Headteacher News 11-10-2024

End of week 6 round up.

Attendance News (and punctuality)

This week’s best attenders were in class class 10 with an amazing 99.33% (closely followed by class 15 with 99.2%).

Attendance is dropping slightly across school and punctuality is becoming a concern. Next week, those who are arriving late to school regularly and therefore missing important learning and check in time will receive an initial letter.

Being on time and being at school every day (unless avoidable) is incredibly important.

This week, I had the pleasure of our Autumn Term Planning Meeting with the local authority. Our 3 year trend in many years is highlighted green (positive) but one area where we are not making enough progress is with attendance. We have improved this year so far (compared to last year) but still linger behind our target of 95%. I am aware of a bug going round and this is obviously impacting on attendance. I thank you for improving our attendance this year but we still have some improving to do for our community and for our school.

Our attendance policy has recently been updated and is available here. Please take a look.

NCPS-Attendance-Policy_October 2024

Attendance League Table

1st Place – Year Three – 96.47%

2nd Place – Year Five – 95. 38%

3rd Place – Year One – 95.02%

4th Place – EYFS – 94.80%

5th Place – Year Four – 94.33%

6th Place – Year Two – 94.18%

7th Place – year Six – 93.95%

This week’s online safety information for parents…

Great advice for parents and educators on Tik Tok. Also available as a PDF here -> tiktok-2022  Safeguarding Visit

You will know that we recently had a safeguarding visit from Lis Marsden, our North Yorkshire advisor. Her report has now been shared with school and so I would like to share some of this with our community.

Parent Voice

All parents spoken to felt that their children are happy and safe in school and were confident in raising any concerns with staff in school and that the staff would deal with their concerns. Parents named a range of staff they would approach which included the class teacher, the safeguarding team, SLT/DSLs.

The SEA asked parents whether they were aware of any bullying incidents all parents stated they did not have
concerns with regards to bullying, further questioning indicated that parents were confident in reporting any concerns.

All parents were positive about the school and the support and guidance they provide for their child with parents expressing positive views about support they gain for children with additional needs. Comments included ‘Very swift support if we need it’, ‘Very supportive staff’ and ‘They do everything within their means to support’

Pupil Voice

All pupils spoken to said that they feel safe in school and could give examples to support this including site security,
initiatives such as buddy benches and the support and advice from trusted adults.

Pupils feel safe in all areas in school and clearly articulated that they could go the staff with any concerns and they were confident they would provide support.

Pupils had a very clear understanding of what bullying is and isn’t and felt that bullying is rare and were confident that
they knew how to gain support and advice, they indicated they would stand up to bullying and it wasn’t acceptable and that it would be dealt with appropriately by the school.

Pupils could explain that pupils with protected characteristics are treated with respect. They did explain that some groups of pupils may need additional support but this is fair and everyone is given the support they need.

The pupils explained the content of some of the PSHE curriculum, including bullying, feelings and online safety as well as lessons which were pertinent to the time of the year and the context of the school for example water shock before the summer holidays and fire safety prior to bonfire night. Pupils could explain that they are given information about online safety in PSHE lessons, in computing lessons and also in assemblies.

The pupils were a credit to the school and they described the school as ‘ safe, community, friendly, happy’

Y6 Residential (Next week)

Next week sees the majority of our year 6 children visit Peat Rigg for their Outdoor Adventure Residential. Behind the scenes, Mrs Linsdell has worked tirelessly to organise this visit for the children. Without noticing, she has probably spent in the region of 40-50 hours of time to organise the whole trip. We give many thanks to her for this and I do hope we all appreciate the work behind the scenes to make sure trips like this go ahead.

I also give a massive thanks to the staff who have volunteered their own time away from their own families to ensure your children have a safe and amazing time away from home next week. Without which, such trips would not be able to go ahead. Thanks to the whole team who will be there for some or all of the week.

Further thanks…

A massive thanks to our cover team. Mrs Dyson, Mrs Mitchell, Mrs Crow, Mr Trousdale, Mrs Tennyson, Mrs Griffiths and Mrs Lok who have been simply amazing this week.

FA CUP FEVER… – Scarborough Athletic v Chester

Have a great weekend everyone and keep your fingers crossed for Scarborough Athletic winning their 4th round qualifying FA Cup tie! Hope to see as many Northstead children there as possible to cheer the team on. No battle! No victory!