Greenmill Primary School
and Nursery Class
Cumnock
East Ayrshire Council
25 January 2011
HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) inspects schools in order to
let parents1, children and the local community know whether their
school2 provides a good education. Inspectors also discuss with
school staff how they can improve the quality of education.
At the beginning of the inspection, we ask the headteacher and
staff about the strengths of the school, what needs to improve,
and how they know. We use the information they give us to help
us plan what we are going to look at. During the inspection, we
go into classes and join other activities in which children are
involved. We also gather the views of children, parents, staff and
members of the local community. We find their views very helpful
and use them together with the other information we have
collected to arrive at our view of the quality of education.
This report tells you what we found during the inspection and the
quality of education in the school. We describe how well children
are doing, how good the school is at helping them to learn and
how well it cares for them. We comment on how well staff,
parents and children work together and how they go about
improving the school. We also comment on how well the school
works with other groups in the community, including services
which support children. Finally, we focus on how well the school
is led and how staff help the school achieve its aims.
If you would like to learn more about our inspection of the school,
please visit www.hmie.gov.uk. Here you can find analyses of
questionnaire returns from children, parents and staff. We will
not provide questionnaire analyses where the numbers of returns
are so small that they could identify individuals.
1
Throughout this report, the term ‘parents’ should be taken to include foster carers,
residential care staff and carers who are relatives or friends.
2
The term ‘school’ includes the nursery class or classes where appropriate.
Contents
1. The school
2. Particular strengths of the school
3. How well do children learn and achieve?
4. How well do staff work with others to support children’s learning?
5. Are staff and children actively involved in improving their school
community?
6. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
7. Does the school have a clear sense of direction?
8. What happens next?
1. The school
Greenmill Primary School is a non-denominational school with a
nursery class. It serves the town of Cumnock. The roll was 348,
including 78 in the nursery, when the inspection was carried out in
November 2010. Children’s attendance was in line with the national
average in 2008/2009.
1
2. Particular strengths of the school
•
Children who are motivated, enthusiastic learners and have pride in
their school and nursery.
•
Children who work very well as teams to make decisions and share
their learning.
•
The work of the headteacher and staff in establishing the school’s
strong place within the community.
3. How well do children learn and achieve?
Learning and achievement
Children across the school are motivated, enthusiastic learners.
Children in the nursery class approach their activities with confidence.
They can make their own choices about what they like to do and are at
the early stages of planning their own learning in more depth. At the
primary stages, children work very well in groups. They communicate
clearly together to make decisions and share their learning
successfully with others. The planned introduction of personal
learning planning will help children be more clear about their strengths
and what they need to do to improve.
Children achieve success in many aspects of school life. Through
learning to play stringed instruments, children perform for others at
national events. Children enjoy sporting activities, such as, cycling
and athletics where they are becoming better at working in teams.
Children have gained skills in citizenship through enterprise activities
and by taking part in performances as choir members. Children
across the school are ready to build on their achievements in
sustainability.
2
Children in the nursery are making good progress in their learning.
They talk confidently and take part in discussions. Children enjoy
using books and are experimenting with writing in different areas of
their play. They like to count and know the names of a few shapes.
They are ready to extend their skills in literacy and numeracy further.
At the primary stages, most children attain appropriate national levels
in reading, writing and mathematics. In English language, children
listen and talk well. They read independently and took part in a fun
‛extreme’ reading challenge. Children write for a variety of purposes.
They are improving their sentence structure and know they are
extending the richness of their vocabulary. In mathematics, attainment
has been slower to improve. Children are beginning to use their skills
in more real-life experiences which they enjoy. Younger children are
gaining confidence in applying counting skills and older children can
complete written calculations accurately. Across the school, children
can identify accurately two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional
objects, and older children have a good understanding of work
involving angles. They are gaining confidence in applying problem
solving strategies.
Curriculum and meeting learning needs
Staff across the school are making positive progress in taking account
of Curriculum for Excellence. The curriculum offers good opportunities
for personal achievement through, for example, ‛forest schools’ and
residential visits. Staff are at the early stages of taking account of
children’s interests and ideas when planning topics to study in more
depth. As part of the programme on health and wellbeing, staff at all
stages, are enhancing the very positive ethos of the school through the
introduction of a new approach to building resilience and positive
relationships. Children at the primary stages benefit from two hours of
good quality physical education each week. Children in the nursery
class do not yet have enough outdoor learning experiences. Through
increasingly active approaches, children have improving opportunities
to develop literacy and numeracy skills across key areas of their
learning. Staff need to continue to deepen these approaches to
ensure they are challenging and build on children’s skills.
3
Staff throughout the school know children very well. In the nursery
class, staff provide activities which challenge most children. At the
primary stages, class activities are set at the right level of difficulty for
most children. Teachers share the purposes of lessons clearly and
increasingly provide more open-ended activities to enable children to
respond in their own way. Activities across the school now need to
build more consistently on what children already know. This will
enable groups of children to extend their learning at a more
challenging pace. Children who need extra help in their learning are
very well supported. Individualised approaches to teaching and
learning are planned in consultation with parents and support
agencies. As a result, children are making appropriate progress.
Homework tasks are regular and becoming more varied. Children
particularly enjoyed making three-dimensional models of local
landmarks.
4. How well do staff work with others to support children’s
learning?
Staff have worked together effectively to establish, very positively, the
school’s strong place within the community. Parents speak highly of
the school and recently showed a very high commitment to attending
individualised discussions about their child’s progress. The Parent
Council plays an active part and contributes, very generously, to the
school as a result of fundraising. The school deals well with any
parental concerns. It informs parents about aspects of health and
wellbeing, for example, sensitive health matters. The school works
very well with a range of partners. New opportunities in stringed
instrument tuition have been highly successful. Sports coaches and
nutrition advisors have made a positive difference to children’s
attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle. Staff guide children well as they
make the transition from nursery into P1. They now need to build on
their learning more effectively. Children transferring to Cumnock
Academy are well supported by a number of interesting transition
projects.
4
5. Are staff and children actively involved in improving their
school community?
Staff and children are involved in improving their school. The
reorganised ‛pupil voice’ and ‘communications’ groups are beginning
to enable children to play a more active part in school improvement
through sharing their views. Staff across the school work well together
as a team. They are at the early stages of building a community of
teachers which will help them be more reflective and focus deeply on
sharing effective learning and teaching. Staff have made important
improvements to attainment in reading. They are now developing
more consistent approaches to the teaching of writing. This is working
well. Staff have yet to focus rigorously enough on improving the
outcomes for all children in mathematics and numeracy. Whilst there
are clear systems in place to evaluate the work of the school, these
are not focused enough on how teachers themselves will improve the
outcomes for all children.
6. Does the school have high expectations of all children?
Children know that they are valued and treat each other with respect.
Staff have very high expectations of children’s behaviour and welfare
which has resulted in a calm, purposeful atmosphere around the
school. Staff are confident in their own approaches to protect all
children from harm. Children’s achievements are celebrated widely
which is encouraging them to participate enthusiastically in all aspects
of school life. Children are developing an informed understanding of
the values and beliefs of others. They take part in regular religious
observance which is well supported by members of the local clergy.
Staff and children work well together to promote healthy lifestyles
across the school.
5
7. Does the school have a clear sense of direction?
The headteacher has a clear vision for the school and is working very
hard to shape the school to reflect this. She has built a strong staff
team who are working effectively together across the school. The
headteacher is ably supported by enthusiastic depute headteachers
who have important leadership roles which are contributing well to
school improvement. The management team and staff now need to
build on their successes to continue to improve learning and teaching.
In doing so, the school, with the support of the education authority, has
the capacity to improve.
8. What happens next?
We are confident that, with support from the education authority, the
school will be able to make the necessary improvements in light of the
inspection findings. As a result, we will make no more visits in
connection with this inspection. The school and the education
authority will inform parents about the school’s progress in improving
the quality of education.
We have agreed the following areas for improvement with the school
and education authority.
•
Improve the outcomes of children’s learning experiences in
mathematics and writing.
•
Improve the outdoor experiences for children in the nursery.
•
Improve the self-evaluation approaches of all staff to track and
monitor the attainment and achievement of all children to ensure
appropriate pace and challenge in learning.
6
At the last Care Commission inspection of the nursery class two
recommendations were made. These have been addressed.
Quality indicators help schools and nursery classes, education
authorities and inspectors to judge what is good and what needs to be
improved in the work of a school and a nursery class. You can find
these quality indicators in the HMIE publications How good is our
school? and The Child at the Centre. Following the inspection of each
school, the Scottish Government gathers evaluations of three
important quality indicators to keep track of how well all Scottish
schools and nursery classes are doing.
Here are the evaluations for Greenmill Primary School and Nursery
Class.
Primary school
Improvements in performance
Learners’ experiences
Meeting learning needs
good
good
good
Nursery class
Improvements in performance
Children’s experiences
Meeting learning needs
good
good
good
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work of the school.
The curriculum
Improvement through self-evaluation
HM Inspector: Shona E S Taylor
25 January 2011
7
good
satisfactory
When we write reports, we use the following word scale so that our
readers can see clearly what our judgments mean.
excellent
very good
good
means
means
means
satisfactory
weak
unsatisfactory
means
means
means
outstanding, sector leading
major strengths
important strengths with some areas
for improvement
strengths just outweigh weaknesses
important weaknesses
major weaknesses
If you would like to find out more about our inspections or get an
electronic copy of this report, please go to www.hmie.gov.uk.
Please contact us if you want to know how to get the report in a
different format, for example, in a translation, or if you wish to
comment about any aspect of our inspections. You can contact us
at HMIEenquiries@hmie.gsi.gov.uk or write to us at BMCT,
HM Inspectorate of Education, Denholm House, Almondvale Business
Park, Almondvale Way, Livingston EH54 6GA.
Text phone users can contact us on 01506 600 236. This is a service
for deaf users. Please do not use this number for voice calls as the
line will not connect you to a member of staff.
You can find our complaints procedure on our website
www.hmie.gov.uk or alternatively you can contact our Complaints
Manager, at the address above or by telephoning 01506 600259.
Where the school has a nursery class, you can contact the Complaints
Coordinator, Headquarters, Care Commission, Compass House,
Riverside Drive, Dundee DD1 4NY, telephone 0845 603 0890.
Crown Copyright 2011
HM Inspectorate of Education