News

Janice Rush, our Chair of Governors

The Chair of Governors at Moortown Primary School, Janice Rush, has been chosen for a national role supporting other chairs of governors to improve governance and school performance.  She was one of only 100 governors to be appointed to the role of National Leader of Governance (NLG) in the latest recruitment round by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL).

Successful candidates were invited to the National College’s learning and conference centre in Nottingham for a formal induction and training for the role.

National Leaders of Governance are highly effective chairs of governors who will use their skills and experience to support chairs of governors in schools and academies for a variety of reasons: the chair may be new, governors may want to focus more on school improvement, or need support in dealing with significant strategic challenges – for example becoming a federation or converting to academy status. They will provide coaching and can support their counterparts in a variety of different ways – for example in using data effectively to improve school performance or by providing more effective support and challenge for their headteacher.

Janice comments: “This is a fantastic opportunity to work with schools across Yorkshire and help drive improvements.”

The role builds on the success of the National College’s National and Local Leaders of Education (NLE or LLE) programme where headteachers use their proven success as school leaders to provide additional leadership capability in struggling schools. (David Roundtree supports other schools in the role of Local Leader of Education.) In some case, National Leaders of Governance may be deployed in partnership with a National or Local Leader of Education.

The overall number of National Leaders of Governance across the country is just over 260, although this will rise to about 300 by April 2014.

Charlie Taylor, Chief Executive of the National College for Teaching and Leadership, has said: “Governors are the people who appoint headteachers and hold them to account so they have an essential role to play as leaders in our schools. High quality governance is vital for improving school performance and it is great that Chairs of Governors like Janice are willing to step up and look beyond their own school in order to help others who will benefit from their support.”

For further information contact Janice: janicerush@moortown.sch.uk

Animals visit Year 3!

This morning, we had a surprise visit from some animals. Mags from Animals In-tuition brought in a variety of animals – both familiar and unfamiliar – for us to learn about. We even got to hold some of them!

It wasn’t just the children who it to hold them. Look at these pictures of me and Mrs Sherriff:

After school-club availability Spring term

We have the following spaces available on the upcoming after-school clubs:

Monday

• Shuffles KS2 FREE 8 places available
• Art KS1 £20 Full

Tuesday

• Sports multi-fit KS1 FREE 3 places available
• Dance and Drama KS2 FREE 5 places available

Wednesday

• Cookery KS1 £20 Full
• Dodgeball KS2 FREE Full

Thursday

• French KS1 £20 10 places available
• Scratch Code Club £20 Full

Friday

• TSC football places available

To book your child a place on one of these clubs, please complete the booking form and return to the office by Thursday 09 January 2014.

To book your child onto the TSC Football club, visit TSC direct and follow their booking process.

The TSC Football club starts on 24 January. All other clubs start week commencing 13 January 2014.

Free one day cookery course for children age 10-13

Get Cooking! are running a free one day cooking course in the February half term week for children aged 10-13.  Spaces are limited to 8.

The Rs for learning

7Rs for learning is an additional theme to our SEAL (social and emotional aspects of learning) coverage across the year.  Throughout this theme children will explore seven key aspects of learning behaviour from resilience to responsibility.

Tuck shop pre-payment

Here is a reminder for our regular customers at tuck shop and for any children who would like to start pre-paying for their fruit.

Please return the recent letter with your money to ensure that you continue to get your weekly fruit at the tuckshop.

The cost for one portion of fruit or veg from 14 January to 01 April 2014 inclusive (11 weeks) is £2.20 and the cost for two portions is £4.40.

Thank you for your support with our tuck shop – 63 customers today!

DfE performance tables: learning

DfE performance tables are published today.  This year, they are more detailed than ever, covering everything from amount spent on resources to absence rates. 

Here’s an overview of learning in 2012-13 for Moortown Primary compared to other primary schools, based on 2013 Key Stage 2 results.

In the tables, there are many, potentially confusing, ways to compare schools and their 2013 results.  You can compare progress, percentage of pupils at expected level, how effective a school is in closing the attainment gap caused by poverty… You can compare test results against teacher assessment, how well children with low attainment perform compared to those with high attainment…

Here are some headline figures:

• proportion reaching Level 4 or more in reading, writing and maths combined is 93% – almost 20 percentage points higher than national (75%) or Leeds (74%) figures
• proportion reaching Level 4B (a mid Level 4, which the current government describes as a level indicating a pupil is ‘secondary ready’) or more in reading, writing and maths combined is 89% – significantly higher than national (63%) and 14th place amongst all 251 Leeds primaries
• proportions making expected progress is also very high: 100% in reading and maths, and 96% in writing – about 10 percentage points higher than for England as a whole, or Leeds overall
• the average level for our pupils was a 5C, which matches quite a few schools in Leeds, but only two schools had a higher level (5B)
• 32% of pupils attained a Level 5 in reading, writing and maths combined – easily putting us in the top 10% of Leeds schools for this measure

Well done to the 2012-13 Year 6 class, to Ms Hazell, Mrs Raseta and to all the previous teachers who have supported the class.

DfE performance tables: attendance

DfE performance tables are published today.  This year, they are more detailed than ever, covering everything from Key Stage 2 results to average teacher salary, from amount spent on resources to absence rates. 

Here’s an overview of absence rates for Moortown Primary compared to other primary schools. 

(Don’t get confused: we often talk about attendance rates – the higher, the better.  The performance tables refer to absence rates, so the converse is true – the lower, the better.)

The absence rate for Moortown Primary is 4.1%.  This compares well against the average across England’s primary state-funded schools (4.8%) and Leeds (4.7%).

I’ve gone through the table and noted the absence rates of 11 other primary schools in the area, chosen in a relatively random way other than schools which are nearby.  Moortown Primary comes about half-way up the list.  It’s great our absence rates are lower than national and Leeds averages.  What we need to keep working on is improving attendance against similar schools nearby…

• if the absence rate of Gledhow Primary and Alwoodley Primary is 4.0%, could our attendance improve by a small amount more to match their figures?
• if Talbot Primary’s absence is 3.6%, should our absence rate be lower than 4.1%?

The attendance tables also include figures to show persistent absenteeism – the percentage of pupils in a school who have particularly high absence.  For Moortown Primary, the figure is 2.8%.  This is much better than national (3.6%) and Leeds (3.5%) rates.  Last year, the 2.8% was made up six pupils.  To put this into context, we can account for four of these children – we know they had / have specific reasons:

• medical conditions where absences are backed up with full medical evidence and / or medical professionals being in frequent communication, or
• other very specific reasons, again, backed up at every stage of absence by communication and evidence from parents and other professionals.

Parents / carers of the other two children could not provide us with any reason for the absences.  Under stricter, clearer guidelines, parents / carers of these children would be fined – £60 per child, per parent.  So far this school year, we have passed on to the local authority two instances of extended and unauthorised term-time absence.

Free physical activity after-school clubs

You may have noticed on the latest menu of after-school clubs, for the Spring term, that our physical activity clubs are FREE!  This is one of the ways we are spending Government funding given to all schools for PE and school sport, encouraging children to take part in a range of physical activities.  In order to maximise the long term impact for our school, both pupils and staff, we are looking at the most sustainable ways to invest the funding.  Further details of some of the projects we are involved in will shortly be posted on the website.

In the meantime, if you have any feedback about our after-school clubs please speak to Mrs O’Malley.

Attendance matters

Our attendance data is looking great so far this year – thank you to all of you who are respecting new guidelines around avoiding term-time absence, which is having a big impact on our attendance and therefore on your child’s learning.  The table below lists attendance this year up until 22.11.13 (final column), which you can compare with the same period last year, and the overall figures for the whole school year.

Don’t forget that each row for last year and this year is a different group of children, so you might want to compare Year 1 last year (95.8% for this period) with Year 2 this year (97.7%) – a great improvement for the same children (and parents / carers) here!

Attendance data is something which Ofsted and other educational bodies look closely at.  For example, Fischer Family Trust reports on attendance by breaking down figures for different groups in school.  They report, for example:

• children who attain well at Moortown have better attendance figures than similar children nationally
• most ethnic groups (but not all) have better attendance than the same groups nationally
• boys and girls have the same attendance data at Moortown

Once again: thank you to all parents / carers who are trying hard to maintain good attendance for their child.