It's official: St James' is a good school!
In July 2019, Ofsted inspected our school. We’ve had to wait a long while for the report to be released because of the summer holidays, but what a wonderful way to start the new school year: Ofsted recognise that St James’ is a good school! The rating of good applies to all areas: effectiveness of leadership and management; quality of teaching, learning and assessment; personal development, behaviour and welfare; outcomes for pupils; and early years provision.
The report is very positive about our school. Highlights include:
The executive headteacher has ensured that the quality of teaching is good across all year groups, including the early years.
Teachers have high expectations of what pupils can achieve.
There are good relationships between staff and pupils.
Pupils work hard, concentrate well and enjoy learning.
The very large majority of pupils attain expected standards in reading and writing…Together with their strong progress in personal development, this means pupils are well prepared for the transfer to secondary school.
Teachers engage pupils in interesting and current topics, such as climate change.
Teachers use good quality texts to stimulate pupils’ discussion and deepen pupils’ thinking.
Leaders have designed a curriculum that enhances pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development as well as practical life skills.
The school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is good.
Opportunities for pupils to reflect, consider and reason are threaded through all aspects of their learning.
Teachers are skilled in encouraging pupils to cooperate and share ideas to develop learning.
Pupils know how to keep themselves safe and say they feel safe.’
The work of staff to promote respect and tolerance can be seen throughout the school.
Pupils are well behaved and aware of their responsibilities in society.
Pupils are looked after well and are safe in the school.
Leaders have designed a safeguarding aspect in the school’s curriculum to ensure that pupils are prepared for life in modern Britain.
Parents and carers are extremely pleased with the early years provision and how it has developed over recent years. One parent said that her child has had a ‘tremendous amount of support’.
Thank you to all pupils, parents / carers and staff for their support during the inspection and over the last couple of years. Miss Beatson and I are very proud of our school and we’re determined to keep getting better and better.
Annual survey results summary, 2019
Every year, we invite you to complete the annual survey of parents and carers. Only a quite small number responded to the 2019 survey, but thank you to the ten who did.
The agree/disagree statements were closely based on those that Ofsted use for their Parent View. This gives you the chance to tell Ofsted what you think about your child’s school, from the quality of teaching to dealing with bullying and poor behaviour.
We also asked whether you’d recommend the school and invited comments about what you like and what we could improve on.
We’re delighted that the statements prompted very positive responses – most statements prompted an agree/strongly agree rating from all but one respondent. (It’s not clear if the same person disgreed with all the statements. If this is the case, we strongly encourage that person to speak with us so we can try to make things better.)
The statements, with a typical comment, are:
- My child is happy at St James’ CE Primary School. (‘Both my children are happy at school. They look forward to going every day!‘)
- My child feels safe at this school. (‘[My daughter] feels very safe and understands the rules.’)
- My child makes good progress at this school. (‘Parents evening are a big eye opener. Looking at her work on how she has progressed from one term to another.‘)
- My child is well looked after. (‘I feel my daughter is 100% well looked after at St James, every teacher/helper or even dinner staff keep check on the children and if a problem does arise it’s dealt with straight away.’)
- My child is taught well at St James’ CE Primary School. (‘I feel the teachers at St James go above and beyond teaching the children in their care. Every aspect of the curriculum is taught in a fun way that can be remembered by my daughter.’)
- Adults in school make sure pupils are well behaved. (‘The school has a wonderful 3,2,1 check system which every child is aware of and responds straight away be it a single child, class or the whole school.‘)
- St James’ CE Primary School deals effectively with bullying. (‘Children have fallings out and they are dealt with if needed and if a case of bullying was seen or reported, I’ve heard from other parents that the situation has been dealt with straight away as bullying is a NO! NO! in this school.’)
- The school is well led and managed. (‘Miss Beatson the head has a wonderful outlook on the school as a whole… Miss Beatson’s enthusiasm as a whole is everything the school needs. She wants the best from every child and staff aiming high and achieving the best!‘)
- The school responds well to any concerns I raise. (‘Any concerns I’ve raised within the school have been sorted straight away. Teachers are approachable and informative and the school secretary Mrs Walshaw is always available for queries or questions.‘)
- I receive useful information from the school about my child’s progress. (‘The school website is excellent I see pictures of what my daughters class have been learning about and the school as a whole.’)
- The school promotes its Christian ethos effectively. (‘I would say it promotes Christian values through the school and home without making it pushy, and keeps the children wanting to learn more about Christianity.’
Tell us something you like about the school. Tell us something the school could improve on.
We received eight comments overall, a mixture of praise and points to consider for improvements – thank you for all the comments.
The survey results and the comments will be passed to Miss Beatson, as Head of School, who will review the feedback alongside me, as Head of Federation, in order to identify up to three key actions that we will do. Miss Beatson will also feed back to staff any particular concerns that were raised as well as – far more common – make sure staff are aware of the praise they’ve earned.
There's still time to enter...
…our 2019 Summer Competition!
St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to believe and achieve – and we want your child to celebrate this by creating the words ‘happy’ (for children up to Year 2) or ‘healthy’ (for children in Year 3 to Year 6) from letters that your child spots in the environment.
Here’s an example of a letter ‘h’ which we’ve found on the internet – somewhere in their surroundings, can your child find the five letters that spell ‘happy’ or the seven letters that spell ‘healthy’?
We found the example above on the internet, but it would be even better if your child were to take pics from real life – perhaps they could find all the images on one day out, or perhaps they set themselves a target of finding one letter every week of the holidays. Your child could spot ‘letters’ near their home or on holiday. They could make the letter shapes from their own body, stretched into different positions, or they could even ask different family members to create the shapes!
There will be four prizes of £15 book tokens – one for the best ‘happy’ word and one for the best ‘healthy’ word.
Please paste the words into a Word document – one side of A4 – and email to school (stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org) by Friday 06 September 2019.
Good luck!
Has your child been looking out for letters that spell 'happy' or 'healthy'?
St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to believe and achieve – and we want your child to celebrate this by creating the words ‘happy’ (for children up to Year 2) or ‘healthy’ (for children in Year 3 to Year 6) from letters that your child spots in the environment.
Here’s an example of a letter ‘h’ which we’ve found on the internet – somewhere in their surroundings, can your child find the five letters that spell ‘happy’ or the seven letters that spell ‘healthy’?
We found the example above on the internet, but it would be even better if your child were to take pics from real life – perhaps they could find all the images on one day out, or perhaps they set themselves a target of finding one letter every week of the holidays. Your child could spot ‘letters’ near their home or on holiday. They could make the letter shapes from their own body, stretched into different positions, or they could even ask different family members to create the shapes!
There will be four prizes of £15 book tokens – one for the best ‘happy’ word and one for the best ‘healthy’ word.
Please paste the words into a Word document – one side of A4 – and email to school (stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org) by Friday 06 September 2019.
Good luck!
St James' Ofsted inspection
As parents and carers will know, our school was inspected by Ofsted at the start of June – on 02 and 03 July, to be precise.
We’ve seen a draft copy of the report. However, it’s Ofsted’s policy not to publish reports when schools are closed. This means we have to wait until the start of September before we can share with you the report’s findings.
In the meantime, thanks again for all the support during the inspection. (In fact, thanks for the support during the whole school year!) We hope you’re having a happy and healthy summer break.
The Lion King
Well done to all the children involved in The Lion King performance. It was a truly magical show with fantastic singing, dancing and acting.
Summer holiday competition
Each year, we invite children to enter a competition – last year, we enjoyed reading lots of postcards from around Yorkshire, the UK and the world.
This year, we’d like your child to get creative with a camera! We want our school to be a happy and healthy place to learn – and we want your child to celebrate this by creating the words ‘happy’ (for children up to Year 2) or ‘healthy’ (for children in Year 3 to Year 6) from letters that your child spots in the environment.
Here’s an example of a letter ‘h’ which we’ve found on the internet – somewhere in their surroundings, can your child find the five letters that spell ‘happy’ or the seven letters that spell ‘healthy’?
We found the example above on the internet, but it would be even better if your child were to take pics from real life – perhaps they could find all the images on one day out, or perhaps they set themselves a target of finding one letter every week of the holidays. Your child could spot ‘letters’ near their home or on holiday. They could make the letter shapes from their own body, stretched into different positions, or they could even ask different family members to create the shapes!
There will be two prizes of £15 book tokens – one for the best ‘happy’ word and one for the best ‘healthy’ word.
Please paste the words into a Word document – one side of A4 – and email to school (stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org) by Friday 06 September 2019.
Good luck!
Sports Day
Well done to all the children for showing resilience and determination in their races!
Summer Fair
Thank you to everybody who supported the school at the summer fair on Saturday. We raised close to £600! The PTA did a fantastic job of organising lots of stalls, food and drink- thank you.
Well done to all the maypole dancers and singers, too.
Summer Fair
On Saturday 29th June, 12pm-3pm, we are having our summer fair. The PTA have been very busy planning activities and stalls: raffle, tombola, bouncy castle, face painting, Wetherby High School and St James’ choir, maypole dancing, beat the goalie, food/drink and so much more………
Thank you to everybody who donated tombola prizes on Friday- this has been an enormous help!
If you are able to help on the day, then please sign up on the sheet in the school office.
We look forward to seeing lots of you there!