Headteacher News 29-2-24

Parents, carers and families,

OFSTED Inspection – 20th and 21st February 2024

You will no doubt be aware that we were inspected by His Majesty’s Inspectors on 20th and 21st February. In line with legal documentation, until the final report is published, we are not able to share any judgements made about our school.

However, what I can say is that I feel extremely proud of the improvements our school has made since beginning my role as Headteacher in September 2022. The whole staff team should be very proud of how the hard work and dedication shown has ensured our school has improved.

Our children discussed at length how proud they are of our school and how they enjoy learning and know that they come to school to learn.

The most recent results of Ofsted Parent View can be seen below and demonstrate significant improvements in all areas.

Once the final report is published, this will be shared with our community alongside our own commentary of our own school and where we see improvements being made in the future.

Attendance Matters

I’m glad to say we are seeing a definite improvement in attendance and that it is slowly rising towards where we want it to be. A reminder that if your child has attendance of above 95% for the Spring Term they will be entered into a prize draw for one of 7 family swim vouchers at Everyone Active.

Special Visitors

On Monday 8th April, Paul Sturgess (Britain’s Tallest Man and former Harlem Globetrotters Basketballer) will be visiting school to meet the children and discuss his journey and how his love of Basketball developed. We look forward to welcoming Paul to Northstead.

On Friday 10th May, Alison Hume, Labour Parliamentary candidate for Scarborough and Whitby will be visiting school. Whilst at home on Saturday afternoon, I was visited by Alison. She wasn’t invited, she just happened to be canvassing in the area. After discussions about local issues, I offered Alison the chance to visit our school to see the remarkable community we have and I’m glad to say she has accepted and will be visiting school on the afternoon of Friday 10th May. Alison will meet with our school council to discuss her role as a politician and will then have a tour of the school and a discussion with senior leaders about the current issues facing education. A great chance for us to have our voice heard and for our school council to learn about her role.

Online Safety and Responsible Use

Recently, we have been dealing with a number of incidents where children in years 5 and 6 have been sending extremely unkind comments to each other. We will do all we can in school to educate the children on their safe use of mobile phones, however we also expect all parents and carers to monitor their child’s use of a phone and to take appropriate action.

Tesco Community Projects

Great news! We have been successful in getting our school to be one nominated for Tesco Stronger Starts fund. Please, if you visit any of the following Tesco stores, place the blue counters into Northstead’s tub and we will receive a donation towards our fantastic cookery club which will enable us to have additional clubs for the children in school to attend. Voting will commence in store from the first week in April 2024 until the end of June 2024

Please see below a list of stores taking part in the voting on our project.  
 Scarborough Castle / Scarborough 2   / Burniston Rd

Victorians for a day – Year 2

Year 2 had a wonderful visit from Miss Periwinkle and immersed themselves in the lives of a child during Victorian times. Thanks to everyone for providing costumes for your child to enjoy the day. Miss Periwinkle joined us to teach us all about the Victorian era and we spent the morning being taught just like we would have been taught in the Victorian classrooms. We started by being instructed to line up in height order before entering a classroom full of tables in rows. We had our hands inspected and then had a drill to get our bodies moving. Although we are such role models we did pretend to break the strict rules so as to learn about the punishments they used during this era. The children were shocked at how school life was so different! After playtime we then had a try at writing on chalkboards and then took part in a silence challenge. After that we used a wash tub and paddle to clean clothes. We then finished our day by exploring toys that they had and made in the Victorian times.

Attendance Matters

You may have seen this week that the Department for Education will be increasing the fines for term time holidays from September 2024.

Attendance has again improved this week, but we still cannot reach the magic 95% on any given day!

Monday 92.2% / Tuesday 93.04% / Wednesday 94.72% / Thursday 94.21% / Friday 90.69%

Why are Mondays and Fridays our worst attending days? How can our community come together to solve this?

Average this week of 92.95%

Year to date average is  92.85%

Classes with above 95% this week were: Class 3 (98%), Class 5 (96.43%), Class 7 (99.33%), Class 12 (96.43%), Class 13 (96.55%).

Classes with above 95% this year are: Class 5 (95.48%), Class 3 (95.88%), Class 7 (96.16%),

Thanks for all you do to make sure your child is in school and learning every day. It makes a huge difference to their attainment and progress throughout the curriculum. But please lets get attendance higher on a Monday and Friday!

Thanks to Dale Power Solutions

Today, 12 laptops were delivered to Northstead on behalf of Dale Power Solutions. We thank them for their generosity.