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Will It Rain?
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Headteacher ArchiveOn this page you will find previous messages that have been superseded on the main Headteacher page.
Wednesday 12th May 2010
Welcome Letter
Dear Parents,
After nearly 4 weeks in my new role as headteacher of St Anne's Catholic Primary School, I wanted to take the opportunity to make contact with you and let you know how things are going:
Welcome:
Firstly, I would like to thank children, parents, governors, clergy and staff for the warmest welcome imaginable! I've had a hugely enjoyable four weeks.
Introduction:
I'm delighted, and deeply honoured to become headteacher of our beautiful school. St Anne's Catholic Primary School is an excellent school in a very vibrant parish. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be given the challenge of moving the school continually forward to even dizzier heights!
I would first like to pay tribute to the outstanding work of Paula Wilson the outgoing headteacher. I worked with Paula for about six years as her deputy headteacher prior to my last post and have known her more than 20 years. Paula has done a brilliant job for our school through determination, endeavour and sheer commitment to the children and staff, combining great skill and brilliant educational insight! For a newly appointed head teacher she has provided a wonderful platform from which to launch the next era of our school.
For the last 14 years I have been headteacher of Sts Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School in Kirkby. This was a post I absolutely loved in a school I cared for deeply. It was a school I would have happily worked in to the end of my career and I can say with absolute certainty it is only St. Anne's in Ormskirk I would have even considered leaving for. I would like to think that Sts Peter and Paul was a highly successful school in its context and indeed last year we were credited with being in the top 100 schools nationally based on Contextual Value Added ratings - apparently just short of the top 50!
Both of my children have had a fantastic start to their education, both having spent their primary school years at St Anne's, so I hope I have a reasonable perspective as both teacher and parent.
I can commit to you to work exceedingly hard for you and your children (I'm sounding like a politician now!) I have a favourite motto: "Do the right thing, not the easy thing." I will try to follow that motto as closely as possible as the school's headteacher. I recognise that I will make mistakes, despite my best efforts not to. When I do I will apologise and put my mistakes right!
So, then, we begin. We move on to continually make the experiences and standards at St Anne's school the best we possibly can. I would like to outline for you some areas we have been working on over the past three or four weeks along with some brief news:
Communication with Parents:
Website:
We have introduced a new website for the school. The site is very much a work in progress, so hopefully you will see the direction it is heading by visiting frequently over the coming weeks and months. A good deal of work has taken place already and you can see how we are getting on by visiting:
Its slightly different from the old website name - so please enter it carefully. Hopefully, that's a website name which is moderately easy to remember. You may prefer to save it to favourites. It's best seen using the Internet Explorer Browser though reads fine in some others. We recently uploaded some external photographs of the school in the Virtual Tour section - please feel free to have look.
Within the parents' section of the website you should find an opportunity to provide direct feedback to school. Any feedback you offer will come directly to me by e-mail and will be very much welcomed. We wish to provide for you the highest standards and would like to know two things:
(a) when we are getting it right so we can celebrate that, and (b) what we must do to improve.
Children (in their section) can also provide direct feedback to us. That will be also be warmly welcomed.
All feedback (whether its about the site itself or about broader school issues) will be read and considered and taken account of in our quest to move on.
Texting Service:
From tomorrow, (fingers crossed) we will be introducing a new communication service to parents. We are trialling a service whereby we can send text messages (to individual or groups of parents) direct to your mobile phone. Occasions such as the recent snow issues highlight the importance of direct parental communication achieved electronically. As I understand it, we have up-to-date mobile telephone numbers for you, though if you have bought a new phone recently and changed number you can let us know by the usual system or alternatively, you can use the e-mail registration section of the website, which is in the parents area, to update us.
Messageboard Service:
To send a text message is very useful for short messages. For longer messages we propose to introduce a messageboard which can be written to by members of staff. If they have a longer message, such as, for example, details of the school trip, we are going to trial posting to the messageboard, and texting the selected parent audience to advise you to have a look. The messageboard area is accessible through the website ( again, found in the parents section.)
We hope to make these new communication systems work. Many years of finding school letters quadruple folded and crumpled in the darkest depths of my children's school bags has taught me the need for electronic communication! In the short term at least we will continue to send paper copies of our main letters too. Perhaps in the long term, with your approval, we can also save some of that paper!
Headed Paper:
As you will see, we have changed our headed paper. We wanted to be mindful of our close connection with our parishes - hence the use of the picture of the largest parish church. Additionally, we reflect our mission, summarised as "loving God in all we do" (a phrase I absolutely love, by the way.) On top of that we celebrate our successes at the bottom and remind you of our contact information, including the website. I hope you find it smart, informative and packed full of our symbolic thrust for excellence in our work.
Breakfast club:
We understand that many of our parents are very busy working parents with huge demands on your time and resources. By September 2010, we are committed to providing a high quality breakfast club in school which will look after your children from eight o'clock in the morning. This will further enhance our out of school provision, (already well - served with our excellent after school club.)
Please watch out for information about the breakfast club which will be coming soon using the communication methods described above. We will need to set a price and seek out who would be interested - so if its likely to be of interest to you - you will need to watch out for this. We then need to staff it and equip it - so it will need to move on pretty quickly.
The breakfast club will have gentle activities for the children along with the availability of toast and cereal. The activities will be slightly less energetic and free than after school club, since we recognise that the children will need to start their educational activities at 8:50 AM in the best physical and mental state of readiness.
Bell System:
St Anne's School is based over quite a large site. In order to try and help keep things synchronised we will be introducing a school bell system. Rather than using old-fashioned bell sounds, snippets of music ranging from jazz to classical will remind children and staff that significant points in time in the day are approaching, and indeed, have arrived. For example a five-minute warning sound will allow staff to draw to a conclusion a lesson just before break, with a different sound indicating that break time has arrived.
This should have a positive effect on managing our time efficiently and effectively across such a large site. As a result it helps us keep children in the right place at the right time - which is a critical safeguarding issue.
Year Six Tests:
Our year six children are closing in on the last of their formal tests. They worked extremely hard and should be very proud of themselves! The last of the tests will be tomorrow, (Maths paper B) after which they can relax a little! They have approached their tests with excellent attitudes and we would like to congratulate them.
Year 4 PGL Trip:
Our Year 4 children return from the trip to the PGL Outdoor Activities Centre based near Shrewsbury. Its a great, rugged site and I hope the children have had a wonderful time. We'll try and get some photographs up on the website soon.
In Conclusion:
After even a very short time at St Anne's, I can see that we have beautiful, wonderful children, fantastically supportive parents and very, very talented and hard-working staff. As a parent, I understand that it's hard to see what happens inside school once you drop your children off each morning. What I can tell you, and am delighted to do so, is that the children are receiving excellent activities and experiences from staff who are hard-working and deeply, deeply respectful to the children.
I'm genuinely delighted about that, since my personal view is that children learn to give respect once they have received it - and whilst I would always expect that staff speak respectfully to children - its great to confirm that this is already a very strong, well developed and clear ethos within the school!!
I'm so excited and happy to be working with you over the coming weeks, months and years! If you see me around the site - please feel free to pop over and say "hello" and introduce yourselves. It will take a short while but I will get to know all the families soon!
Yours faithfully Joe White |
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