Governors’ Report to ParentsOctober 2017

A Fantastic Start Back – Chairs Report

It was great to see all of the children return to school, full of enthusiasm after their summer break. We would like to welcome all of the new children coming up from Infant school. All of the children in school have settled in brilliantly into their new classes and the teachers have enjoyed getting to know them.

We are pleased to report that Porchester has enjoyed another successful year and continues to go from strength to strength. This report outlines our successes and achievements and we hope that you will take the time to read the report and congratulate your children on their hard work. We continue to build on our strong community links and help develop our children to becoming good citizens. Whenever Governors visit the school, we are always struck by the exemplary behaviour of the pupils, towards staff, visitors and towards each other

Unlocking the talent and realising the potential of every child in our school is our ultimate aim. All of the staff here recognise children as unique individuals with specific talents and needs and they work tirelessly to provide rich learning opportunities through a positive school experience. You will find

our classrooms to be places which are hives of activity, full of learning and enquiry.

The happiness and success of every child is central to our schools core purpose. Promoting high levels of achievement in all aspects of a child's development is important to us and reflected in all we do.

We believe that we are extremely fortunate at Porchester to have created such a positive and vibrant environment in which our children can learn. We would like to thank the staff and the

Head Teacher for their on-going dedication and commitment which makes Porchester Junior School the school that it is today - successful, happy and continually improving.

Julie Barnard, Chair of Governors

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Off to a Flying Start

We are thrilled to announce that in July 2017, Porchester Junior School became an academy school when we joined the Flying High Trust. The multi academy trust offers us a great opportunity to work and learn together with other schools to develop and share the very best practice, to provide exciting and innovative development and leadership opportunities for staff and to challenge each other to provide the highest quality teaching and learning experiences for children. The

Trust ethos is grounded in school improvement and each academy will seek to improve on its previous best and are enabled to improve to become outstanding.

The Flying High Academy trust aims to:

develop school communities where every individual can flourish and maximise their potential, and where no target is unreachable;

provide an exciting, inspirational curriculum, grounded in literacy and mathematics and which strongly reflects 21st century technologies;

raise attainment and achievement by empowering children, parents and the local community.

Together, we will strive to achieve excellence and for our schools to be the best in the Universe.

Values Based Education

Porchester Junior School is a Values based school, developing the whole child to ensure each child fulfils their potential and feels ready to take on the world.

Our current value is Perseverance.

What does perseverance look like? People who show perseverance: Keep going. Don’t give up. Have a go even if the task seems impossible. Have a positive attitude.

People who show perseverance realise: Realise that you may not succeed at first but if you keep trying you will get there in the end. Have a positive attitude which helps them to succeed Know that not giving up helps to feel proud of your achievements and yourself. Understand that things that seem impossible at first get easier when you keep going.

People show perseverance by: Keep going and not giving up. Have a go at a task even if it is hard. Have a positive attitude. Believe in themselves.

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In our learning at Porchester we always reach for the stars and as a result we will persevere until we get there. Supporting and encouraging our children to develop patience and perseverance in the weeks following and beyond will support them as they become life-long learners.

OFSTED Inspection

We were visited by OFSTED in October 2016 and we are extremely pleased to have received such a positive report from the Inspector. As always there is some improvement to be made and we are now working hard to address the recommendations that were outlined in the report.

Notable quotations from the report include:

“The pupils are extremely well behaved. They are considerate, well mannered and welcoming to visitors. Pupils talk confidently, listen to, and value, each other’s ideas. Children like being pupils at your school”.

“The school is an extremely bright and welcoming place. Displays are informative, well maintained and respected. In each of the classes I visited, behaviour was characterised by positive attitudes and respectful relationships. The pupils I spoke with were articulate, confident and polite. They are very proud of their school and clearly enjoy and appreciate the provision you and your staff make for them”.

“Pupils experience a broad and balanced curriculum that engages them and contributes

to their enjoyment of learning. They develop appropriate skills across a range of different subjects. When I asked pupils which subjects were their favourites, all subjects were mentioned”.

We were awarded Ofsted Good, and we are immensely proud of our children, staff and whole school community.

The Governing Body

At Porchester Junior School leaders have children’s safety, welfare and learning at the forefront of all decision-making. Each member of staff and each governor has an area of responsibility and accountability for at least one aspect of the school’s life, working as a strong team to improve and raise standards. Pupil voice, through the School Parliament and parent consultation through regular meetings and surveys, mean that the whole school community is part of the consultation and decision making process.

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Name Type of Governor Term of Office MonitoringJohn Hatton Co-opted Governor 30.11.2018 Child protection and

safeguarding/leadership and management

Nigel Best Co-opted Governor 30.11.2018 Teaching and Learning / Behaviour and attendance /appraisal

Avril Lane Parent Governor 11.05.2020 Governors Training, Health and Safety, appraisal, personal development and wellbeing

Julie Barnard Parent Governor, Chair of Governors

07.11.2019 Safer Recruitment/Special educational needs/looked after children, High Achieving children, complaints

Simon Widdowson Staff Governor 31.08.2019Graham Cullen Head Teacher OngoingHelen Foster Co-opted Governor,

Deputy Head Teacher12.10.2021

Vacant Co-opted Governor

The Headteacher and her Senior Leadership Team work with all aspects of the school community to identify priorities, plan and action developments for these and to closely monitor impact and outcomes. The Governing Body monitors school improvement priorities through regular visits to the school for meetings and observations; it also spends time on scrutiny of documentation and ensures that the Headteacher and staff are regularly and rigorously appraised. The full Governing Body meets at least once a term, usually more frequently as we have sub-committees which meet regularly to discuss specific issues. In all, the ‘Team’ ethos at our school is key to the successful learning of all our children.

Mrs Sharon Astill and Ms Jodi Bush have recently retired from the governing body and we thank them both for their time and positive contributions for many years.

This means that we are currently recruiting for a new governor. If you feel you have spare time, enthusiasm and skills to offer us, please get in touch for an informal chat about the role and what is involved.

SATS Results

Our SATS results for the last year were in line with our expected outcomes for the specific group of children. You will see that we exceeded the national average in Reading, Writing and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling. We were slightly under the national average for Maths. We have already set ambitious targets for this academic year and are expecting our next cohort of children to perform even better than this year's group.

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% MET THE EXPECTED STANDARD

READING(NA 71%)

Grammar(NA 77%)

MATHS(NA 75%)

ALL PUPILS 78% 78% 68%

% MET THE HIGHER STANDARD

READING (NA 19%)Grammar(NA 23%) MATHS NA 17%)

ALL PUPILS 22% 24% 15%

% WRITING

WRITINGExpected standard

(NA 76%)

WRITINGHigher standard

(NA 15%)ALL PUPILS 83% 25%

For 2017/18 we have recruited a new teacher of maths to ensure we make improvements to our SATS results in the forthcoming years.

What we want to improve

Our key priorities for 2017-18 are

OUTCOMES for PUPILS

To raise standards in mathematics through a ‘mastery’ approach so more pupils achieve age related expectations (ARE) at the end of KS2

To raise standards in reading through a more focused approach to the teaching of reading comprehension so more pupils achieve ARE at the end of KS2

LEADERSHIP and MANAGEMENT

To further develop middle leaders so they have the skills necessary to inform their teaching through the detailed analysis of current trends in the performance of their pupils

To review the roles and responsibilities of all staff, in particular middle leaders, so that leadership capacity is strengthened

QUALITY OF TEACHING, LEARNING and ASSESSMENT

To further develop and improve the quality of teaching across the school by:

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-developing and embedding a ‘challenge curriculum’ to engage and motivate pupils-adding greater stretch and challenge to the curriculum-children to become more confident and independent in their learning

Staff changes

Last term we were extremely sad to say goodbye to Mrs Ingle who left to take up a new position as acting Head teacher at Bilsthorpe Flying High Academy. The times shared, friendships forged and the incredible successes which Porchester has enjoyed alongside Mrs Ingle have been an extraordinary part of all our lives. We are very proud of all that we have achieved as a school and thank Mrs Ingle wholeheartedly for the part she has played in this. We wish her every success in her new role.

We also said goodbye to Shaun Martwich our caretaker who also found a new position at Bilsthorpe Primary School.

We were however extremely pleased to welcome Helen Foster into the Deputy Head position and Mrs Foster has settled in very well and is making great inroads into school with our new, exciting challenge curriculum.

We are delighted to introduce three other new members of staff who are Nick Pearce (maths teacher), Lauren Mintey (Year 3/4), Shane Murphy (caretaker who will start after half term).

Challenge Curriculum

At Porchester Junior School, we want our/your children to feel inspired, motivated and eager to learn so that they see learning as worthwhile, fun and interesting. If children acquire good learning habits early on, they will, hopefully, carry these throughout their learning journey – wherever that takes them.

We have adopted a topic based curriculum. Each half term, we ask a big question, based on the National Curriculum. The children tell us what they already know and what they would like to know about that topic. We then use this to design the weekly questions. Approaching it this way allows the children to let us know what they are interested in, allows teachers to address any misconceptions they have and gives

the children ownership and a voice to their learning.

We introduce the topic with a WOW – to stimulate and excite the children immediately. The WOW could be a visit or visitor, dressing up, food tasting or something else. The children then research a question every week, which might have a Science, Art, History, etc focus. At the end of the topic we are planning a reflection, where the children can answer the big question, based on all the learning they have done over the half term. We are trying to make these as real-life as possible, so we may

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Mrs Foster

write to a famous person, present our ideas to the rest of the school, to Mr Cullen, or even to their parents/carers.

The topics are cross-curricular, which ensures we teach a broad and balanced curriculum. We also use what is going on in the World around them to inspire some of those questions. We believe it is important for the curriculum to reflect the world our/your children inhabit, at this specific time. Because of this, we will not be producing a cycle of topics that are covered, as these will change from year to year. What remains the same are the National Curriculum objectives, which are covered in our topics over the four years they are here.

PSHE, although no longer statutory, is still taught to support children through school years. We will also be doing themed days throughout the year, to further enhance learning. All children are really enjoying engaging with the school’s new curriculum. This half term children in upper school have been learning all about The Mayan civilisation through a unit called ‘ Would I like to be a Mayan child' whilst children in lower school have been learning all about The Stone Age.

Additional Learning Needs

The Role of the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENco), Ms Moore is to provide support for children who are struggling to meet the demands of the National Curriculum in English and Maths.

More Able and Talented Pupils are identified at an earlier stage. Work in class is differentiated for them. This year a range of activities were planned to extend their learning experiences such as an extended writing programmes and additional maths activities.

Finance

The school received £817,008

The school’s expenditure over the same period was £844,100

Staff costs are our largest outgoing. The rest went on school meals, maintaining and improving the premises,

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Expenditure Description Actual Expenditure (%) as at 31.03.17

Employees 69.95%

Premises 8.22%

Capitation 4.67%

Capital 1.56%

Supplies and Services 15.53%

100%

utilities, educational resources (including investment in ICT, books and other equipment), and other general running costs.

As in previous years, there is some money that is carried forward to next year, which is used to cover the refurbishment of school rooms and facilities. The governing body reviews how the school uses the money it receives under the pupil premium, which is funding to support disadvantaged children (defined as pupils who have received free school meals within the past six years). You can read a summary of how the school spent last year’s funding on the school website. Effective management of the school’s finances ensures that our funds are spent wisely, allowing the school to optimise its resources to provide high-quality teaching and learning, and so raising standards and attainment for all the pupils.

Attendance

Regular attendance at school is essential if children are to reach their potential. In accordance with Government Guidelines, we can not authorise parents to take children on holiday during term time for this inevitably has an adverse effect on their progress at school. We seek to ensure that children also appreciate the importance of coming to school regularly. We can authorise absences for medical appointments, days of religious observations etc . Schools need to authorise absence sparingly and only after careful consideration, particularly where pupils have a history of irregular attendance.

Annual Target 2016/17 96.5%Actual attendance 96.0%Attendance target 2017/18 96.5%.

School Policies

During the year the governing body review and update the policies and procedures of the school to ensure that the school is running effectively and to make sure we are operating effectively. In addition during the last twelve months we have had several external audits including a Safeguarding Audit, Audits from the Flying High Trust prior to our joining the Trust and a Values-based Education audit. The outcome of these reviews and audits show the Governing Body not only how our performance is doing, but where we can improve and ideas of how we can achieve that. We are pleased to report that the school and its leadership team is operating at a high standard and is effective. If you would like more information our Policies and Procedures are available on our website or via the office.

Role Models

Each week we have a role model of the week. Teachers choose one child from each class and they have hot chocolate and biscuits with Mrs Waplington in the staffroom

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on Friday afternoon. Each child also gets a certificate which is given out in Friday’s celebration assembly.

Sport

Although the school has limited outdoor space sport plays an important part in school life. Children participate in a variety of team games as an integral part of the P.E. curriculum. Children all benefit from the work of qualified sports coaches who teach them every week. All children are included in

sports activities and we aim to ensure that each child finds a degree of personal success and enjoyment. Sports activities include netball, basketball, athletics, football, tennis, cricket, athletics and swimming. Sports days are always well attended, providing an enjoyable day for children and their families. We are mindful too of the need to help children to keep fit and active. To this end, teachers offer a wide range of extra curricular activities including Basketball (Years 5 / 6), Football (Years 3 / 4), Athletics Years 5 / 6), Rugby (Years 5 / 6).

Porchester Parliament

We are currently holding elections for our 2017/2018 Porchester Parliament. The results will be posted on the website in due course.

Enrichment

Since the beginning of 2017/18 term we have had:

Two grandparents days, grandparents were invited into school for the morning to see what the children were learning about in class and then had a school dinner with their grandparents - we had over 90 grandparents attend!

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Year 5 and 6 visited Safety Zone at The National Watersports Centre which helped teach them to be more aware of their personal safety and that of others.

Children raised money by celebrating Jeans for Genes day, approximately £80.00 was raised at this will go towards helping children who are affected by this life altering genetic disorder.

As part of the Carton Academy’s transition programme, Year 6 spent the afternoon experiencing science. they built rockets, used bunsen burners in the science lab. Year 6’s will also be taking part in an Enterprise day at The Carlton Academy shortly.

To encourage speaking and listening all children took part in No Pen Wednesday! There was lots of discussion, drama, speaking and listening - but not a pen in sight.

Community Links

We continue to promote the school at every opportunity and are excited about the future particularly in relation to our membership of the Flying High Trust whose aim has your children at the centre. We also liaise with Nottingham Evening Post to celebrate any interesting events we may have at school. We continue to work closely with our local family of schools to ensure smooth, structured and planned transition for our pupils within schools looking at the factors affecting the transition from Infants to Juniors and Juniors to Secondary School. This is a key priority for the school. We are continuing to develop our links with the wide range of schools within the Flying High Trust. We also work with our local church, St Johns Methodist church, and the children attend Harvest Festival, Christmas and Easter celebrations which they enjoy.

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