Author: Mr Roundtree

We publish a calendar of all our school events and holidays on our website. We’ve just announced the dates of our five training days for next year – the first school in the city to do so.

Did you know that if you use an electronic calendar at home or at work you can subscribe to ours? This means that you’ll always have accurate information about what’s going on in school, alongside all your own appointments.

If you’ve previously subscribed to our calendars, you’ll need to resubscribe as we’ve changed the URL (website address) at which they’re published. Sorry for the inconvenience. This is a one-off change; you won’t have to update them again.

• Subscribe to Holidays and Training Days
• Subscribe to School and Class Events

Subscribing to calendars should work in Outlook, iCal, Google and all other popular calendar apps.

We’re happy to confirm the training days for next year:

• Monday 05 September
• Tuesday 06 September (which means children return to school on Wednesday 07 September)
• Monday 31 October (following the half-term holiday, which means children start the second Autumn term on Tuesday 01 November)
• polling day, sometime in May (this is likely to be 10 May, but has not been confirmed)
• Monday 23 July (this is the last day of the school year, which means children finish the Summer term on Friday 20 July).

We’re one of the first Leeds schools to confirm their training days.  We’re happy to do this in order for you to arrange holidays and therefore ensure term-time absences are kept to a minimum.

The dates will be posted to the school’s website calendar shortly.

At Moortown, we believe a fundamental aspect of learning and living is speaking and listening.  It’s sometimes neglected in other schools, but it’s at the heart of what we do at Moortown and should be at the heart of home life, too.  That’s the reason our children often have Talk Time homework.

We’re not alone in placing such importance on talk.

In a recent BBC article, England’s communication champion Jean Gross notes that the level of communication skills required to succeed in the workplace was increasing.  “Today’s workplaces require people who can get a point across, listen well to others, and work in teams,” he said. “Worryingly, 47% of UK employers say they can’t find recruits with these speech and language skills.”

A recent survey of eight- to 16-year-olds in the UK, carried out by the Communication Trust and National Literacy Trust, has found that more boys than girls feel confident expressing their views in class and social situations.

Of 6,000 children surveyed, 69% of boys said they were “very confident” or “confident” speaking in front of classmates, compared with 57% of girls.  More boys than girls also said they felt confident “saying no to friends” (70% to 62%), “talking to new people” (67% to 62%), “explaining your point of view” (78% to 74%), “asking when you don’t understand something” (75% to 69%) and “talking with teachers (81% to 78%).

The only areas where more girls felt more confident were (perhaps rather worryingly) “talking to people online” (85% to 82%) and (perhaps unsurprisingly) “listening to other people’s opinions” (93% to 89%).

At home, you can help your child, whether it’s for Talk Time homework or simple, daily conversation:

• Don’t talk on behalf of your child – they need to be ready to respond, even if it’s a quiet murmur to begin with.
• Encourage them to expand on what they say – can they explain, give examples and add some extra information so their conversation is interesting, convincing or lively?
• Be a good role-model – show your child you’re listening by asking questions, adding your comments and reflecting on what they’ve said.
• Ensure that everyone at home shares time for discussion (at meal times, for example) and have one-to-one chats (just before sleep is an ideal time!).

We’re closed tomorrow, Thursday 05 May.

I realise there have been many disrupted weeks, with too many odd days off for our children. This is far from ideal, especially in the week just before Year 6 SATs.

However, Moortown Primary is used as a polling station. This means that we are not able to change the date of this day. Other local schools, such as Talbot Primary, have had the same days of closure in recent weeks.

As we always do, we’ll use the day as a training day for our teachers. They will be in school on Thursday and we will be writing the 2011-12 School Development Plan and Action Plans so that we keep getting better and better.

Apart from the half-term holiday (week beginning 30 May), there are no other planned school closure days this year, the last day of the summer term being Friday 22 July.

The local authority has regularly monitored the performance of schools.  This system of monitoring, challenge and support may change due to local authority and government re-organisation (and cutbacks?), but here are some comments from the most recent report about Moortown Primary:

“Rigorous monitoring of teaching ensures close scrutiny of learning.”

“There is clear evidence that the school is systematically tracking the progress and attainment of a variety of pupil groups.”

“Staff track progress and attainment of specific groups.  The electronic tracking system across school has simplified analysis and collection of data and allows for quick interpretation of data and identification of individuals who may require additional support.  The Headteacher closely monitors and supports less experienced teachers to ensure assessment remains consistent.”

“Three paired lesson observations were carried out during the visit.  The Headteacher and Local Authority representative were in complete agreement regarding overall judgements and the quality of aspects within lessons.  In all lessons behaviour and discipline was excellent.” 

“Relationships between newly qualified teachers and pupils are very good with the right balance of inter-action and respect.  Technology was used well in all lessons and is clearly an intrinsic part of the teachers’ tools for delivery.  It was also clear that in all lessons pupils were enjoying learning.”

“The Headteacher has a clear understanding of the strengths and areas for development for each teacher and has worked extensively with each to ensure consistent practices are used and areas for development are improved – the quality of all the lessons is testament to this approach.”

“The systems in place for supporting and developing newly qualified teachers are excellent.  Teachers are provided with systematic, comprehensive written feedback which is supportive and useful.  The Headteacher regularly checks that expectations are met and that quality of provision is as high as possible.  New staff are clearly responding to this.”

“Newly Qualified Teachers have already met Ofsted standards and in some aspects are exceeding basic expectations.  All three show strong potential.”

It’s more evidence of the excellent provision we have at Moortown Primary, a happy and healthy place to learn.

In the news today, schools ‘should let children help pick teachers’:

More schools should involve pupils in the recruitment of teachers, says the children’s commissioner for England.  A survey of 2,000 children aged nine to 16 for commissioner Maggie Atkinson found two-thirds would like a role in the recruitment process.

This is nothing new for Moortown, where pupils feedback each time we recruit a teacher. Most recently, when we recruited four new teachers, pupils were involved in three ways:

• candidates taught a short lesson and pupil reactions and learning was closely observed;
• a selection of pupils gave feedback – they were asked what they liked about the lesson and what they learnt;
• the School Council fed-back to a governor their views of the candidates – again, only the positive features of each candidate were discussed.

Interestingly, pupils could describe many aspects of the four successful candidates they liked and thought all four would be right for Moortown; their comments matched what adults also thought, having watched lessons, interviewed and assessed other selection tasks on the day.

Even as far back as my recruitment, around four years ago, the School Council were involved: they interviewed all the candidates and then passed on their views of each, with the whole process watched by an adult interested in how candidate and councillors interacted.

Some critics express concern that this undermines teachers.  We feel that pupil voice can be one of a number of selection procedures, and won’t undermine the profession if the discussion only considers positive aspects of teachers and what they can bring to the school.

The Stephen Lawrence Education Standard is unique to Leeds. It was developed in partnership between Education Leeds, the Leeds City Council and Black and Minority community representatives, in response to the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the publication of the MacPherson Inquiry Report into Stephen’s death in 1999. The Standard was launched in 2003, the first of its kind in the country.

At Moortown Primary School, we have had the award for some time now.  We now want to update it. We know Moortown Primary School is a happy and healthy place to learn. Children tell us, parents and carers tell us, and awards such as this one, the Healthy Schools status and the Inclusion Chartermark prove it. 

We want everyone in our community to be treated fairly.  We want to recognise everybody’s similarities and their differences – and celebrate their differences. We make sure this happens by our Visual Ethos Statement that underlies everything we do.  Our ethos is talked about – children know what the symbols mean, including the globe which shows that we are a multi-cultural school with pupils and staff from many different countries, the four children holding hands that show that we all work together and the religious symbols you can see represent children who have different faiths (or no faith at all).

The children linking arms is echoed in our school logo: children are represented as happy, healthy and co-operative.  When our school council chose this logo in 2008, the different colours in the logo was suggested by a councillor as being symbolic of the different ethnicities in school.  This went further than the original design remit and represents the confidence and positive awareness we try to nurture amongst all our stakeholders.

Practical means to promote awareness, cohesion and equality range from SEAL, a fundamental, on-going theme in our school, to themed weeks, such as the forthcoming ‘My Community’ week (the second themed week to celebrate and learn about belonging, identity and differences such as race).  Our growing links with Shallcross Primary in South Africa will further enhance children’s and adults’ understanding and empathy.

The Stephen Lawrence Standard means a lot to us.  We know we’re doing things right and we want to be recognised for this as well as learn more about what we can do in the future to be even better.

At Moortown, we pride ourselves on being a happy and healthy place to learn. We monitor this closely to make sure that it’s not just an empty slogan but a true picture of life in our community.

For the past three years, one of our classes has been taking part in a short survey (‘Me and My School’) which looks at responses in relation to emotional difficulties, behavioural difficulties and school climate. The results help us to ensure our provision best suits the needs of our children – and we receive vouchers to spend on play equipment, too!

There is strong evidence that there is a higher proportion of pupils with low anger and aggression scores at Moortown Primary School than participating pupils both nationally and locally. The school climate is rated better at Moortown Primary School than schools nationally and locally. The emotional difficulty scores of pupils at Moortown are lower.

As well as Moortown, 181 other schools across England took part. A total of 20 schools in Leeds completed the ‘Me and My School’ questionnaire. Children responded to a series of statements, answering ‘Never’, ‘Sometimes’ or ‘Always’.

Our postbox is just inside the Reception entrance.  It’s a white postbox on the right hand side – you just need to lift the lid and post any payments you need to make.  You can use the postbox to leave other items, too: letters, concerns, term-time absence requests.  In the summer term, we invite parents / carers to complete an Annual Survey – using the postbox means your responses can be anonymous if this is important to you.

When you need to make a payment at the office, for dinners, clubs, trips etc, it’s a good idea to remember the following two points:

• Money should be in a sealed envelope clearly labelled with your child’s name and class and what the money is for.
• All envelopes should be ‘posted’ in the post-box just inside the Reception entrance – this is a quicker way to pay than queueing!