Standards and Quality Report 2017-18 School Name: Kirklandpark Primary

Context of the school:

Kirklandpark Primary School is situated in parkland on the outskirts of the market town of Strathaven. We have a large area of amenity ground adjacent to the school, which we use for outdoor learning, sports and games. Our old school building is due to be demolished from June 2018 onwards, further increasing our outdoor space.

Our new school building officially opened in June 2017. It is on three levels, one and a half storeys and has a very open and spacious feeling. We have 11 classrooms, a gym hall, dining hall and several large open areas. Currently we have a 20/20 nursery and 10 mainstream classes.

Kirklandpark’s overall SIMD level is currently 8.0, the local secondary school, Strathaven Academy is 6.9 and the level for SLC is 5.1. Our catchment area incorporates SIMD levels 4-10 with 5.7% of our children living within SIMD 4, 8.3% in SIMD 5, 4.2% in SIMD 6, 9.4% in SIMD 7, 21.5% in SIMD 8, 34.4% in SIMD 9 and 16.6% in SIMD 10.

Kirklandpark has undergone significant changes within the last two years. In addition to moving to a new building the entire Senior Management Team has changed as the previous Head Teacher and Depute both retired on the 13th October 2017. The new Head Teacher took up her post in January 2018 and the Depute’s position was filled in February 2018. It is our vision for every child in Kirklandpark Primary and Nursery to achieve their full potential by developing their knowledge and skills through challenging learning experiences in a nurturing, positive and motivating environment where high expectations are set and success is celebrated. We ensure inclusion and equality leads to improved outcomes for all children and we work to provide all with opportunities to be involved in the life of the school. We encourage our children to strive to be successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. Our ethos is nurturing and founded on a climate of mutual respect with shared values and expectations, secured through positive relationships, providing children with a quality broad general education. We are committed to ensuring the highest standards are in place for learners through our shared vision and values.

Over time we are raising attainment and all children have made progress on prior levels achieved. Robust tracking and monitoring is now in place and timeous interventions ensure continuous progress for learners across the curriculum. We have effective systems in place to promote equity and we celebrate children’s achievements as they develop a range of skills and attributes. Aifl strategies are utilised to set learning intentions, success criteria and to provide appropriate, high quality feedback. Children’s learning experiences are well matched to their needs, facilitating opportunities for problem solving, creative thinking, active and independent learning through a variety of teaching and learning approaches and groupings.

Strong partnerships exist between all stakeholders, promoting a sense of common purpose that puts children and their learning at the centre. Effective self-evaluation involving all stakeholders supports our approaches to continuous improvement and enables all to have a shared understanding of our strengths and development needs. We work closely with colleagues across the learning community both at times of transition and to support the application of consistent standards in learning and teaching and expectations of our children. Pupil voice is integral to the life of the school and we support children in developing high levels of self-esteem, taking ownership for their own learning, thinking and decision making. A wide range of extra-curricular activities are available to extend children’s involvement in the life of the school.

Strong leadership of learning is demonstrated by staff at all levels within different contexts including those that are collaborative and support our collegiate culture. Staff undertake career-long professional learning (CLPL), ensuring subject knowledge is up-to-date and reflected through the provision of high quality learning experiences. We make best use of our resources including digital technology to motivate learners and support inclusion. Our curriculum reflects current educational thinking to support positive outcomes for children, optimising skills for learning, life and work through enterprise and creativity across all areas of learning. The structure of the curriculum provides equity of opportunity to maximise the successes through creative and innovative approaches to curriculum design.

Poverty Related Attainment Gap – PEF Target Group

Currently our target group includes children receiving free meals. This accounts for 2.9% of our school population. The children cover a range of stages within the school. None of the children within this group are in SIMD 4. Although not included within this year’s figures we anticipate that those living within SIMD 4 will be included in future target groups as tracking and monitoring has shown that most are making less progress than those within SIMD levels 5 – 10. Monitoring and tracking shows that some of the children within our target group are not attaining levels expected of most children of their age and stage in Literacy and Numeracy.

Kirklandpark Primary And Nursery ClassKirklandpark Avenue

StrathavenML10 6DY

The National Context for Education

The National Improvement Framework (NIF) for Scottish Education sets out the Scottish Government’s vision to continually improve Scottish Education and to close the attainment gap, delivering both excellence and equity. Our school, working in partnership with South Lanarkshire Council is fully committed to delivering these ambitious aims.

The key priorities of the National Improvement Framework are:

Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy Closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged

children Improvement in children and young people’s health and wellbeing Improvement in employability skills and sustained, positive school leaver

destinations for all young people

Key drivers of improvement have also been identified, these are:

School leadership. Teacher professionalism. Parental engagement. Assessment of children’s progress. School improvement. Performance information.

South Lanarkshire Council’s overall vision is to “improve the quality of life of everyone in South Lanarkshire Council.”

Education Resources’ key purpose is to:

“Raise achievement and attainment, inspire learners, transform learning and work in partnership to strengthen our communities”

The priorities relating to this are:

Deliver high-quality early learning and childcare to give our children the best educational start

Raise standards in literacy, numeracy and close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Improve health and wellbeing to enable children and families to flourish. Support children and young people to develop their skills for learning, life and

work. Ensure inclusion and equality are at the heart of what we do.

Our school is committed to taking these priorities forward and developing each driver through our annual School Improvement Plan (SIP.)

Assessment of children’s progress throughout the Broad General Education (to end of S3)

As one of the drivers, our school, alongside all schools in Scotland, has been required to report on Curriculum for Excellence levels for literacy and numeracy achieved by all children at the end of stages P1, P4, P7 and S3. This data is submitted to South Lanarkshire Council in June each year and collected subsequently by the Scottish Government. This data is based on teacher judgement, informed by a wide range of assessment evidence including standardised testing where appropriate. As from session 2016/17 all schools in Scotland will be required to participate in the new Scotland National Standardised Assessment (SNSA) project. This will further help inform teacher judgement of levels.

The following table shows benchmarks for children achieving Curriculum for Excellence Levels.

Level Stage covering 3 years approx. Early The pre-school years and P1, or later for some.

First To the end of P4, but earlier or later for some.

Second To the end of P7, but earlier or later for some.

Third and Fourth

S1 to S3, but earlier for some.The fourth level broadly equates to Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework level 4. The fourth level experiences and outcomes are intended to provide possibilities for choice and young people’s programmes will not include all of the fourth level outcomes.

Senior phase

S4 to S6, and college or other means of study.

Some children and young people will start learning at these levels earlier and others later, depending upon individual needs and abilities. Many children not attaining National Levels will have an Additional Support Plan (ASP) and may be making good progress but against different milestones e.g. individual targets. Learning progress is not about how fast children move through the levels but about ‘how much’ and ‘how well’ children learn, having depth and breadth of experiences at each level.

Assessment of these levels is based on a wide variety of evidence and ways of measuring progress such as assessment of projects, general class work, observations and peer assessment. Where possible, children and young people are encouraged to be directly involved in the assessment process.

Schools and teachers work with others to set shared standards for assessing progress. These standards are based on National “benchmarks” for each area of the curriculum. This process is called moderation and it ensures that schools have similar expectations.

What follows is our school’s data about achievement of these levels for session 15/16 through to session 17/18.

Review of SIP progress session: 2017 - 2018Priority 1: Closing The Attainment Gap Between The Most And Least Disadvantaged Children All pupils and parents will be clear of the wellbeing indicators and the importance / impact of Health & Wellbeing and RRS on pupil progress

National Improvement Framework Key Priorities Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy

and numeracy; Closing the attainment gap between the most and

least disadvantaged children; Improvement in children and young people’s health

and wellbeing; and Improvement in employability skills and sustained

positive school leaver destinations for all young people.

National Improvement Framework Key Drivers

School leadership

Teacher professionalism

Parental engagement

Assessment of children’s progress

School improvement

Performance information

HGIOS 4 QI:

1.4 Leadership and management of staff 1.5 Management of resources to promote equity 2.1 Safeguarding and child protection 2.3 Learning teaching and assessment 2.7 Partnership 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion 3.2 Raising attainment and achievement/Securing children’s progress

Progress and Impact:

As a result of significant changes in staffing and staff absences throughout the year planned work within this area has not progressed to the depth of level intended. In addition to this we opted to spend further time auditing our current position to provide a more detailed picture of existing provision. As a result we are targeting children’s attitudes towards and readiness for learning. Our focus will be on developing children’s resilience, self-esteem and independence. Planning materials have been produced and resources sourced to support learning within this area.

Significant work has been carried out with children in P6 & 7 relating to Internet Safety. Our Parent Council organised a CEOP information evening delivered by Police Scotland and we invited parents and staff from Chapelton Primary to join us for this. Attendance was not as high as we would have liked but the evening was well received by those who attended and positive feedback was given. Further Information provided by Police Scotland will go onto our website and will be emailed to parents.

We have established our Rights Respecting Rangers Group which is led by Miss Thomson. The group meet on a monthly basis focusing on the conventions of the UNCRC.

Next Steps:1. Further develop whole school use of SHANARRI indicators and language through assemblies, completion of pupil self-

evaluation wheels and targeted lessons as part of HWB curriculum.2. UNCRC articles will be linked to SHANARRI indicators.3. All classes to have a Class Charter, utilising the language of the UNCRC.4. Planning materials to be matched to HWB benchmarks.5. Staff to undertake ‘Nurturing Schools’ training.6. Target Setting for all pupils to be established on a three week cycle and involve home-school liaison.

Priority 2: Improvement In AttainmentThe school will provide pupils with opportunities to increase their skills in numeracy and maths by providing a range of materials and workshops for parents to help their children in homework tasks.

National Improvement Framework Key Priorities Improvement in attainment, particularly in literacy

and numeracy; Closing the attainment gap between the most and

least disadvantaged children; Improvement in children and young people’s health

and wellbeing; and Improvement in employability skills and sustained

positive school leaver destinations for all young people.

National Improvement Framework Key Drivers

School leadership

Teacher professionalism

Parental engagement

Assessment of children’s progress

School improvement

Performance information

HGIOS 4 QI:

1.5 Management of resources to promote equity 2.2 Curriculum 2.5 Family learning 2.7 Partnership

Progress and Impact:Big Maths was introduced throughout the school and this has impacted on children’s learning to varying degrees. The children’s mental maths skills in P1, P2, P6 and P7 were not hugely impacted by use of the strategies and materials, however they did improve through stages P3, 4 and 5. In the longer term, ‘Big Maths’ is one resource available to support teaching and learning and in order to increase pace, challenge and depth of learning further we will consider this as one tool and will focus the basis of teaching and learning on the benchmarks. Planned parent workshops did not happen due to major staffing changes in the SMT. Our focus shifted towards building and developing our team and our whole school ethos. We plan to include the provision of parental involvement within this year’s calendar with the main focus remaining on Maths. Parent workshops will be one mode of delivery however we plan to extend this to include prompt sheets and ‘come and learn with me’ sessions. ‘Come and learn with me’ sessions are intended to let parents join their children in their learning to see how things are done in the classroom.We have identified that there requires to be a greater correlation between our planning and assessment in order to best meet the needs of our children and to support appropriate pace and challenge of learning. In addition to using teacher professional judgement, classroom observations, jotter monitoring and planning to track progress we have also analysed the data provided through SNSA assessments to identify trends and gaps in children’s learning at P1, P4 and P7. One trend permeating all levels relates to difficulties in utilising the language associated with maths and this can be seen through a dip in results related to solving word problems. As well as tackling this area we also feel that we need to employ further whole school assessment to provide further data at each individual stage.

Next Steps:1. To adapt our planning and assessment to reflect the CfE benchmarks in Numeracy.2. To provide information and guidance to assist parents in support their child’s mathematical development.3. Undertake more rigorous tracking and monitoring of maths progress and attainment.4. Employ use of further summative assessment materials to track children’s longer term recall in Maths.5. Target ‘word problems’ as an area for whole school development, supporting children in using their problem solving

skills.

1.1 Attainment data - Attainment of Literacy Curriculum for Excellence levels 2015/16 and 2016/17 (teacher judgement).

1.2 Attainment data - Attainment of Numeracy Curriculum for Excellence levels 2015/16 and 2016/17 (teacher judgement).

1.3 Attainment data - Attainment of Literacy Curriculum for Excellence levels 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 (teacher judgement).

1.4 Attainment data - Attainment of Numeracy Curriculum for Excellence levels 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 (teacher judgement).

Achieving Excellence: Overall Progress towards National Improvement Framework PrioritiesSession 2017-18Use all available evidence (including data)

Literacy: Progress satisfactory good very good excellent

X

Strengths- 100% of our Primary 1 children have attained Early Level in all aspects of Literacy.

94% of children in Primary 4 have attained First Level in Listening and Talking whilst 98% of children in Primary 7 have attained Second Level. 77.8% of children in Primary 4 have attained First Level in Writing whilst 79% of children in Primary 7 have attained Second Level. 83.3% of children in Primary 4 have attained First Level in Reading whilst 83% of children in Primary 7 have attained Second Level.

- Our data shows an increase in attainment at Early and Second Level for children in P1 and P7.

- Attainment levels for children in P1 and P4 are above the previously reported average for SLC and the national average in reading, writing and listening & talking.

- Attainment levels for children in P7 are above the previously reported national average but the same as the SLC average in reading.

Attainment levels for children in P7 are above the previously reported average for SLC and the national average in listening & talking and in writing.

Next steps- Attainment levels for our current Primary 4 children are lower in Writing and Maths than for the previous cohort. This

is largely due to an increased number of children having additional support needs that are literacy based. Our SIP for 2018 – 2019 targets personalised learning and meeting children’s needs. We will be modifying our approach to approaches to planning and assessing in order to reduce barriers to learning for all children.

- Analysis of SNSA results, together with teacher judgement and parental feedback highlighted punctuation and grammar as being an area for improvement and our SIP targets the development of a whole school progression framework to support and enable this.

Numeracy:Progress satisfactory good very good excellent

X

Strengths- 100% of children in Primary 1 have attained Early Level in Numeracy.

- 83% of children in Primary 4 have attained First Level in Numeracy whilst 83% of children in Primary 7 have attained Second Level.

- Attainment data for all stages is higher than previously reported SLC and national averages.

- Our data shows a decline in attainment from the previous P4 cohort. There are a number of children within this year group who have additional support needs and specific intervention is being put in place to support them in further developing their knowledge, skills and confidence.

Next steps- Consolidation activities are being built into our planning formats to ensure a regular revision cycle is in place across all

stages.

- Further support and consolidation is being incorporated using ICT within class work programmes and homework planning.

- Planning formats are being updated to focus on the benchmarks and ensure progression, pace and challenge.

- A range of assessment data will be gathered to provide robust tracking and monitoring information.

Health and WellbeingProgress satisfactory good very good excellent

X

Strengths- Data obtained from a variety of sources including pupil questionnaires and Chit Chat group feedback shows that in the

lower stages our children’s health and wellbeing is good. For some this declines through P4-7 with a small number reporting that they do not enjoy school and are not always treated well by their peers. A small number of children feel that bullying is a problem within the school.

Next steps

- Further development of Health and Wellbeing tracking and monitoring, using the SHANARRI indicators requires to be undertaken to incorporate more detailed analysis of children’s mental health and wellbeing.

- Undertake nurturing schools programme.

- Implement a programme of study focused on developing children’s resilience and self-esteem.

- Target setting incorporated into home-school learning programme.

Employability Skills/Positive Destinationssatisfactory

good very good excellent

X

Strengths- Parents are invited to come into school and talk to the children about their jobs. This is most often related to Social

Studies / IDL and topic work.

- Children are increasingly taking on further responsibilities within the school.

- Our buddying system has been updated for session 2018 – 2019.

- Enterprise activities are undertaken by children throughout Primary 1 – 7.

Next steps- Further development of Skills For Work requires to be undertaken across all stages from P1-7.

- Tracking of Skills For Learning, Life And Work requires to be established across all stages from P1-7.

- Partnerships with local organisations and businesses needs to be further enhanced and in some cases established.

Overall quality of our learners’ achievements Highlights of session 2017-18

This session has been very busy with children across all stages participating in a wide range of learning activities as they benefit from a broad general education with a curriculum that is balanced, challenging, stimulating and enjoyable.

Our school has undergone significant change during this session as both the Head Teacher and Depute Head Teacher retired in October, resulting in a completely new management team. There was an interim period when no senior management team was in place. The staff team worked very hard to ensure continuity for the children and they did an excellent job. Since January 2018 we have worked hard to strengthen our ethos and have worked hard as a team. The children are encouraged to participate in decision making within the school and we are working towards increasing their independence.

Pupil voice has been developed with children beginning to participate in regular learning conversations with their teachers and with the headteacher, in addition to monthly ‘Chit Chat’ groups. This provided children with the opportunity to input directly into our school improvement process, contributing their ideas and opinions. The role of our Pupil Council is set to increase next session and in addition to their organisation of fundraising events they will also play a regular part in our school assemblies by encouraging the children to focus on our school values.

In preparation for the demolition of our old school building our Parent Council are working in partnership with Council Officers to plan our new playground area. It is a vast space that incorporates many of the children and staff’s suggestions including a pond, outdoor classroom, dry stone wall feature and two mini tennis courts. Initial work has also been undertaken by our Primary 6 children to identify ways to improve the health and wellbeing of the wider school by making our playground a ‘better’ place to be. They aim to tackle unkind behaviour and designate quieter areas within the playground for those who find the hustle and bustle of a busy playground difficult to cope with. This will continue next session and will involve our Pupil Council. Our Primary 5 and 6 children have also undertaken buddy training and their role in session 2018 – 2019 will change from the format currently used. The children will be involved as playground buddies and as paired readers and / or spellers.

Our Junior Road Safety Officer’s worked closely with personnel from Enterprise Resources to run our ‘Walk To School Week’ and also ‘Walk On Wednesday’ for Primary 5. They have also taken part in a campaign to raise awareness with parents about the dangers of unsafe driving and parking when bringing children to school. Whilst sharing a campus with St. Patrick’s Primary the J.R.S.O.s from both schools worked together to carry out a leaflet drop to parents parking outside the school. Next session we are hoping that they may be able to help us to get a second cycle shelter for the Lethame Road entrance to the school. Our P6 boys and girls have also undertaken Bike Ability and have learned about cycling safely on the road. Next session, we are going to be campaigning for our children to wear helmets at all time when cycling.

Our links with the local community have strengthened as we have worked with local health professionals to promote healthy eating by designing posters that are displayed in the medical centre. Our children have also contributed towards the John Hastie Museum displays and have subsequently visited the exhibition in the Town Mill. We have worked with Strathaven Library to visit the new facility, publicise the activities available to the children and we worked with Audrey the Librarian to encourage and motivate the children to visit the library during the summer holidays.

Brass, Woodwind and Strings tuition have all been available and accessed by children in Primaries 5, 6 and 7. Our Primary 5 children took part in the Youth Music Initiative and enjoyed developing their knowledge

and understanding of music. They learned to read music and to develop their appreciation of music as well as their ability to perform various percussion instruments under the direction of our affiliated music specialist. They showcased their work, giving a short performance to other children within the school on the final day of their tuition.

Two of our Primary 7 children also worked with the Strathaven Academy band throughout the year and subsequently played at the S1 Prize Giving in June.

Working closely with the Parent Council and P.T.A., we have enjoyed a successful Halloween Disco, Christmas Fayre, and Summer Disco. In addition to this our P.T.A. organised our entry for the Strathaven Gala. This was very successful and we were delighted to win first prize for our ‘Greatest Showman’ themed parade.

A large number of extra-curricular activities were available for children across the school. These activities were organised and run by staff, parents and coaches provided by our Active School’s Co-ordinator. Clubs included netball, football, sewing, science, coding and mindfulness. We also established a choir who performed for the staff, children and parent / carers during our Easter Service. Primary 7 held a school show on two nights in June. It was a collaborative initiative involving many members of our teaching staff and our entire Primary 7 cohort. The children all participated and provided an excellent performance.

Several members of our Primary 7 class were trained as Sports Ambassadors by our PT and Active School’s Coordinator. The children developed their leadership skills and worked with the younger children to teach them new skills and sports. Our school was then nominated for the South Lanarkshire Sporting School Awards and we were delighted to win the award for the East Kilbride area.

Two of our Primary 6 pupils were nominated for awards at the South Lanarkshire Pupil Achievement ceremony. One was for citizenship and the other for recognition of success in athletics.

We have established our Twitter feed and a school App which is proving very popular with parents and children alike. Our website is currently being updated.

Our children have enjoyed participating in a wide range of sports based activities, developing their skills, stamina and general fitness;

- P5, 6 & 7 developed their swimming skills through a 12 week programme organised in conjunction with Strathaven Leisure Centre.

- P5 participated in the East Kilbride Games (experiencing taster sessions in a range of sports)- P7 took part in Strathaven’s Sports Hall Athletics - P7 took part in Curling- P4 took part in an Orienteering programme organised by our Active Sports Coordinator

Our janitor and DHT continued to run a weekly football training session for our P6 & 7 children with teams competing in a number of tournaments.

Our extra-curricular Dance Club performed at the East Kilbride Dance Festival and thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to showcase their learning to groups from other schools.

We welcomed a number of students and parent helpers into the school to work alongside our teaching and support staff to assist the children in their learning. This has proven very successful with volunteers from our parent body supporting our ‘World Book Day,’ reading sessions. In addition to this we have also benefited from the help of secondary school pupils from Strathaven Academy. They have been on work experience and have helped to run our Sports Day.

As part of their transition to Strathaven Academy our P7 children were engaged in a number of activities to focus on skills needed to ‘survive the move!’ They had a chance to meet various members of staff from Strathaven Academy including the Guidance staff and the DHT. The children also relished the chance to develop new friendships before attending their ‘official’ two day visit to Strathaven Academy. Some of our P7 children and their parents also attended the evening meetings at the Academy over the course of this period. We were also delighted to work with Ms Baran to develop our knowledge of basic Spanish. In addition to this many also participated in an after-school badminton club held at the Leisure Centre by staff from the Academy.

Our staff have worked collaboratively in house and with colleagues from other schools on moderation and sharing good practice events, whilst also ensuring shared expertise through PEPAS and local authority wide transition work.

The children in Primary 6 have continued to operate our Credit Union and have now successfully trained a replacement team for when they move onto Primary 7. Our House Captains and several willing volunteers have an active role in our weekly assemblies, playing a lead role as they organise certificates, presentations and report on aspects of school life. Our Rights Respecting Rangers are beginning to learn about the UNCRC with an aim to lead assemblies once per month to focus children’s attention on the Convention on the Rights Of The Child and SHANARRI. In addition to this our Pupil Council are working towards focusing children’s attention on our school values, creating thought provoking presentations and encouraging their peers to think about their personal role within the school.

Primary 7 have compiled a ‘leavers’ book,’ which has been sent for professional publication. They have enjoyed charting their journey through primary school and reminiscing on times gone by.

Almost all of our Primary 7 children participated in our annual residential trip to Ardmay. They enjoyed a week of outdoor activities and team building.

Primary 6 took part in ‘Clyde In The Classroom,’ developing their knowledge and understanding of local marine life. They work in conjunction with a Scientist from the group who helped them to cultivate fish which they released into the burn in the park.

All of our classes have undertaken topics that developed their entrepreneurial skills, working as a team and showing responsible attitudes as they debated and made collective decisions.

We’ve had several class assemblies to showcase the children’s IDL work. The children entertained their parents and carers demonstrating their knowledge and skills through dance, song, poetry and prose.

We took part in Strathaven Gala, submitting an entry into the raft race, the parade, the netball competition and the swimming competition. Two of our Primary 7 children were also members of the Gala Court.

In April we moved to a cashless payment system which has drastically cut down on the amount of teaching and learning lost to administration relating to the payment of meals and trips.

Children in P1, 4 and 7 took part in the SNSA online assessments in Literacy and Numeracy. Our statistics show that almost all children in Primary 1 achieved ‘high’ in literacy and numeracy, whilst most in Primary 4 and 7 achieved ‘high’ in Reading and Writing. Approximately half of the children in Primary 4 and 7 achieved ‘high’ in Numeracy. No children achieved ‘low’ for literacy and numeracy in Primary 1. Less than 15% achieved ‘low’ in Reading, Writing and Numeracy in Primary 4 and 7.

Comment on strategies that have been successful in engaging with children and young people, staff, parents and the wider community and the impact of these.

Primary 7 have begun to lead monthly discussion, ‘Chit Chat groups,’ based on aspects of our improvement planning. All children in the school take part in these groups. Children discussed and collated answers to questions providing their views and opinions on what works well and what could be better in school. These results are collated and shared with children at a follow-up assembly using a ‘what you told us, what we did approach.’ Questionnaires are often created by the headteacher or a member of the teaching staff.

Work in this area will continue and children will extend their input to be involved in the evaluation of HGIOS 4 quality indicators (as appropriate). Our Pupil Council and older children within the school will also be encouraged to be involved in the creation of the questionnaires. We will also involve the children in creating ‘child friendly’ and ‘parent friendly’ summaries of our improvement plan.

Further smaller groups will be set up to work on specific areas of school improvement, enabling children to have a direct input into our school improvement process.

We communicated our school improvement targets and progress throughout the year with our stakeholders using a variety of means including;Updates in our newslettersIncorporation into our websiteDisplays at Parents’ EveningsInclusion within the Headteacher’s report for Parent Council

Next session we will also share our targets within school through wall displays, ensuring they are in a prominent position and by annotating it with our progress throughout the year. In addition to this, more rigorous sharing of progress being made will be incorporated into our website with a specific page dedicated to this.

‘Take home your learning’ was successful and popular with parents. We will seek to continue this to strengthen home-school links. We will also incorporate ‘bring your parent to learn with you’ at various points throughout the year. Parents will be invited to come along and join their child / children to engage in a Maths lesson. Many comment on how much they enjoy sharing their children’s learning in school and how this helps them to support their child at home. Comments often refer to how different learning in class was from their own memories of school and how it enabled them to better understand what and how their child learned. To help further support us to improve Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing we will be reviewing our approaches to family learning and seek to involve parents and carers more extensively into the wider life of the school in order to promote partnership working and minimise barriers to engagement. We will also increase our communication about life within the classroom with parents and carers to keep them informed of children’s learning on a more regular basis.

Working within a ‘Learning Trio’ has been extremely beneficial for the head teacher, sharing practice and learning what happens within other establishments in order to challenge our own thinking.In addition to this collegiate working with other head teachers it has proven to be effective in creating networks, comparing practice and to support development work.

In addition to this embarking on SCEL’s ‘Excellence In Leadership’ programme has provided excellent opportunities for the Head Teacher to create relationships across Scotland, building networks and contacts to compare and contrast approaches and procedures.

Moderation activities across schools in our learning community has focused attention on holistic

assessment approaches. Assessment became more focused and professional dialogue ensured that there were shared expectations and values. Class teachers had an opportunity work with colleagues who taught children of a similar age and stage, providing a sense of ‘stage partner’ working which was enjoyed and felt beneficial to develop pedagogy. A next step for this would be to undertake peer visits to other schools to enable staff to look beyond our own school. The planned programme of assessments to be undertaken was not fully completed due to changes in the central leads for the project.

Joint CLPL on ASD, delivered by Psychological Services for teaching and support staff proved to be very successful with the same messages being delivered and shared with all staff. This will be further adopted to include other areas of practice next session.

Increasingly the children’s responsibilities within the school have encouraged them to take a pride in their new environment and to look after it. The older children have also embraced their position as role models and this has been reflected in a marked improvement in behaviour.

We have refocused our vision and refined our values to reflect the ethos that we wish our school to have. We are working to foster independence and resilience, supporting children to make good / sensible choices. We have a new motto and school mascot, both created and chosen by the children.

Increased direct communication has been established through our Twitter account and our App. We have also begun to receive details of parents email addresses to increase the speed of communications that we make with parents and to enable us to be more eco-friendly.

Adjustments to tracking materials are ready to trial in the coming session to create greater consistency across all stages within the school and also to aid tracking and monitoring with a focus on pace and challenge. The planning materials are also focused on the benchmarks and not the associated resources that are used.

Peer observed lessons were carried out during Term 3 for the first time in a number of years. This enabled teachers to compare and contrast their practice and pedagogy and in some cases prompted collaborative working.

Quality Indicator

How are we doing? How do we know?

School Self-Evaluation

1.1 Self-Evaluation for Self-Improvement

We undertake collaborative approaches to self-evaluation, seeking input from all stakeholders to focus our planning for improvement.

Audits are routinely carried out with parents, children and staff to gather ideas and opinions.

Pupil participation is becoming an increasingly strong feature of our self-evaluation, harnessed through Chit Chat groups, learning conversations and into the new session, our Pupil Council.

We engage in moderation activities throughout the Strathaven Learning Community.

We are now making more rigorous use of data that we collect and use this to inform areas for targeted support eg. PEF planning. This also informs modifications to planning and pedagogy to ensure curriculum design principles are fundamental to driving forward standards and expectations.

Observed lessons, jotter monitoring and tracking and monitoring meetings support whole school improvement and consistency in the application of the standards and expectations.

A high level of feedback was provided by children via Chit Chat groups, class questionnaires and assembly question times.

Positive feedback was given by staff involved in moderation across the learning community.

Minutes from Parent Council meetings reflect a positive response to the direction that we are taking the school in.

Assessment information relating to Listening and Talking and Numeracy requires to be tracked with greater consistency as there is not currently enough detail available.

Good

Less formal methods of capturing parental ideas and opinions have worked well and will continue to be utilised in the coming session.

More opportunities to involve parents and carers in the life of the school and in supporting children’s learning will be provided.

Increased opportunities for collaborative working and moderation within our own establishment to be built into our quality calendar.

Stakeholder groups will be set up to input directly into our establishment development work throughout the process as well as capturing opinion at the beginning.

Higher profile for our Pupil Council.

Look for opportunities for moderation beyond our own learning community.

1.3Leadership of Change

We have expanded and adapted our school vision to encompass the ethos that we work towards achieving. In addition to this we have adapted our aims and

Staff and parents have offered the children a large number of extra-curricular activities not previously available.

Satisfactory

In the new session we will make more consistent reference to our school

values to specify how we will achieve this vision.

Our staff have worked hard as a team to drive forward teaching and learning and they are each leading within their own classrooms and across different areas within the school.

Staff demonstrate a commitment to shared educational values and professional standards.

Our vision involves reflection to implement and effect change.

Sporting and non-sporting activities have been offered. There has been a high uptake of places offered with a number of activities running on several occasions to accommodate demand.

Staff have worked collaboratively to evaluate our curriculum and identify areas for development and improvement.

Our School Show involved almost every member of our teaching staff collaborating to share their expertise and learn from each other.

Sports Day was overseen by our PT but involved each member of staff having a role to play. Organisation at departmental level involved collaborative working.

vision through assemblies and our newsletters.

Our Pupil Council will be responsible for increasing knowledge and understanding amongst the other children by developing and delivering presentations based on our values during assemblies.

Establish display showing photographs and comments of children exhibiting school values in everyday actions.

Our children will become increasingly more aware of the language associated with SHANARRI and will use this to self-assess their own health and wellbeing with increasing confidence and accuracy.

Increased monitoring of impact of changes made across all areas of school life, particularly with reference to promoting equity.

Regular time within our WTA will be made for collegiate professional dialogue.

Professional dialogue and curricular audits have identified that teachers would like to utilise a whole school programme to update our approaches to teaching Music.

2.3Learning, teaching and assessment

Our ethos and culture reflects a commitment to children’s rights and through our committees, Chit Chat groups and information

Increased pupil participation in establishment improvement work to

Satisfactory

Further involvement is needed with committees

gathering, children’s views are sought, valued and acted upon.

We have a bright, modern environment that employs the use of digital technology to support and enrich learning. This is enjoyed by all children from P1-7.

directly effect change and further develop the four capacities.

Our ICT resources are utilised as tools for teaching and to record and enhance learning.

communicating on their progress more regularly through assemblies and our newsletter.

ICT resources will be increasingly used to reduce barriers to learning and to record learning where children have additional support needs.

A progressive programme of learning will be developed to ensure children have the appropriate ICT skills as a basis to thrive in the working environments of the future.

Homework programmes will include opportunities for children to demonstrate their learning using ICT and digital media.

3.1Ensuring wellbeing, equity and inclusion

We have a supportive nurturing ethos which ensures that our school community has a shared understanding of wellbeing.

Our curriculum promotes inclusion and equity at all times and we actively work towards eliminating discrimination.

Close partnership working with parents, professionals and the wider community to ensure barriers to learning are minimised and to facilitate maximum opportunities for personal and academic progression to be made.

All staff are valued and know that their views, opinions and

We are increasingly using the language of GIRFEC within our practice. We include regular CLPL activities within our annual timetable.

We have increased our focus on the UNCRC, established a Rights Respecting Committee.

We are increasing opportunities for children to undertake responsibilities within the school regardless of age and stage.

Personalised planning structures are in place and being modified to further reduce barriers to

Good

Further work will be undertaken to communicate with parents and carers on the principles of GIRFEC. We will also communicate our monthly focus through our newsletter.

We will offer increased opportunities for staff to undertake GIRFEC related training.

Our PEF spend for the coming session will be targeted towards supporting children to increase their ‘readiness to learn’ through training from the Nurturing Schools

concerns are taken seriously. learning for children with additional support needs.

Children’s achievements both in and out with school are celebrated during assemblies. House points, stickers and certificates are awarded to promote children’s self-esteem.

Network.

We will develop and implement a progressive programme of activities to develop our children’s resilience. This will also include a whole school ‘Positive Growth Mindset’ approach.

3.2 Raising attainment and achievement

Across all stages within the school there are aspects of very strong practice in Literacy and Numeracy. This has led to increased attainment, especially at Early Level.

Our learners are further developing their confidence and are increasingly contributing to all aspects of school life. They are developing and applying personal and academic skills enabling them to take increased responsibility for their own learning.

Tracking and monitoring has been adapted to ensure that planning, assessment and evaluation records are based on the benchmarks and are cohesively linked.

Progress made by children identified within our PEF target group has been closely monitored and evaluated.

Detailed data, gathered over time is not yet available for Listening and Talking and Numeracy.

Current attainment data collated on Seemis and from the SNSA results show an increase in attainment in most areas with P4 showing a decline in Maths.

Our quality calendar contains designated time for observed lessons, moderation, jotter monitoring and the implementation of summative assessments.

Our WTA includes designated time for

Good

Our PEF target group is being extended to include those who live within our lowest SIMD (4). This additional group contains a number of children who are not attaining to a level expected for most children of their age and stage.

Increased provision for personalised support will be put in place as a result of the audit and update of approaches to ‘meeting pupil’s needs.’

Further more detailed tracking and monitoring information will be gathered in Listening and Talking and in Numeracy.

An increased range of summative information will be gathered, including pupil responses in Health and Wellbeing.

Termly planning meetings will change to reflect an increased focus on monitoring and tracking.

Children will be

professional dialogue to discuss and debate progress being made in raising attainment.

encouraged to take the lead in setting their own targets, becoming increasing more confident in doing so as they gain experience and as they mature.

Parent and staff feedback, together with evidence gained from SNSA, GL assessments and class work have identified punctuation and grammar development as being a key focus for improvement.

Overall evaluation of establishment’s capacity for continuous improvement

Our shared vision and values support our work for continuous improvement and we are committed to ensuring that children receive the best possible opportunities to succeed in school and in their wider lives. We base our ethos on developing the four capacities for learning and strive to deploy all resources to facilitate this.

We carry our annual curriculum audit to determine areas where the most imminent improvements to teaching and learning are required to be made. In addition to this we also undertake evaluations and audits with parents, our wider staff and the children. In doing so, we adopt an inwards, outwards and forwards approach to self-evaluation.

Audits show that parents and pupils are pleased with the progress that they are making and with the work carried out in school. New initiatives are met with positive responses and our stakeholders are supportive. We do however, need to engage our wider stakeholder group more fully into the process of undertaking improvement based work beyond the initial gathering of ideas and opinions.

We have established a three year audit cycle based on the HGIOS 4 quality indicators and use these to reflect on our school’s position in terms of best practice. To date, this has been completed by teaching staff and now needs to be adapted to enable parents, carers, children and our wider staff to contribute and engage with the process.

The school community has undergone a huge amount of change during the last year and the staff, pupils and parents have all worked hard to ensure continuity and coherence in our approach and in developing a strong ethos. We are continuing to build relationships across the learning community and into the wider community and are now seeking to further strengthen our community links. Our school community is set to increase in size in August 2018 as our anticipated roll rises to 289. We will be welcoming two new members to our teaching staff and will continue to support and develop collegiate approaches to support each other. Teachers and support staff will be encouraged to work together undertaking mentoring and coaching roles to share good practice.

Our staff have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities for leading learning and there is a strong focus on improving learning. Staff have a shared understanding of standards, pedagogy and strategies for raising attainment.

Our records are becoming more focused to detail evaluations supporting personalisation in children’s learning and adaptations to reduce barriers to learning.

The ethos of our school is solution focused in order to effect change for the longer term, enabling our children to reach positive destinations when they leave school through each step in their learning journeys.

We are committed to continuous improvement to ensure equity for all and we seek to work closely with parents / carers and other stakeholders in order to ensure this.

Signed: Dawn Laing

Date: 26/6/18