Friday 25 November 2011

It has been an exciting week in school this week with all the anti - bullying activities. Most of the children will be bringing home the tee shirts they made and although I could not attend the show myself the children all seemed to enjoy the anti - bullying show that was put on for them. It has been a fun week for the children we run this event so we can get across the important message that we do not accept bullying in this school. Sometimes we do have incidents of unacceptable behaviour and we do deal with these as soon as we find out about them. However, some children feel unable to report incidents when they happen so could I please ask you as parents to encourage your children to report any incidents as soon as they happen rather than waiting until they get home or wait until a few days after it has happened. Leaving them makes issues so much more difficult to resolve.


Next week we have another ‘Mufti Day’ on Friday. This time the children have to bring in something for the Christmas Fayre eg toiletries and sweets. This event is a great money spinner for the school and the more we raise the more your children benefit. Teachers will also be asking you via their blogs to send in items for the class Christmas hampers. I would like to thank you all for your efforts last week for ‘Children In Need’. Even though it was only planned at the last minute we managed to raise an impressive £237.50 for a very worthy cause.

Our chair sent out the timeline this week for getting the action plan out to parents in response to the Ofsted. It is going to take a little longer than we anticipated but you will receive it before the end of term.

I am glad to say that we have had a good response to our maths evening so the event will be definitely going ahead. If you have not yet returned your letter and would still like to attend then there is still time to do so. I look forward to seeing lots of you there – it should be a good night!

Friday 18 November 2011

Thank you very much to everyone who donated money to ‘Children in Need’ today, especially as we only gave people short notice about the ‘non-uniform day’. We originally were not going to do anything for this day since we will be asking for contributions for our own ‘Christmas Fayre’ in a couple of weeks but there was so much in the media about the event that I thought the children would feel left out if we did nothing. The appeal also supports some very worthwhile causes.


I am sure that some of you have been wondering what is going to happen in school on November 30th. You have probably heard a lot in the news about all teaching unions taking industrial action because of the government s decision to alter their pension provision. The hope is that the government will see the strength of feeling through the amount of people that have voted to take action and that they will change their mind about the changes to teachers’ pensions. As soon as I know what is going to happen on that day I will let you know.

I hope that we will see lots of you at the ‘Mathematics Evening’ on December 1st. We are holding this event as so many parents told us in the summer that they would love an event about maths because calculation methods are so different from those they learnt at school. Deborah Mulroney, who will be presenting the event, has been a maths consultant with Hertfordshire for many years. She is working with our school at the moment on a maths research project which involves schools that have had consistently high maths attainment over a number of years. During the evening she will be demonstrating a number of different calculation methods and strategies that are used to help solve mental maths problems. Then after a short Q & A session pupils will be demonstrating some of the maths calculation methods they have learnt in class. Apart from the pupils involved in demonstrating calculation methods this will be an evening for parents only.

Friday 11 November 2011

I feel like I have not been in school a lot this week so I find it hard to believe that it is already Friday. As I explained last week I had many meetings which meant that I have been out of school quite a lot. Something that I am really disappointed that I missed was the Year 4 assembly which I am told was excellent so congratulations to everyone involved with that.


This was the week that our Ofsted report went home. I would like to remind people that the Ofsted inspection gives a snap shot of the effectiveness of the school, with particular emphasis on the statistical analysis of results etc. Each term our SIP [school improvement partner] also visits the school to gauge our effectiveness. Our SIP recently graded the school as a good school with some outstanding characteristics.

Even in the best schools there are always areas for development and we will be publishing an Action Plan soon that will address these. As we continuously monitor the school’s effectiveness many of those areas already feature in our School Development Plan.

Progress and achievement [which is purely driven by the SATs results] were deemed to be satisfactory due to slightly lower scores being gained in 2010 than in previous years. This judgement however is already out of date as this year’s results were much improved and show better progress but the Ofsted process looks at results from a three year period. In fact in the Potters Bar area we were joint top for our SATs results.

As we wrote in the letter that accompanied the report if you have any comments to make regarding the inspection or the report please address them to our chair of Governors who will share them with all the governors at our next meeting which is on the 22nd of November. We will be publishing the action plan after it has been agreed with governors at this meeting.

As the Ofsted report showed the children enjoy their learning at Little Heath and I would like to thank all those parents who have taken the time to show their continuing support for the school.

Friday 4 November 2011

Half-term seems a long time ago as we settle back into school life.The main excitement in school this week has been the anticipation for 'Bonfire Night' which is tomorrow night. You may have seen the picture of Ella Sperni - Clark with her winning entry for the Fireworks Programme cover in the local paper. I would like to thank in advance the PTA, the Rotary Club and all the volunteers who help to make the night such a big success.It is always a great night but it takes a lot of preparation to make it so and would not be the success that it is if so many people did not give up their free time to help organise and run it.
Apart from the preparation for Bonfire Night it has been quite a normal week in school which has been rather nice. I have a lot of meetings to attend next week so you may not see a lot of me but I am still working!
 I look forward to seeing lots of you at the Firework Display.