Pupil Survey (418 students completed the questionnaires with 100 being asked from each year group).
“The pupils gave a very good overall performance score (77%), while among the pupils who had been attending the school for over a year, 49% said the school had improved over the last year while only 16% thought that the school’s performance was worse.”
(Kirkland Rowell Pupil Survey 2008-9 Judgement: p4)
With regard to academic criteria, the highest proportion of pupils who said they were making good progress was for Religious Education, Music and German.
The highest proportion of pupils who said they were not making good progress was for Geography, English and Physical Education.
With regard to Non-Academic areas, pupils are most happy with the delivery of community spirit, availability of resources and school facilities.
The pupils are least happy with the delivery of levels of homework, truancy control and developing potential.
The pupils' top priority for improvement is school facilities.
Since the previous survey the following academic areas obtained significantly higher scores: Music, German and Art.
There were 15 non-academic areas which obtained significantly higher scores
All academic subjects received “good” responses with 14 being “exceptional”. Community spirit, availability of resources, school facilities, control of bullying, school discipline, developing confidence, teaching quality, school security, computer access, happiness of child and social health education were rated as exceptional.
There were two issues: suitable class sizes was considered only satisfactory (one third thought it an issue) and school uniform (half think it’s good and half think it isn’t).
Overall the surveys paint a very clear picture of a school that continues to improve in many key areas and, based on these results, Kirkland Rowell judges it to be outstanding with reference to sections 4 to 7 of the SEF ( those are personal well being of the pupils, quality of teaching and learning, leadership and management and overall effectiveness).
Painting canteen
Mrs Smith, the College Business Manager, originally took colour charts to the school council and following their views chose a range of feature wall colours and took these back to the School Council. They then selected 2 colours to work with, and she said she would organise the arts students to design a colour scheme around the feature wall colours. I then took these to Mrs Reading (D&T Teacher) and drew up a competition specification with a prize of £30 for the student who designed the winning colour scheme. About 6 students submitted drawings and these drawings were then taken back to the School Council who chose the final winner. We did slightly amend the colours but a prize of £30 in cash will go to Laura Chandler this week.
Refurbishment of Toilets
We have now appointed architects to work on designing new toilets for the 4 toilet blocks in the new school. The work will be done over the summer holidays at a rough cost of £60k
We advised the architect that we need to involve the students in the final choice of design. We propose to ask for a small team of about 8 pupils to work with and meet with the architect. The architect will come up with a range of designs with different cost implications and the students could be involved with choosing the design and colour scheme, and be aware of cost implications etc. When the plans are ready we will probably display them outside the toilet blocks to keep the pupils informed.
Art Pictures and photos for the canteen.
We are going to organise a ‘graffitti’ competition for art work for the canteen for all students in the school to enter. Mrs Reading has suggested a Banksy theme for art work which would be done on canvases. There will be a prize of £40 per pupil for each entry that we commission. We may also have a photo competition for Media students with a food theme, as there is plenty of space to display art work in the canteen.