In this blog, I’d like to update parents about the work we have carried out over the school year on our School Development Plan priorities. To develop our successful school further, this year we’ve been working on the following areas:
Quality of Teaching and Learning
Work in this area has mainly focused upon the introduction of the new National Curriculum for England and Wales – we’ve had to re look at our long term curriculum planning to ensure that our plans ensure full coverage of the new statutory requirements. This has been carried out across the whole curriculum and we have made relevant adjustments where necessary.
We’re really fortunate with our wonderful teaching staff – all teachers are graded ‘good’ or better through observations and scrutiny of books and children’s progress and the very large majority of staff are capable of delivering ‘outstanding’ teaching – we couldn’t ask for more.
Leadership and Management
Work in this area has centred around the development of the Aireborough Learning Partnership (ALP) Trust and Noctua, the Teaching School Alliance that Tranmere Park is a founding ‘strategic’ partner for.
The ALP Trust has successfully worked upon a new assessment system to replace levels from September 2015 which will be used across all Aireborough primary schools. Noctua has been busy establishing support programmes for other schools and this year has successfully taken over the support of new Leeds Headteachers from Leeds City Council and next year, will be supporting Newly Qualified Teachers across the city.
Tranmere Park has been involved in supporting a Leeds school Ofsted classed as ‘Requiring Improvement’ and I have worked with 5 new Leeds Headteachers in their first year of Headship.
Achievement and Standards
Our aspiration for achievement is that Tranmere Park is within the top 10% of highest performing primary schools – we were top 12% last year so fingers crossed that we get into the top 10% this year – outcomes are extremely positive!
Behaviour and Safety
We’ve focused on learning behaviours this year with our ‘Growth Mindsets’ work – this has been a really positive development focus and Governor pupil interviews show that pupils have found the work extremely useful in understanding the learning process and developing resilience when tackling problems. It’s also sparked changes to our end of year reports and pupil mentoring for next year – all of which we think are very positive.
Along with the School Leadership Team, I’m currently working on next year’s School Development Plan – which seems very strange as I’m sat in my office listening to Year 6 rehearsing their Leaver’s Assembly – already thinking about next year when this one hasn’t even finished!