King Charles C of E (VC) Primary School Western Terrace, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4EP

Telephone: 01326 313607Fax: 01326 312998

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Executive Headteacher: Mrs Claire Fortey

Head of School: Mrs Hannah Stevens

School Development - Autumn update for parents

Friday 4th November 2016

Dear Parents and Carers at King Charles School,

I am writing to you as the new Chair of the Killigrew Partnership School Development Governors’ Committee following our recent School Development Meeting. I am the Diocesan Director for Schools and am very glad to be given this opportunity to work even more closely with the two schools.

The role of the Governors’ School Development Committee is to be accurately informed of the school’s self-evaluation and to measure the impact of actions taken. To carry out our role, we are fully involved in the school’s monitoring plan and have detailed discussions with the Senior Leaders.

The school uses data effectively to ‘tell the story’ of pupil progress and identify areas for improvement and where there are established strengths. The plan tends to refer to the stages when children’s progress is externally measured but the actions for improvement will apply to all year groups.

Last year’s data tells us that the school has some significant strengths:

Reading results for Y6 pupils were above both Cornwall and national averages
A higher percentage of Y6 boys showed they were writing at greater depth than national and more Y6 girls reached the expected standard than national.
The amount of progress that pupils make in the Early Years is steadily improving.

These are the areas for improvement identified by the data.

Children need to make more progress in Mathsand develop their mastery of what has been taught so that more of them meet or exceed the expected standard in Y2 and Y6.
Pupils need to make more progress in learning their letter sounds so that more of them achieve national expectations in phonics in Y1
In the Early Years Foundation Stage ensure that all pupils make good or better progress from their starting points.

In addition to a Standards Plan for improving progress in Reading, Writing and Maths, the School formulates detailed action plans under three headings consistent with Ofsted Inspection Areas:

Quality of Teaching Learning and Assessmentwhich shows how the school is going to raise standards by improving the accuracy of assessment for instance but also looks at classroom practice and teaching in other subject areas. The school is specifically reviewing PE this year and is adopting a new curriculum called Real PE. In addition the school is adopting the Read Write Inc. approach to teaching the reading and writing of phonics.

Personal Development, Behaviour and Welfarewhich covers not just how children behave around the school but their attitudes to learning as well as the whole school community’s understanding of the importance of diversity and equality. In addition the school is continuing to work on improving the school grounds in order to maximise play and learning opportunities; we are all looking forward to seeing the exciting plans the school have developed with the team from Eden beginning to come into fruition!

Leadership and Managementcovers the impact leaders have on all the areas for improvement as well as looking at how the school develops leadership amongst all stakeholders from the Governors to the Pupils and how well it enables parents to be partners in their child’s learning.

As the School Development Committee monitors these actions across the year we will report progress each term.

Parents are a very important part of the way a school develops and I know that all the staff and governors at King Charles welcome and appreciate your support.

Whenever I visit King Charles, there is always a ‘buzz’ of children learning and I look forward to sharing with you the progress we see this year.

Jo E Osborne

Jo Osborne

Chair of The Killigrew Governors’ School Development Committee.