Kings Park Primary School
Newsletter
December 2015
Dear Parents and Carers
Yesterday’s Church Services were clearly enjoyed by everyone and we were delighted to have
found a solution to this year’s seating problem. It is always a delight to watch such talented young
musicians, choirs and performers!
Term 1 has, as always, been very busy. The children have experienced a wide range of educational
experiences and opportunities. Many children have experienced a sense of wider achievement
through sporting or cultural activities. Please feel free to look at all the different class pages on
the website to get a ‘taster’ about the range on experiences on offer to King’s Park Pupils.
Relationships and Behaviour
Whether learning is taking place in school or out of school on excursions, King’s Park pupils continue
to do us proud. We never expect a child to ‘be perfect’ ... none of us are! We do ask that all the
children are willing and able to learn from any mistakes and to treat each other in a respectful
way. All of the staff do a huge amount of work, along with parents, to help children learn about
how relationships can be built and maintained over time. We have been joined this term by some
Polish speaking families and it has been delightful to watch the children bridge the language
barrier together! Lots of ‘Charades’ type gesturing to each other goes a long way to build
friendships in these circumstances. Later in January, we have some American children enrolling
with us for a few months and we look forward to getting to know them and explore how our
different education systems work.
P1 intake Session 2015 / 2016
Our P1s deserve a special ‘pat on the back’ for settling so well into school life! There is a gentle and
well planned transition from Nursery to Primary 1 which supports the children’s diverse range of
academic and emotional needs at this important point in schooling. It was great to see so many
positives come out of the recent parental ‘settling in’ survey. Many thanks to Ms Davidson and the
P1 team for all their hard work to accomplish this.
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Attainment and Achievement
Our attainment results continue to be in line with or exceed Midlothian and National averages. We
use attainment data to help us plan for appropriate interventions. These interventions regularly
come in the form of:
Enhanced support from the class teacher
Input from a Learning Assistant (directed by the teacher or Support for Learning Teacher)
Input directly from a Support for Learning Teacher
Ongoing monitoring or input from the Headteacher or Dupute Headteachers
Specialised input from Services such as Behaviour Support, Speech and Language, Children’s First
Workers, Social Workers, Children and Families Workers.
Staffing
I’m delighted (and relieved!) that our staffing has remained stable overall so far this school year
and we have been able to keep our Support for Learning Teachers away from having to cover
classes. We have advertised the P6 vacancy and will be interviewing on 13th January.
Nursery staff vacancies are also being advertised and we hope to be interviewing for those posts
the week beginning 11th January.
The Support for Learning department will continue to be line managed by me while Mrs Orr is
covering in P4b. We have a well organised structure of meetings and make every effort to
communicate diary dates one or two months in advance so that parents are able to come in and
discuss their child’s progress.
New Communication Systems
The website calendar is still very much ‘a work in progress’ and we appreciate your patience while
we get fully up and running with this. We have decided that it will run more smoothly to have just
one person responsible for the uploading of dates and information. School Admin, Mrs Baillie, will
be taking this on in the New Year once she has had a bit of training from Mr Bowen. Mr Bowen
kindly offered his skills and expertise and helped create our fantastic looking website. We met
recently to review the parts of the website that need updating and will be busy working on that in
the new year.
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January INSET
Staff return to Work on 5th January 2016 (Pupils return on the 6th ) The January INSET will be
spent working on:
Planning systems for the teaching of French P1-P7
Moderatiing teacher judgements of pieces of writing
Refreshing our Child Protection Training.
Parent Council and PTA
Once again, the PTA have been busy helping raise money for the school. Many thanks to everyone
who contributes to this! The money being raised this year is being targeted towards the constant
refresh and extension of reading resources.
The most recent Parent Council Meeting was very well attended and we look forward to being in a
position of appointing a new Chair and Secretary early in February.
I would like to thank all families in our school community for their continued support and
appreciation, which we evidence through the feedback we receive throughout the year.
Wishing everyone a lovely Christmas break. We look forward to seeing you again on January 6th.
Kindest regards
Arlene Limerick and staff