CONTENTSPAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
THE SCHOOL CONTEXT 3
PUPIL ROLL 3
STAFF COMPLEMENT 4
CONSULTATION PROCESS5
VISION,VALUES AND AIMS OF EDUCATION & LEISURE SERVICES6
VISION, VALUES AND AIMS OF THE SCHOOL7
PROMOTING EQUALITY 8
WHAT IS SELF-EVALUATION?9
SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION11
LOCAL AUTHORITY REVIEW19
INSPECTION OF THE NURSERY BY THE CARE INSPECTORATE19
APPENDIX 1 (Review of programme of self-evaluation20
Dounby Community School
Standards and Quality Report
2016 to 2017
Introduction
The purpose of this report is to inform parents, school staff and employees, Orkney Islands Council and the wider community about the work of Dounby Community School through the last academic year. The report sets the work of the school in the context of the local and national agenda for continuous improvement. The report also responds to the assessments of standards within the report by indicating the direction of future improvement work of the school. The detail of such work to improve standards is contained within the sister document, the School Improvement Plan for 2016 – 2019.
The School Context
Dounby Community School was opened in 1976 to serve the parishes of Harray, Sandwick and Birsay, replacing the individual schools which had served those parishes previously. In 2000 the building was extended to meet the increasing demands on the limited community facilities. The building now provides a site for educational and recreational activities throughout the day and evening for the local community.
Pupil Roll
The pupil roll at June 2017:
Two year olds 0
Nursery year19Primary 422Nursery and Pre-School 42
Pre-school year23Primary 516Primary 1 to Primary 7143
Primary 119Primary 620Total, all children185
Primary 2 20Primary 720
Primary 326
Staff Complement
The school staffin the year 2016 - 2017was as follows:
Headteacher:Alastair Forsyth
Principal teacher:Rachel Garson
Class teachers: Nursery and Pre-School, Gwen Coltherd, Louise Forsyth (0.1);Primary 1, Nicola Moar (part-time 0.5), Eileen Sandison (part-time, 0.5); Primary 2Rachel Garson; Primary 3, Emma Shaw (probationary teacher 0.8 contact time), Hazel McKinlay (part-time, 0.2); Primary 4Natalie Rendall, Primary 5Juliane Stokes; Primary 6, Becky Miller, Primary 7, Lesley Harcus (part-time 0.8), Katherine Diaper (0.2).
Support for learning teacher:Hazel McKinlay (part-time, 0.6),
Visiting specialist teacher of PE:Gill Manson
Visiting specialist teacher of Art:Eilidh Harcus
Visiting specialist teacher of Music:Karen Kemp
Early years worker:Phyllis Ballantyne
Early years practitioner:Parnell Inkster, Vicky Rendall
Support for learning assistants:Parnell Inkster, Lorraine Buchan, Mai Banks (part-time, 0.5), Donna Wishart (part-time, 0.1)
Rowena Baker (part-time, 0.4), Clare Flett (part-time, 0.3);
Early intervention assistant:Mai Banks (part-time, 0.5)
Secretaries:Linda Johnston,Donna Wishart (part-time, 0.3)
Auxiliaries:Pam Rendall, Kerry Flett.
Janitor:Donald Foubister
Visiting instrumental instructors:Brian Jones (Brass), Michael Butler(Woodwind) Karen Griffith (Strings)
Dounby Centre staff:Inga Craigie, James Kirkpatrick
Catering staff: Vanessa Kemp, Pam Rendall, Moira Garson, Marga Spence, Jean Copland
Cleaning staff:Lorraine Campbell, Jean Copland, Ean Scott.
Consultation Process
During the development of the School Improvement Plan the staff, parents, Parent Group (parent council) were consulted. Priorities were identified taking account of:-
- National priorities.
- Orkney Islands Council Service Improvement Plan.
- The school’s own priorities identified through self-evaluation using the quality indicators contained within ‘How Good Is Our School?’
- Priorities identified through inspection, including local authority monitoring and inspection by The Care Commission and HMIe.
- Staff priorities identified through review meetings.
Parents are consulted directly using the monthly newsletter, via questionnaires, through the occasional use of focus groups, via informal discussion and throughthe meetings of the Parent Group. Minutes of Parent Group are circulated to all parentsand carers and placed on the school’s website.
During the review of the School Improvement Plan for the development of this Standards and Quality Report all of the above groups may have been consulted again or asked to comment on the draft version of the report.
Vision Values and Aims of the Education, Leisure and HousingService
Vision:This is our community. We want the very best for everyone.
Our core values are:
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Enjoyment
- Being Safe
- Being Healthy
- Being Active
- Being all we can be
Our vision embraces many aspirational and achievable ambitions. We believe that by working together we will support everyone to develop as active, healthy individuals who take responsibility for their own learning and enjoy learning together for a sustainable future in our diverse community. We aim to ensure everyone feels accepted, respected and safe by providing a tolerant, understanding and caring environment. We want everyone to do their very best in all that they do and we celebrate their successes individually and collectively.
The key aim of the Education, Leisure and Housing Service is:
We aim to improve achievement and attainment, health and wellbeing for all pupils, students, service users and members of the community.
In particular we aspire to help people become:
Successful learners, Confident individuals, Responsible citizens, Effective contributors.
Vision, Values and Aims of the School
Our vision was adopted following consultation with staff, pupils and parents in December 2009.
We value happiness, health, justice, effort, questioning, creativity, equality and respect.
These values will be attained through our aims:
- We aim to do the very best for our pupils and strive to understand how they learn and how we can challenge and support their thinking and learning.
- We aspire to help our pupils to become:-Successful learners. Confident individuals. Responsible citizens. Effective contributors.
- We aim to improve the achievement and attainment and the health and wellbeing for all pupils, staff and for the wider school community.
Promoting Equality
The school actively promotes equality through the curriculum via day-to-day classroom teaching, through assemblies and other gatherings and through educational visits, and visitors and events in school. Issues of equality are often addressed as they are raised in the classroom or though events locally and nationally which the children bring to us through their questions and curiosity. Assemblies are used to address issues of equality on a regular basis.
In our school we work hard to achieve equality of opportunity for all our children. The school is mindful of its responsibilities to the relatively high proportion of children within its community who require some or considerable additional support for learning.Children on our roll who have both temporary and permanent disability are supported by both the children and the staff. Very good examples of cooperative work by the children are frequently demonstrated.
During the school year issues like the use of “language” by children has been addressed. The use of words in a discriminatory manner is discouraged by all staff and the reasons for our disapproval of the use of words, like “gay”, in certain contexts is explained to children.
The school entrance system continues to be a problem as both elderly visitors to school and individuals with physical disability can find it challenging to enter the building. The headteacher’s reports and minutes of Parent Group document the continued efforts by the school to rectify this issue.
The school has built on its work with Smiddybrae House to develop leading practice in working across generations. Our Primary 7 children continue to enjoy regular opportunities to work with the residents and the staff of this local care home.
The school recorded no incidents of racial discrimination during the year.
What is self-evaluation?
At the heart of self-evaluation there are three questions:
- How are we doing?
- How do we know?
- What are we going to do now?
Our self-evaluation is guided by the comprehensive quality frameworks and helpful advice contained in the HMIe documents “How good is our school?” (2015)and “How good is our early learning and childcare?” (April 2016).
The quality indicators are arranged threethemes which Education Scotlandhas adopted for evaluation purposes.
- Leadership and management
- Learning provision
- Successes and achievements.
Self-evaluation should:
- Ensure educational outcomes for all learners are improving.
- Address the impact of inequality on wellbeing, learning and achievement.
- Consistently deliver high quality learning experiences.
- Embed progression in skills for learning, life and work.
- Further strengthen school leadership at all levels.
- Improve the quality and impact of career-long professional learning.
- Extend and deepen partnerships to improve the outcomes for all learners.
- Increase learning for sustainability.
- Tackle unnecessary bureaucracy.
Evaluations of how the school is doing are made using a six-point scale.
Excellentoutstanding or sector leading.Satisfactorystrengths just outweigh weaknesses.
Very goodmajor strengths.Weakimportant weaknesses.
Goodimportant strengths with areas for improvement.Unsatisfactorymajor weaknesses.
Self-evaluation of the school against the Quality Indicators in How Good is Our School? 4
1.3 Leadership of Change: Good.
The school and staff adapt quickly and effectively to changes in priority and initiatives from the Scottish Government and the local authority. The school is innovative and leading in using the local environment and local opportunities for enhancing learning.
2.3 Learning, Teaching and Assessment: Good.
There is strong teaching and good learning across the school but there are improvements still to be made. Assessment is generally good but moderation continues to require further development.
3.2 Raising Attainment and Achievement: Good.
Attainment is improving but there are still areas of learning, for example in maths and reading, where a number of children do not make sufficient progress.
3.1 Ensuring Wellbeing, Equality and Inclusion: Good.
This part of our work may be very good. There are significant strengths, in managing children with behavioural difficulties and in the general ethos and care demonstrated by the staff of the school. Evaluated as good because there are areas for improvement.
School priority 1: reading (raising attainment and rate of progress).National Improvement Framework priority:
Improvement in attainment in literacy. / HGIOS?4 Quality Indicators
3.2 Raising attainment and achievement.
Progress and impact: Two initiatives were put in place to further address the standards of literacy in school and to assure children’s continued progress, particularly with the learning of reading. Project X was purchase from OUP at a cost of £4,000 and IDLCloud was purchased from Ascentis at a cost of £400 in the first year and £100 for each subsequent year. Reading is monitored closely in school, use of PIPS data (P1, P3, P5 and P7) and this year of INCAs with Primary 6 provides nationally comparable data. Additionally IDLCloud requires some testing of reading and spelling to take place in order to set the software up for each child. This testing was repeated after six months.
The school took part in an initiative from the local authority, developing literacy learning through play-based learning. One teacher has attended the training.
Staff were supported with the introduction of Project X by peer working, but the resource is there to help provide guidance for guided reading. IDL Cloud was actively supported by the headteacher and there is ongoing work to support teachers with the understanding of the data it provides.
Outcomes as measured by PIPS indicate that Primary 7 performance with reading was below local and national means in both attainment and progress whilst Primary 5 showed attainment and progress as significantly above national means. Standards of reading in Primary 4 at the end of the year were very good with 95% of children achieving 1st Level. Progress in learning to read in Primary 1 measured by PIPS showed good progress.
Success criteria. We will know we have succeeded when:
- 85% of children make at least expected progress with the learning of reading, a significant proportion, 30%, make good progress. Achieved in some classes, but not all.
- 90% of children with PIPS reading scores of 60 or greater from Primary 3 make good progress with the learning of reading, year on year, as they go through school. Partially achieved.
- 99.5% of children leave Primary 7 as functional readers, able to access the curriculum in Senior 1. Not achieved.
- 85% of children make the expected progress, or better, with reading each year. Achieved in some classes, but not all.
- Reading standards in the school are significantly better than the Scottish average across the whole school. Achieved in some classes, but not all.
- Reading teaching is 100% compatible with Curriculum for Excellence. Achieved.
- 90% of children enjoy the learning of reading throughout the school. Achieved.
School priority 1: reading (raising attainment and rate of progress) (continued).
National Improvement Framework priority:
Improvement in attainment in literacy. / HGIOS?4 Quality Indicators
3.2 Raising attainment and achievement.
Next steps: Using the Pupil Equity Fund the school has developed a project for a consultant to work alongside individual teachers to raise the quality of the teaching of reading, this is focussed at 2nd Level. A second teacher will join the early literacy project.
School priority 2: support for learning
National Improvement Framework priority:
Improvement in attainment in literacy. / HGIOS?4 Quality Indicators
3.1 Ensuring well-being, equality and inclusion.
3.2 Raising attainment and achievement.
Progress and impact: Administrative improvements were made in order to improve the quality of transition at the end of each school year. Class teachers were given more information with regard to their responsibilities managing targets and Individualised Education Plans. The school improved its ability to identify needs and to track children’s progress. The school introduced IDL Cloud (see above) to address dyslexia across the 2nd Level particularly, we are using this as a universal intervention.
Review of success criteria. We will know we will have succeeded when:
- All children with identified needs have the interventions in place which will support their learning and their health and well-being, IEPs and Child’s Plans are in place for those children on Stages 3 and Stage 4 of Staged Intervention respectively. Partially achieved.
- Every class has an up-to-date support for learning file maintained by the class teacher, this file includes an up-to-date intervention overview sheet. Achieved.
- Every class teacher meets the support for learning teacher twice a year, in this meeting suitable targets and interventions are discussed, the intervention spread sheet is agreed, the class support for learning file is checked. Partially achieved, one meeting for all but not two for everyone.
- All children are involved in the target setting process and have the opportunity to agree their own targets. Achieved.
- 100% of children transition successfully from Nursery to Primary 1 and from Primary 7 to Senior 1. Achieved, to the best of our knowledge at this time. Nursery to Primary 1 transition, achieved.
- 90% of pupils with identified needs make expected progress within Curriculum for Excellence Levels in aspects of the curriculum upon which their need do not impact. Partially achieved.
- 65% of pupils with identified needs make expected progress within Curriculum for Excellence Levels, where their identified need is known to impact on progress. Partially achieved.
- 85% of pupils make at least expected and satisfactory progress with learning to read. Partially achieved.
- All children are happy learners. Partially achieved.
School priority 3: professional standards
National Improvement Framework priority:
Improvement in attainment. / HGIOS?4 Quality Indicators
1.1 Self-evaluation for self-improvement.
2.3 Learning, teaching and assessment.
3.1 Improving wellbeing, equality and inclusion.
Progress and impact: There was some work carried out with regard to self-evaluation which is well established with regard to self-review, however, taking responsibility for whole school self-evaluation by all teachers continues to require further development.
Success criteria. We will know we will have succeeded when all teachers working in the school:
- Always demonstrate professional integrity, trust and respect, and commitment. Achieved.
- Have secure knowledge and understanding of the methods and underlying theories for effective teaching of literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, and effectively select the most appropriate methods to meet all learners’ needs following the guidance given by school procedures. Achieved.
- Respect the rights of all learners as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and particularly their entitlement to be included in decisions regarding their learning experiences and have all aspects of their well-being developed and supported. Achieved.
- Are developing deep, critically informed knowledge and understanding to enhance their skills and abilities in relation to the key areas of career-long professional learning particularly in respect of pedagogy, learning and subject knowledge, and curriculum and assessment. Yes, developing.
- Know how to work with the local and global community to develop realistic and coherent interdisciplinary contexts for learning, particularly in relation to sustainability. Developing, on-going learning and development.
- Know how to promote and support the cognitive, emotional, social and physical wellbeing of all learners, and demonstrate a commitment to raising all learners’ expectations of themselves. Achieved. Low arousal techniques, understanding and application of growth mindset research, good P.E. teaching and application of the 2 hours of physical activity, these are some of our approaches to achieving this aim.
- Know and understand how to apply the principles of assessment, recording and reporting as an integral part of the teaching process. This area continues to be developed.
- Know how to use both formative and summative assessment information in reviewing progress, in improving teaching and learning, for identifying next steps and to report to parents and carers, and children in a clear, informed and sensitive manner. Achieved.
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