Phew! We’re nearly there!
As ever, it’s been another super busy and very productive year here on planet Tranmere!
I thought I’d take a few minutes to update you all with our progress on our School Development Plan this year. In addition to all the ‘outward facing’ work we do – the bits you’ll be aware of from the work and activities your children are doing – behind the scenes all members of school staff are busy working on making the school EVEN better through some carefully chosen initiatives to ‘tweak’ our practice in certain areas.
The Development Plan also includes planned improvements to the buildings and grounds, and priorities identified by all our stakeholders: Governors, Staff, Pupils and Parents.
Our main development work on the bulding this year was actually completed last summer holidays: the new KS1 playground; which looks amazing and has been extremely well used over the year. We’ve also made improvements to the Reception outdoor area, including weatherproofing the decking area – again, very well used by the children and making a big difference to the ‘wind tunnel’ effect on days when the weather is not so kind to us! We’ve also replaced a section of the old fencing which was becoming dangerous. We’re really grateful to the PTA for their help in buying these super ‘extras’ – our school buildings budget is only £7000 for maintenance and any developments, so we really wouldn’t be able to do a fraction of what we do without their hard work and your support. Thanks!
The children’s priorities this year were: a Scrapshed for KS2 – in situ and used every breaktime, and they also told us they’d like to see what their lunches looked like before they ordered – we refer you to the giant banana under the shelter!
Staff told us they would like to have some time for our new assessment procedures to ‘bed in’ this year – which they have – and we’ve been really pleased with how the new system is working. It allowed us to predict our end of year outcomes very successfully and has been a helpful tool for teachers.
Governors had requested that the perimeter fence was repaired – which has been actioned – and also took part in a Governornace Review in the Autumn term to make sure that our Governing Body was working as effectively as possible!
The main issue for parents centred on the replacement system for levels which was introduced this year. It’s all gone smoothly and hopefully parents have found the transition from levels to our new assessment system relatively easy and have been informed through our information evenings and regular updates to the website.