1 About our school / centre / Gowanbank Primary is situated in the Pollok area on the south side of Glasgow.
Ourschool was built in 1954 and has extensive grounds around the building which contain an Eco garden, where the children are gaining experience of outdoor learning.
The school is part of the Hillpark Learning Community.
In June 2013 the school roll was 120 with there being six classes and a nurture
class.
Our staff comprises of a Head Teacher, a Depute Head Teacher ( four days per week), a principal teacher (job share for half of each week) and five class teachers, plus a nurture teacher
In addition we have five Pupil Support Assistants, who work alongside the teachersto enhance the work of the classrooms and support children in the learning.
Our school has a Parent Council, which works closely with and actively
supports the work of the school. Our, vision, values and aims were formed in consultation with the Parent Council, who in turn consulted the wider
parent/carer body.
Our school aims were revised in May 2012 to reflect the development work we were undertaking and revisited in May 2013, to include a specific aim related to health and wellbeing. We continue to pursue links with the local and widercommunity and the Parent Council have greatly assisted us in this.
We regularly communicate with all parents and carers, through monthly newsletters.
Parents/carers are regularly invited to attend school events where the children can showcase their school achievements and over the last school session parental/carer attendance at these events has greatly increased.
We actively promote the inclusion of outside agencies such as, the Community
Safety team in the school and regularly involve the children in external visits
related to their work in school to enhance theexperiences of the children.
2 Our vision, values and aims / Our Vision
In Gowanbank Primary School we will provide a safe and healthy learning environment, where all pupils are encouraged to be actively involved in their learning. Pupils will be supported to aim high and success will be celebrated.
Our Values
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Positive Attitudes
- Equality and Fairness
- Honesty
- Nurturing
- Provide a learning environment that is nurturing, stimulating and challenging for all
- Actively promote health and wellbeing through all areas of school life.
- Provide opportunities for all learners to be actively involved in their learning and reach their full potential
- Continue to develop strong partnerships with families and the local community to benefit children’s learning
- Maintain an ethos of high expectation and pride in the school
3A
Our successes
and
achievements / What outcomes have we achieved?
Improvements in performance (Quality indicator 1.1)
The overall quality of improvements in performance is good
Most children are learning and achieving well. Most children have made good progress in their learning. Staff have raised their expectations of the childrenand this has resulted in an increased pace of learning for children. Children are now involved in setting targets for their learning and this has assisted in supporting the children on what they need to do to improve.
The whole school has focussed on handwriting skills and this has resulted in the children writing more legibly and neater.These skills have also been evidenced in other curricular areas.
In Primary 7 most children can write descriptively and make good use of adverbs and adjectives to enhance their writing. In reading most children are reading with fluency and expression and developing their reading skills across the curriculum.Good use has been made of texts related to interdisciplinary topics to challenge the children in reading from a variety of genre, which has proved effective in enhancing their reading skills
In mathematics the children are confidently interpreting information and using this to draw conclusions and solve problems.
In Primary 4 children are displaying an increased confidence in writing and are using punctuation accurately.
They use research skills effectively to find out information, for example in their recent Egyptians topic and in mathematics most children can find the perimeter of simple sided solid shapes
In Primary 1 almost all children are able to write a sentence and a few children are able to produce extended pieces of writing. Almost all are confidently using their phonics skills to decode and read new and unfamiliar words.
In mathematics almost all children are able to confidently count to 20 and add to 10.
Opportunities for children to develop their health & wellbeing, literacy and numeracy skills through their interdisciplinary topics have increased as have opportunities for children to extend and apply learned skills in other contexts, particularly through the use of focus weeks in the school e.g. Eco/ Fairtrade week.
The school has worked within and across the learning community to share standards and moderate children’s progress and whilst progress has been made, this requires further development and will be continued again next session.
A tracking system has been introduced to map children’s progress through literacy and numeracy and this has assisted in ensuring that the children are being provided with opportunities to develop the relevant, experiences, outcomes and skills and in addition apply them in new and unfamiliar contexts.
The school attendance for last session was 92.23%, which is a 2% improvement on last session, but still requires further improvement. We continue to be very pro active in promoting strategies to improve attendance,which includes a recently revamped reward system to encourage children’s attendance and reduce late coming.
However this remains an area of concern for the school and requires continued attention.
The text messaging service to parents/carers continues to be used and parents are now responding more positively to this.
The school very successfully celebrates wider achievement and promotes this through success assemblies where children are encouraged to share their achievement with the whole school and these are displayed on the “outside achievement wall”. The school has achieved their Silver ECO Award.
Staff show they value the children through their positive interaction with them,their encouraging feedback to them and the attractive displays within classrooms and around the school.
The school improvement plan continues to have a positive impact on school improvements,particularly in the areas of team work, nurture and learning and teaching.
How well do we meet the needs of our school/centre community?
How well do we meet the needs of our school/centre community?
Learners’ experiences (Quality indicator 2.1)
The overall quality of learners’ experiences is good.
Almost all learners are motivated, engaged and participate effectively in their learning.
Children in almost all classes are becoming increasingly more involved in their own learning and are clear about the steps they need to take to improve. Learning intentions and success criteria are used effectively in all lessons.
Childrenreceiving constructive feedback based on the learning intentions and success criteria, is now well embedded in school practice.
Across the school, most children are regularly learning effectively in groups and pairs and active learning strategies are now embedded in classroom practice.
The school has been using PLPs with children setting their own targets, but we have recently revised these, to encourageincreased partnership with home and these will be launched in September 2013. The new format will show the learning journey each child takes from week to week and across the child’s primary school career.
Children demonstrate the skills of responsible citizens through taking on a range of roles such as serving on the eco group or the pupil council, acting as housecaptains, reading and playground buddies or as junior road safety officers.
The school has widened children’s learning experiences through a range of planned events, for example Literacy week and external visits,withthe number of planned educational excursions having increased. This session the whole school was able to work in partnership with Glasgow Museums Resource Centre to enhance children’s skills in art, which produced some very effective results.
The school and children have also benefitted from funding from the NHS to extend and improve our Eco garden and as a result of this the children were able to work with Greenspace to design our new layout and have the first hand experience of being involved in its creation. The school has also been fortunate enough to secure the services of a professional gardener, who will continue to work with the children next session.
Most of the P.6 and P.7 children enjoyed a residential weekend at Blairvadach Outdoor centre in September 2012, where they learned a number of outdoor and team building skills.
A school Christmas choir successfully performed at Silverburn Shopping Centre and raised funds to support a children’s charity at Yorkhill hospital.
Pupils are involved in a wide variety of sports coaching and events.
The children enjoyed in school coaching in netball, badminton, football, cricket and rugby.
Out of school events included regular football matches against other schools and participation in the south west athletics and badminton championships.
A variety of lunch time e.g. school choir, and after school clubs e.g. badminton, football were arranged.
We work very closely with our Active Schools Co-ordinator and welcome any opportunity to be involved in any events or coaching opportunities.
We school recently performed a very successful school pantomime, which involved every child in the school. This was a first for Gowanbank and the children certainly displayed their development in the four capacities – confident individuals, successful learners, effective contributors, responsible citizens.
The children are proud of their school and actively involve themselves in our ethos of achievement and celebration.
The children continue to report that they feel safe at school and enjoy being at school and know who they would go to if they had a problem.
3B The work and life of our school / centre / How good is the education we provide?
The Curriculum (Quality indicator 5.1)
The overall quality of the curriculum is good
The school provides a broad, balanced and varied curriculum in line with Curriculum for Excellence.
This session, we have reviewed the curriculum and ensured that a coherent approach is taken to planning learning experiences. Staff have revisited the seven design principles at collegiate sessions and engaged in discussions about coherence and progressive experiences for children.
The curriculum is becoming more innovative and relevant in almost all classrooms.
The staff are planning using the experiences and outcomes and plan learning intentions, success criteria skills and assessment opportunitiesat the same time This session the staff have began planning co-operatively across the stages of the school and this approach has proved successful, and will be further developed next session. We will continue tokeep our approach to planning under review to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our children and fulfilling the principles of the Curriculum for Excellence.
We will also continue to consider how best to plan for breadth, depth and application of learning.
Interdisciplinary learning is now embedded in school practice and has proved to be more effective through staff reducing the number of experiences and outcomes involved in a topic and providing increased opportunities for the application of skills in other areas.
The school has taken part in moderation activities with schools within the learning community. This has proved effective in allowing staff to compare and agree standards. There is a learning community plan in place for next session to continue to share the standard and moderate work from all stages.
French isbeing taught at the P.5- P.7 stages as we now have a member of staff trained in French.
All children have 2 hours of PE and in addition our P.7 pupils have two terms of swimming lessons per year and ICT is used to enhance learning and teaching in all classrooms, with Smartboards being a regular feature of the teaching approach.
Transition arrangements from early years to primary are effective and from primary to secondary are very effective with an enhanced transition programme available to the most vulnerable children.
Representatives from each primary school and early years establishments formed a working group which devised a transition document which is now in use across the learning community. This will ensure that we can plan effectively for continuity for the new P.1 children.
A similar group was established this session for the P.7 teachers and secondary colleagues and again a transition document was created.
Staff from Hillpark secondary and associated primary schools met in May this year to moderate standards and agree the classification for S1 next session.
Transitions will continue to feature in our learning community improvement plan.
Meeting learning needs (Quality indicator 5.3)
The overall quality of meeting learning needs is good.
There is a very caring ethos within the school. Children’s social and emotional needs are quickly identified and appropriate support put in place.
In most classes, tasks activities and resources meet the needs of most learners.
In almost all classes there is appropriate pace and challenge to support children’s learning. In almost all classes there is appropriate differentiation.
There are effective procedures in place to identify children with additional support needs based on a learning community policy.In addition we have developedour own guidance statement this session.
Children with additional support plans have their needs reviewed formally on an annual basis, with parents involved in this process. Interim reviews are held each term and parents are invited to be part of these meetings.
Teaching staff set targets in collaboration with the children and parents.
Support staff provide very good support within the class for children who require additional help and their deployment is regularly reviewed. This session two members of our support staff have also provided individualised support to children who have been unable to maintain full time classroom integration and this has proved successful in helping these children build positive relationships and progress their learning.
The DHT is the ASN co-ordinator and has worked very hard to manage the planning and reviews for children with additional support needs. She has provided very effective training for staff to enable them to complete ASPs and to ensure they are aware of their roles and responsibilities within the ASN Act. Teaching staff now assume responsibility for setting targets and conduct review meetings with parents. Most staff have undertaken external training in specific topics to help assist the management of pupils with specific identified needs, e.g. autistic spectrum.
The school and in particular the ASN coordinator has developed very good relationships with outside agencies such as social work, educational psychologist, speech and language therapy and Greenview outreach services to support children.
The school has a high level of social work involvement and works effectively with them to support the most vulnerable children.
The school has a nurture class.The appointment of a new nurture teacher and her fresh methodology has had a major positive impact on the approaches within Daisy Cottage and across the whole school.
A number of vulnerable children have made impressive progress within the nurture class and have been successfully reintegrated into their mainstream classroom setting.
The nurture teacher has also successfully supported children at the upper stages of the school and played a major role in extending the nurturing principles across the school in all aspects of school life.
Good account is being taken of the SHANARRI indicators and each class has a dedicated area within the school where each individual child’s progress in the principles of SHANNARIare recorded. Both the nurturing approach and the progress towards the SHANNARI agenda has resulted in positive changes and will be further developed next session.
Improvement through self-evaluation (Quality indicator 5.9)
The overall quality of improvement through self-evaluation is good
Self evaluation at all levels is now embedded in school practice.
Staff talk positively about the impact of staff development and clearly recognise the impact that CPD activities have on theschool improvement plan and improving the learning and teaching.