22 May 2012
Dear Parent/Carer
Stromness Primary School and Nursery Class
Orkney Islands Council
In March 2011, HM Inspectors published a report on your child’s school. Recently,
as you may know, we visited the school again. During our visit, we talked to children
and worked closely with the headteacher and staff. We heard from the headteacher
and other staff how the school has continued to improve. We looked at particular
areas that had been identified during the inspection in January 2011 and at aspects
of the school’s work, as proposed by the headteacher. As a result, we were able to
find out how well children are now learning and achieving and how the school is
continuing to support them to do their best. This letter sets out what we found.
How well do children learn and achieve?
Staff have improved the way children learn in the school. In the nursery class,
children are happy and settled. They listen very well in group situations and respond
appropriately to instructions and direction from adults. Children are confident when
speaking to adults and each other. Across the primary stages, children continue to
respond positively to opportunities to work with each other in pairs and small groups.
Staff have started to increase the ways in which children contribute to the life of the
school and wider community. They have introduced ways for children across the
school to work together. This is encouraging older children to develop their skills in
taking responsibility. Staff have started to reduce the number of learning activities
which focus on completing worksheets. This is helping make learning more
interesting for children. More needs to be done to develop children’s understanding
of what they need to do to improve their learning. In writing, children create texts for
a wider range of purposes. At the upper stages, children are developing their
confidence in talking about how they solve mathematical calculations. However,
children’s progress in English and mathematics continues to vary as they move
through the school.
How well does the school support children to develop and learn?
Staff are increasing their confidence in using the experiences and outcomes of
Curriculum for Excellence to plan children’s learning. They now need to make better
progress with Curriculum for Excellence to ensure children’s skills are developed
well enough across all areas of learning. The school now provides children with
appropriately regular opportunities for religious observance, including as part of
Education Scotland
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Transforming lives through learning
assemblies. Staff are continuing to improve approaches for supporting children
requiring help with their learning. They now make better use of arrangements to
identify and plan what help children with additional support needs require. In
mathematics, staff are beginning to provide activities which take greater account of
what children already know. There is still more work to be done to ensure activities
are at the right level of difficulty for all children and meet their learning needs. The
school has improved communication with parents through, for example, sending
home helpful learning logs, creating class ‘blogs’ and updating the school website.
Some parents would find it helpful to have more information which tells them how
Curriculum for Excellence will improve children’s learning and raise standards of
achievement.
How well does the school improve the quality of its work?
The school has improved aspects of its work since the original inspection. Staff have
benefited from valuable support from the education authority. Working relationships
between staff members are now more positive. Staff work together more as a team
to improve the work of the school. They have reviewed and updated the school’s
vision, values and aims. Staff are more involved in using self-evaluation to improve
children’s experiences and achievement. Increasingly, they reflect upon the learning
and teaching which takes place in their classrooms. They are keen to receive
detailed feedback about what they need to do to improve learning and teaching.
They require clear guidance on improving the work of the school to ensure that
effective approaches to learning and teaching are implemented consistently across
all stages. The pupil council now meets more regularly and has made improvements
to the life of the school, including creating a school newspaper, ‘the peedie press’
and selecting new games and activities for the playground. The headteacher
continues to monitor the work of the school in a variety of ways, including reviewing
teaching plans and carrying out observations of learning and teaching. She now
meets with groups of children to discuss their learning in classes. There is still a
need for the headteacher to take a strong lead. Overall, approaches to
self-evaluation are not yet rigorous enough to ensure that they impact on improving
learning, teaching and achievement consistently. The school and the education
authority need to continue to work closely together to ensure further improvements.
What happens next?
There is evidence of improvement in children’s learning since the original inspection.
However, there has not yet been enough improvement in other key areas of the work
of the school, including meeting children’s learning needs and self-evaluation. As a
result, we will continue to engage with the education authority to monitor progress.
We will carry out a further follow-through visit to the school within one year of the
publication of this report, and will report to parents on the extent of the improvement
that has been achieved.
Janie McManus
HM Inspector
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Please contact us if you want to know how to get the report in a different format, for
example, in a translation. You can contact us
at enquiries@educationscotland.gsi.gov.uk or write to us at BMCT, Education
Scotland, Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park, Almondvale Way,
Livingston EH54 6GA.
If you want to give us feedback or make a complaint about our work, please contact
01506 600200, or write to us at the above address or e-mail:
feedback@educationscotland.gsi.gov.uk.
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