pupils and their families a chance to see the school in action – meeting current pupils, teachers, staff and other families. Those of you who have children at pre-school, please do come along and help us spread the word!
