Minute ofa General Meeting of the Dounby Community School Parent Group held on 25 May 2017

Present:AlisonSundholm-DurkinGeraldine FergusonDawn Flett Lorraine Flett Alastair Forsyth (Head Teacher)

Pamela JohnstonMargaret Sinclair (Chair)

In attendance:

Carol McManus,Service Improvement Officer, Department of Education, Orkney Islands Council

Rachael King, Councillor for the West Mainland

1Chair’s welcome and apologies

There were apologies from Caroline Corrigall, Anna Davidson, Steve Durkin, Lorraine Sandison and Stuart West.

The Chair welcomed Carol McManus and Rachael King to the meeting and explained that Carol had come along to help explain to the Group changesto Council policy and changesto nursery education being taken forward by the Scottish Government that would mean the school would be organised rather differently from August 2017.

Carol explained that from August 2017 there would be no teacher in Nursery, which would now be line-managed by a senior officer in the Education Department at the Council. There would be more focus on making nursery a dedicated ‘care’ environment and, although staff would still be trained in ‘learning’, early learning training would be the required background for staff. There were mixed feelings among parents present as to whether this was a positive development. Generally it was felt that, for children at this pivotal age, a greater focus on specialist early-learning knowledge and skills could only be a good thing. Carol confirmed that there was soon to be a consultation on the expansion of Early Learning and Childcare from 600 hoursto 1140 hours.

In addition, from August 2017, all classes from Primary 1 to Primary 6 would be composite classes. Primary 7 would be the only class that would be a single-age cohort class. Carol explained that a composite class is one where children from two or more year groups are taught together, that over 80% of schools in Orkney have one or more composite classes, and that this was a common feature across Scotland. ln small schools (e.g. Shapinsay, Hope) composite and/or multiple composite classes are a standard feature of the school.

Carol reassured the Group that small schools are particularly skilled and adept at providing appropriate teaching and learning opportunities and maximising the benefits of multi-age groupings for their pupils. lndeed, in any class there is commonly a range of ability and maturity, and class teachers at all stages provide a curriculum that meets pupils' learning needs. She said that there was no evidence to support the view that pupils in composite classes perform either better than or worse than pupils in single-age classes. There was, however, some evidence to show that pupils in composite classes gain socially.

The proposed compositing of classes across the school had come about because the Council needed to allocate to the school the teachers to teach only six classes,rather than seven as in previous years. As the school roll is falling, teaching staff numbers had to reflect this due to Council policy. Up until now Orkney had been able to maintain a very generous model compared with other local authorities, but the economic climate was finally making an impact and these measures had now become unavoidable.

The Group wondered how best to engage with parents on these important changes. Alastair and Carol accepted that parents would have concerns, or at the very least questions, and offered to facilitate a meeting between interested parents and a member of staff from the Council to answer any questions. It was agreed that a letter would be emailed out to parents as soon as possible by the headteacher, setting out the changes and enclosing a Council fact sheet on compositing which would hopefully answer some questions. Parents would then be invited to a meeting to discuss any outstanding concerns.

Action:Headteacher/Local authority

Carol McManus then left the room and the meeting continued.

2 aApproval of minute of last meeting (meeting held on 23 February 2017)

The minutes of the meeting held on 23 February 2017were approved as proposed by Dawn Flettand seconded by Lorraine Flett.

2 bMatters arising

Review of Parent Group constitution (update on progress)

It appeared that there had been no comments from parents and carers arising out of the consultation on the new constitution. The new constitution was therefore approved, and it was agreed that the next step would be to elect new Year Group Representatives in time for the next meeting, which would be the AGM in September.A letter would probably be sent out to all parents and carers (i.e. the Parent Forum) asking for two volunteers from each year group (Nursery Year, Pre-school Year, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 4, Primary 5, Primary 6, Primary 7).

ACTION: Headteacher

Play Dounby and Scrap 4 Play/Scrapstore

The Chair confirmed that she had attended the last meeting of the Harray and Sandwick Community Council,where it had been agreed that they would provide aletter of support which would help, in a community development fund application, to provide evidence of need and of community council endorsement of the playpark project.

As regards the Scrapstore project, the Group approved the payment of the final bill of £7,187.00 to GreigHarcus. There had been three training sessions to familiarise playground staff and the headteacher with the policies and procedures around the operation of the scheme, and all that now remained before the official launch was for the teachers to go to see another Scrapstorein action and for the children to have it explained to them at assembly.It was hoped that the launch would take place well before the summer holidays.

ACTION:Headteacher to organise these final stages of the process.

School doors

Assurances had been receivedfrom the Council that the work to the doorswould be carried out during the summer. Rachael King confirmed that she had raised the issue of disability access at Council meetings.

School logo

Working with art teacher EilidhHarcus, the children had produced their ideas for a new design, but no design had jumped out as completely meeting the brief. It was agreed that Alastair could draw up a list of themes that had come out of the drawings and pass these, with the children’s designs, to Carol Peebles or to iDesign who would hopefully be able to come up with an idea for the finished logo.

Proposed ‘Keep Safe Online’ meeting/workshop for parents

Due to staff illness the Community Learning and Development section of the Council would not be in a position to deliver any training until after the summer holidays. There were online training materials available through the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre but these were difficult to download and use from the website.

Rachael King offered to raise the need for training with Councillor Andrew Drever, the Chair of the Council’s Police and Fire Sub-committee.

ACTION: Rachael King

3Correspondence received by Chair

Invoice fromGreigHarcusforScrapstore building works – see 2b above.

4Headteacher's Report for May 2017

Alastair tabled his report (see attached) which gave details of the compositing of classes due to take place in August 2017 and confirmed that as from that date the headteacher would no longerbe the manager for nursery (see discussion earlier in the meeting under Item 1). Alastair confirmed that further details as regards staffing would be made available in due course.

5FODS Report for May 2017

The Chair tabled a report from the Treasurer which showed that, after payment of the invoice from Greig Harcus, there would still be more than £9000 in funding between the two accounts.

6School Improvement Plan 2017–24 – What would Parent Group like to see in the plan?

Group members were happy with the list of proposed priorities in the Headteacher’s Report, although some members did question why literacy could not be on there too. Alastair explained that maths learning in the school was definitely weaker than literacy and that he had identified maths teaching and learning as a priority for the school. Maths is to be a priority for the Education Department next year. It was agreed that further time was needed for parents to fully understand the way the School Improvement Plan worked, and to be reassured that its priorities were appropriate – especially since it was now going to cover a 7-year period. It was agreed that this should be a priority agenda item for the next meeting.

7Standards and Quality Report 2016–2017– What are the successes that Parent Group would like to celebrate?

It was agreed that there should be mention of the increasing involvement of parents in the life of the school e.g. Parent Group, FODS, the playpark development project and the Scrapstore projects, and the new Parent Focus Group initiative being trialled by the headteacher to hear from families who did not regularly attend Parent Group meetings. Also singled out for mention were the highly successful performance of the St Magnus Saga play, and the creative and artistic work of teachers and pupils in connection with the St Magnus 900 celebrations and other events – which had been highly praised by many in the wider community and had led to increased confidence for many children in their own speaking skills and their musical and artistic development.

8Local Authority Review – update on progress

Alastair confirmed that there was nothing significant to report on this front other than to say that he continued to work closely with the Service Improvement Officers at the Council wherever possible to ensure best practice and continued monitoring of progress on improvement areas highlighted in the Council’s review.These areas of continued improvement would be included in the School Improvement Plan for 2017–24.

9Parental involvement: Focus Groups initiative– headteacher to report back

See discussion as part of Item 7 above. Agreed that this should be a standing agenda item for every meeting.

10Self-evaluation using HgioS 4 and HgioELCC – headteacher to report back

Due to lack of time this was not fully discussed, but again it was agreed that this should be a standing agenda item for every meeting.

11Funding for Twinkl, a timesaving online resource for teachers and schools

Theschool was requesting financial support from FODS for the purchase of asubscription to the teachers’ web resource Twinkl, which some teachers were already paying for privately. Thesubscrition would give the school ten accounts. It was agreed that this was a very suitable use of FODS money, and it was also agreed to fund the purchase of two new school tents.

12Agenda items for next meeting

  • AGM matters
  • School Improvement Plan 2017–24
  • Local Authority Review – progress update
  • Self-evaluation (HgioS4, etc.)
/
  • Parent Group constitution
  • Playpark project
  • Focus Groups
  • Keep Safe Online workshop /meeting

13Any other competent business

None

14Date of next meeting
It was agreed that the next meeting would be held on Thursday 21September 2017, again at the new start time of 18.30.