Headteacher blog 5th July 2024

It’s the busiest time of the year: reading, checking and commenting on 450 end-of-year reports. We are also pulling together all of the end-of-year assessments and await our statutory Y6 SATs results next week. The vast majority of children are progressing very well but we have a very wide spread: above average numbers of children reaching higher standards alongside a number of children barely, or not, able to access formal age-related assessments. As an inclusive school, we welcome this but it is a challenge for teachers and support staff every day. For some of our children, ‘small steps’ progress must be identified and celebrated as significant milestones.

We have been doing lots of recruitment over the last couple of weeks: part-time teachers last week and teaching assistants this week. I have been delighted with the quality of candidates and the recruitments that we have made. Candidates often struggle with questions that challenge them around impact and ‘how do you know you are good/effective?’ It is important to combine hard data around pupil progress academically – either against national curriculum expectations or ‘smaller steps’ assessments for children with SEND – and other ‘softer’ information and feedback such as patterns of attendance, happiness, behaviour and pastoral records, verbal or written feedback from stakeholders and informal observations. We have to do a great job: to fail to do so would let down our children, would be a waste of public money and a waste of our working life.

Year 2 at Skelton Grange this week