The Governing Body

The following are members of our governing body:

Parent Governors (7): Mrs Sarah Richards, Mr Greg Lister, Mr Mark Cotton, Mr Robert Williamson, Mr Paul Copley, Mrs Louise Martinson

LEA Governors (3): Mrs Sue Nicholson, Mrs Lynn Millard, Rev Peter Webster

Community Governors (3): Mr Scott Millard, Mrs Sue Walker, Mr Paul Robinson (Chairperson)

Teacher Governors (1): Mrs Sue Collings

Non Teaching Governor (1): Ms Jean Ingram

Head Teacher (1): Mr Martin Alger

Progress from the last Ofsted Action Plan

The four action points from July 2004 have now been dealt with.

Fund Raising

As in past years, the school has been very active in raising funds. The principle areas were the PTFA have worked very hard to fund adventure playgrounds for the pupils in KS1 and KS2. Both of these are completed. The most recent significant purchase was new furniture for our dining room in the school colours. School discos remain very popular and the Halloween Fancy Dress was very successful. The Parish Council has made valuable contributions. Our School Tuck Shop continues to thrive during morning break and this provides healthy snacks for pupils. A big thank you to those pupils and parents who support the PTFA Easter fair, always a significant fund raiser. During the year we have made contributions to a number of charities. These include Jeans for Genes Day, the NCH and NSPCC; we donated our Harvest Festival collection to the Rootless and Homeless Project in Hull. Each of these organisations has been very grateful for our efforts on their behalf. As in previous years this reflects the caring attitude of our pupils and parents.

Special Educational Needs

Ms Ingram is the schools SEN Governor and she worked closely with Ms Longbone who is our Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO). Last year we outlined changes to the provision of SEN in schools and we are including that information again for new parents. The structure for SEN provision is as follows:

The first stage in provision is SCHOOLS ACTION, this involves all provision provided by the school for pupils with Special Educational Needs. All of this support will be co-ordinated by our SENCO.

The second stage is SCHOOL ACTION PLUS. This involves the support of external agencies in helping to meet the needs of the pupils. A range of agencies including SENSS provides provision: the Education Psychologist, the Hearing Impaired Service, the Visually Impaired Service and the Pupil Referral Service (Behaviour).

The final stage would involve formal assessment where all agencies involved work on assessment with a view to awarding or not a STATEMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS STATEMENT OF SEN A statement will outline what needs to be done to meet a pupils needs. It is usually accompanied by an amount of funding which reflects the degree of need.

It is our aim to meet every pupil’s need, making Gilberdyke an inclusive school. We use the following strategies to our pupils:

• Early identification of need, as many of our pupils attend our Foundation Unit and we are able to identify any needs very early.

• Staff are able to support pupils in class and plan accordingly.

• To help provide focussed support, pupils are given an Individual Education Plan (IEP). This outlines Pupil need and the support to be given. It also provides targets for improvement.

• Parents are kept informed of pupil’s progress and their inclusion on the SEN register.

• The school compiles a register of pupils who have special educational needs and this shows the stage at which the pupil is placed on the register. Pupils on the register Our SEN register was updated in July and the following numbers apply: -

The Disability Discrimination Act

The governing body are drawing up a plan to develop disability access to the school. The plans will cover curriculum access and also the physical environment of the school. This plan will be incorporated to the new building, which might take place in the near future.

What did we teach this year?

We continue to work within the National Curriculum, which involves the Numeracy and Literacy Strategies. Our other curriculum areas are based on the QCA schemes of work adapted to suit our pupils. Last year we talked about the breadth and balance of our curriculum and developing all aspects for the benefit of all children. We now have our QCA units delivered through a thematic curriculum helping to deliver excellence and enjoyment.

We continue our pursuit of developing learning and teaching in school with the development of our teaching and learning programme. We have developed both practice and theory to help all our children participate in their learning. We are sure our pupils are becoming more independent and successful learners. Let’s Think with Y1 is a good example of a successful learning strategy.

We took part in the Authorities Creative Context project, which involved some of our pupils working with a visiting artist, and producing exhibits for the final display in Beverley Minster in July. The positive effect this had on pupils work in literacy was very encouraging. To develop this creative element of our work, Mr Alger will be taking classes for extended work in art during this term and throughout the year. This year we hope to take part in the new context based on ‘Shelters’.

During the year we had a number of theatre companies in school to give pupils additional experiences. The performances covered a range of topics including History and Artefacts, Conservation and the Environment, Personal and Social Development and Health and Safety. These encouraged pupils to question some important issues. We also had Play in a Day for Year 5 where they work with a visiting actor to produce a plat at the end of the day.

We are very pleased with some of last year’s initiatives which are now very much part of our work. These include the areas of Every Child Matters; making a positive contribution and the economic future.

All of our themes are supported by a comprehensive range of visits and visitors to enrich our curriculum for pupils.

Extra curricular activities

Lots of our pupils have benefited from working after school in our Clubs. During the year we have continued our work in Music, Sport and Needlecraft. All of these activities are regular events and include many and varied activities for our pupils to explore.

Many of the visits to various schools have encouraged our pupils to be aware of the high standards that we have and it has also allowed them to be competitive and deal with success and failure, which is a very important lesson.

The School Development Plan

This report refers to 2006-2007.

School Priorities

Our priorities this year will be developed under the sections of the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda ie Be healthy, Stay safe, Enjoy and achieve, Make a positive contribution, Achieve economic well-being.

1. Learning and Teaching – assessment for learning.

2. Implementing the new Literacy and Numeracy Frameworks.

3. Key Skills in the curriculum.

4. Improving reading, a whole school approach to phonics.

5. Review of the school behaviour policy and practice.

Our School Council

We have continued to develop and structure our school council and we will move this forward through staff inset and PSHE (Personal Social and Health Education) and Citizenship lessons which embrace the Council. This year we are looking to use the school council to look at pupil learning and their experiences in the classroom – what works well.

Class Groupings

This year our KS1 and foundation has the benefit of Infant class size funding and this has allowed us to divide year 2 into two smaller clases. The performance of pupils at KS1 tests was good and supports the use of our additional grant for infant class size to benefit all pupils in the reduction of class sizes. In years 5/6 we have introduced an extra class to cope with the large number of pupils, this will make teaching more effective and allow us to further pursue personalised learning.

Policies

The school has a full range of policy documents and these are kept in the Heads office where they can be seen on request. Our policies are monitored regularly and conform to guidance from the relevant bodies. The school’s subject policies have been reviewed recently - September 2006.

Transport

The meeting of pupils from the bus has continued through the year and this has proved to be successful in improving the safety, this continues to be funded from the school budget. The supervision of pupils on the bus is the responsibility of the driver and it is therefore important that bus children maintain high standards of behaviour. The Governors ask that parents reinforce the importance of good behaviour. The number of vehicles outside of school remains a significant problem as congestion increases the risk of accidents.

Staff development and training

The Governors support fully the development of all staff in school and this year has seen continued development in staff training. It is very important that staff attend courses to keep up with ever changing educational policy. In order to achieve this, staff have to attend courses in school time and also in their own time after school. This means that supply staff will be taking classes from time to time. We are fortunate that we have regular staff that covers lessons for us and this eliminates the negative effect of course attendance. It is the policy of the school to ensure that staff development is linked with the priorities of the School Development Plan. This helps move the plan forward and provide the expertise we need.

Let's Celebrate

During the year we have had many reasons to celebrate the achievement of pupils in school. Let's look at some of these:

o The school SATS results have been excellent and improved yet again on previous years. Not only were the basic levels very high but pupils are achieving very well as shown by the high value added scores ie their improvement from year 2 to year 6.

o Pupils in school play in regular matches against other schools in cricket, netball, rugby and Football. Many pupils have benefited from coaching in school in curriculum time and at sports clubs. o Our Showing and Sharing assemblies have continued to be a strong motivating activity for our pupils. We have seen many parents during the year and this sharing of Achievement a real cause for celebration.

o We have enhanced our curriculum through a comprehensive range of visits and visitors.

o The school celebrates its pupils' love of learning with exciting teachers and exciting lessons. o Pupils’ behaviour continues to be very positive and helps create an excellent atmosphere in school.

o Our Year 5 residential visit was very successful; pupils were able to take part in a range of supervised activities, which many had not experienced before. A wonderful weekend. A visit is planned this year in year 6.

o Many pupils are playing musical instruments and the regular performances in Showing and Sharing helps us all to see how much progress they are making. The children enjoyed taking part in the Hornsea Festival and enjoyed a range of successes.

o The support for school from the local community has been excellent.

o The immense respect between all members of the school community has a very positive effect on learning.

Important Dates for 2006-2007