Dear Parents and Carers,
On Wednesday this week, I had the privilege of supporting Mr Polak (TEAM Director of Education) in a review at Umberleigh Academy. These days are super-helpful as they enable me to go and see best practice in other settings. I am then pretty shameless in 'borrowing' and bringing back new ideas to HB!
Yesterday, it was our turn to be reviewed. These half-termly reviews of how we are performing are also vitally important for staff at HB: rigorous scrutiny of strengths and areas for development feed directly into school improvement. On our review, Mr Polak was joined by Miss Ratcliffe (HoS at Witheridge) and Mrs Wells, Chair of Trustees. It was great to have them here as they have, just last week, all been through an Ofsted inspection.
During the review, they spent time looking at some teaching in EYFS and KS1 to make sure that we are building firm foundations. They also scrutinised work in History and Writing Books - with a particular focus on how we support children who may struggle for one reason or another. They also reviewed our Support Plans for SEND children. Everything is looking very positive and I will share some of their findings next week.
A number of things really stand out as I have visited the children in the different classes this week. The first is the wonderful work atmosphere - with all children working with great purpose in quiet, calm classrooms. This is true from EYFS to years five and six. This gives rise to the second thing to note, and that is the quality of work children are producing - both verbally in lessons and in written form. Across all subjects, work is of a really high standard as you will see at the next Book and a Biscuit (Monday 9th February). The final thing I noticed is how proud the children (rightly) are of their work. Day in and day out they rise to tricky challenges and with perseverance they conquer these. Children are very pleased to speak about what they have achieved - something I really hope they do with you when they arrive home!
In the last few weeks it has been noticeable how many colds there are around school - not just amongst the staff either! Our levels of attendance have improved significantly this academic year and I can only think that this is due to children still coming in with slight sniffles and colds where previously they may have been kept at home. As long as your child does not feel too unwell, we welcome this as it means that children are not missing vital learning. It is so important to be in every day and it would be great to continue to improve our attendance levels as we progress through the year.
We are moving to an electronic system for recording accidents in school and will be implementing this in the next week or so. A letter should be emailed to you today.
Have a lovely weekend,
Rob Norton
Head of School
