Darnley Primary School and Visual Impairment Unit

1 / About our school/nursery
Our school roll for session 312. The children were allocated to 12 classes, four of these classes being composite classes. The total staffing this session was 15.3. This includes the Head Teacher, the Deputy Head Teacher, two Principal Teachers, thirteen class teachers and six Support for Learning Workers. Miss McGarrity delivered various curricular areas to each class once per week. Mrs Colrain and Ms Allan provided French for children from P5-P7.
Our Visual Impairment Unit has a role of 8 children this session with the staffing for the Unit being one Principal Teacher, two teachers of the visually impaired and two Support for Learning Workers.
You will notice that the school refurbishment was completed this session and we are very proud of how our school looks. We have been working on the outside of the school too. We have been successful in securing finding from a variety of sources to make improvements to our schools grounds. We now have a Wildlife Meadow, a Beastie Manor and every class in the school has planted and harvested some kind of fruit or vegetable. This will continue next session as we have
been awarded an Education Scotland Food for Thought grant which will enable us to develop these areas further and allow the children to prepare and cook more of our own produce.
School Vision and Values
At Darnley Primary and Visual Impairment Unit we strive to provide a happy, caring environment that nurture and educates all or children to their full potential. We achieve this by ensuring high quality learning and teaching and by working in partnership with parents/carers and the wider community, further developing positive attitudes to diversity and inclusion.
Our values are; care and nurture, educate, trust, respect, include, are happy, are honest., community
We will continue to support your child in the coming year to develop confidence and resilience to achieve their full potential now and in the future.
2 / Our achievements this year.
This year we worked on three areas for improvement. Children parents and staff worked together to achieve:
  • We continued to raise attainment and achievement through sharing good practice in assessment, moderation and sharing the standard in Literacy
  • We continued to support and promote wellbeing for all through the use of the wellbeing indicators, My World Triangle in planning and supporting some children.
  • We began to help identify, plan and implement experiences which would strengthen all aspects of the STEM curriculum.
Here are some of our achievements from this year:
  • We won the Scottish Power Foundation Library Energiser competition.The school received a £2,000 library makeover and a mini book festival, with an author visit.
  • Glasgow givals of UDO Dance Championship
  • School visit for Malawi delegation to showcase good practice relating to inclusion within the school
  • We have ben awarded around £9,000 for improvemnets to our outdoor spaces from GHA, Greggs and Education Scotland. This work has been led by chidlren working with our partner Sowing Seeds and will continue next session.
  • The Rota Kids won the Rotary Club Planet Earth Trophy
  • The Football Team won The Willie Meachin Trophy

3 / How well do children learn and achieve? (1.1, 2.1)
We provide a positive, inclusive, well resourced learning environment where all children feel safe and secure. All our children are well behaved, hard working and enthusiastic about their work.
All children benefit from a variety of learning experiences that develop them as successful learners, responsible citizens, effective contributors and confident individuals, provided through Enterprise, Healthy Living, Citizenship and ECO programmes.
The buddy system in place for P1 allows all P7 children to contribute as responsible citizens. Some children have the opportunity to participate in projects involving the wider community, for example fundraising for Cancer Research, Local food banks, Rota-kids club and the Pro Community Cup
All children are regularly given opportunities to express their views, for example, the Learning Council asked children about their attitudes to Reading, all children were asked to give their feedback about the House System and children were consulted on the new library space. The STEM Kids contributed to the organisation of our STEM week. The Healthy Heroes came up with new stations for our potted sports based on paralympian themes. All children have the opportunity to contribute to the ethos and life of the school by being voted on to a number of committees. These are: Learning Council,Healthy Hereos, ECO, STEM Kids and STARS. The work of these groups allows all the children to contribute to issues, not only locally, but also in the wider community.
Our House System has given leadership opportunities to our P6 and P7 children in the form of House Captains, Vice Captains and Team Leaders. The children comment positively in these experiences. P6 children (Playground Buddies) have been trained in restorative practices and playground game and man the Buddy Bench at lunchtimes – a place where children can go if they want an organised game or are having difficulties with their friendships.
All children with a visual impairment have, in addition to whole school achievements, the opportunity to experience a range of specifically tailored activities.They all participate in the city wide, monthly sporting events.
We have consistently raised attainment for all our children. Almost all children make very good progress in Maths and Numeracy and English and Literacy. A targeted approach for support in the early years has seen a positive impact on the attainment of children in Primary 1 particularoly in reading.
All children are actively involved in their learning. Through the use of learning intentions and success criteria, quality feedback, self and peer assessment and personal target setting all children are aware of their progress and areas for improvement. Almost all teachers provide clear and constructive feedback that helps children know how well they are doing and enables them to set their own targets.
As part of our STEM focus children have had experience of a wide range of different contexts encompassing these curricular areas taking the form of mini challenges , one off day events and IDL experiences. Awareness of STEM subjects and careers has been raised with both children and their families and this will be further developed next session.
Attainment Data
Percentage of children achieving the level
Numeracy / Reading / Writing / Listening and Talking
P1
Early Level / 85 / 95 / 87 / 87
P4
First Level / 79 / 79 / 76 / 94
P7
Second Level / 80 / 78 / 75 / 93
4 / How well do we support children in their learning and development? (5.1, 5.3)
Our curriculum provides all the children with a broad general education based on shared values. Through our school improvement planning process all staff have been involved in developing a shared vision and rationale for the curriculum.
When planning or adapting courses and programmes all teaching staff, through professional dialogue, reflect on both, the principles of curriculum design and the impact that curricular change has on learning and teaching and the progress of the children. Our curriculum maps help teachers to plan pathways through the experiences and outcomes ensuring a progressive, skills based curriculum.
All teachers share their skills working in, and in some cases leading, teams to plan and develop aspects of the curriculum, for example, staff regularly met to plan learning and assessments. All teaching staff have participated in professional development activity at Learning Community level. This has enabled all teachers to have a clearer understanding of the principles of assessment and the picture of achieving the level at each of the Curriculum for Excellence levels.
Children and teachers planned a block of learning this year based on the children’s choices and interests where the children led the direction of the learning. Enterprise and Global Citizenship assist children to make connections in their learning.
To effectively meet the needs of all children, including those with additional support needs, curricular adaptations are in place. All tasks, activities and resources are very well matched to meet the needs of all our children.
There is a robust staged intervention process in place including procedures for referral and assessment. These procedures ensure all children experiencing difficulty have their needs identified and met promptly. All children with significant needs have an appropriate and effective Wellbeing Assessment Plan/Additional Support Plan in place. The Additional Support Needs Coordinator and the teacher set realistic, achievable targets for the child. These targets are shared with the child and his/her parents or carers.
We make very effective use of our Support for Learning Workers (SfLWs). Their timetables reflect the support they offer to individual children. All SfLWs support children in class, in exercise programmes, speech and language groups and friendship groups, as well as supporting children in the playground. This helps address the barriers these children have to learning. They receive regular and appropriate training to help them provide appropriate kinds of support for example this year they were part of the training to help support children for whom English is an additional language.
The inclusion of the visually impaired children into the school is an example of innovative practice. The school is visited regularly by staff from establishments within Glasgow and across the United Kingdom. The needs of children with a visual impairment are very well met by the use of an appropriate range of tasks, activities and resources. They are effectively supported to access the mainstream curriculum by a range of specialist resources for example, Braille, kindles, classroom camera, enlarged text and audio books. Most of the resources are available for use at home to ensure that learning needs are continually supported in both situations. Clear written guidelines for staff working with children with visual impairment help ensure that their needs are appropriately met.
All teaching staff, at points of transition, work closely with Pre5 and S1 to ensure learners’ progress is not impacted at these times. There is an extended transition programme for vulnerable children and children at risk of missing out. This ensures all vulnerable children maximise their progress at times of transition.
5 / How well do we improve our work? (5.9, 9.4)
The school has a very good understanding of our areas of strength and our areas for development. Our approach to self-evaluation is very effective because it focuses on learning and teaching and we gather evidence from a wide range of sources for example; visiting classrooms, looking at children’s work and talking to children about their experience as a learner in our school.
Management and staff regularly review and the progress and impact of the school improvement plan helping us clarify the next step. This year children were asked to comment upon what they liked about school and what they would change. This has given some interesting feedback about after school clubs, school trips and play times. We look to develop skills and competencies of all staff by providing a range of leadership opportunities such as leading school improvement activities, ordering resources to support speech and language groups or developing a part of the curriculum.
6 / Here is what we plan to improve next year.
Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge: to identify processes, classroom practices and organisations that avoid the creation of attainment gaps with a focus on Reading
To extend our support to our children and parents and increase parental engagement to raise attainment with a particular focus on Reading
Implement experiences which would embed and strengthen all aspects of the STEM curriculum and implement measurable assessment methods for STEM skills

For more information about this report please contact:

Emma Nicholson

Head Teacher

Darnley Primary and Visual Impairment Unit

Email :

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