Head teacher blog 3rd November 2017
I had a good half term break but I am nevertheless pleased to be back at school spending time in classes and looking at books. I have been focussing on ‘Behaviour and Engagement’ in my first round of monitoring visits this academic year and what I have observed was overwhelmingly good. This week I have had the pleasure of sitting in on super sessions in 3M, 2La, 2Lo and RF – having observed in almost every other class before the break. Mr Cooke did the monitoring in 4K and he reported that behaviour and engagement in that class was absolutely spot on. I have also been sampling books in Years 1-5 recently and there is obvious pride in children’s work and evidence of progress already this year. I am also keen to see whether teachers are marking efficiently and effectively, in a manner that is positive in terms of their workload and well-being. I am pleased to report that we do seem to be making progress in this area too. You might notice less lengthy written comments, and more quick ‘text highlighting’, ‘margin marking’, marking codes and tick marking against lesson objectives and success criteria. These photos below are from a particularly impressive set of books from Miss Bradley’s class.
On Wednesday evening we held the first full governors’ meeting of the academic year. It was well-attended and we covered a lot of ground. Quite rightly, the governors at the meeting provided both valuable support and an appropriate level of challenge to myself and the senior leadership team: I left the meeting with lots of things to consider, action and report back on. After governor Bernice Ridley’s ‘retirement’ and Howard Bradley’s conversion to a co-opted governor, we now have a vacancy for another parent governor coming up. Look out for the call for nominations soon; if you would like to discuss what it means to be a governor, please get in touch.
