August/September 2022
Welcome back all families P2-7 and a warm welcome to our P1 families just starting out on their primary career! It has been lovely to be back into routine again and pupils have had a smooth start in their new classes…although there are a few tired faces just now! Only to be expected! Please have a read at important information below and, as always, please do get in touch if you have any questions or concerns.
Classes
This session we have 5 classes…
P1 with Mrs Mair (and Mr Thomson on a Friday)
P3/2 with Miss Bonner
P4/3 with Miss Kelly
P6/5 with Mrs Young and Mr Doherty
P7/6 with Miss Johnstone (and Mrs Steer on a Wednesday)
Mr Thomson is working in the Orchard this year
Mr Steer is supporting numeracy across the school.
Mrs Steer is supporting literacy across the school.
As you will see below, our attainment figures are healthy and we continue to seek our new and exciting strategies to keep pupils fully engaged in learning.
Attainment across the school
We are very proud to share our attainment information with you – it demonstrates just how hard our pupils and staff are working every day to achieve the best!
In reading achievement is 76%
In writing achievement is 73%
In listening and talking achievement is 84%
In numeracy our achievement is 80%
Almost all percentages have increased and there is a steady upwards trend…good news!!
Attendance
As we embark on another school session it is important to follow up on the above percentages by addressing attendance. If pupils do not attend school with great regularity, they will not achieve to their full potential. We spend a lot of time in school talking about why learning is important and the purpose of aspects of learning. I cannot stress enough that evidence tells us that our pupils who have the highest attendance in school also have the best achievement. At present our school attendance is around 95% – this is very good and tells us that we do not generally have an attendance issue. This is more great news!
Please do try to get your child to school every single day! I know some mornings can be difficult with tired grumpy children, but once they are here, almost all of the time, they are absolutely fine! Please also be assured that we will contact you if your child is unwell – we do care about the pupils and their health and wellbeing is of utmost importance.
Meet the teacher
Yesterday all parents (apart from P4/3 parents) were invited into school for an informal chat with the teacher, a look at some resources and a wee slice of pizza! This event was very well attended – thank you for taking the time to come along! The food looked good but was all gone when I went for a slice!!
I hope you found it useful. Parental partnership is absolutely crucial in your child’s learning journey. Children who have parents willing to engage with school (as much as they can) will achieve more. Your knowledge of your child is the best and we utilise that to best support your child in their learning. Parents have so much to contribute to the learning process! Pupils only spend approximately 15% of their life per school year in school. This means that they spend 85% of their life per school year out of school. We squeeze in as much learning as possible, but the majority of a child’s learning happens out of school! Parents, you are the main educator – steer your child to be the best person they can be!
Communication
In keeping with our environmentally friendly processes, we are trying to increase our email communication with families. Instead of having paper copies of letters and information, we will regularly email these out. Please check your emails every day if possible as we do always have lots of information to share! We have email contacts for almost all families, please let us know if your address changes.
North Glasgow Community Food Initiative
We work in close partnership with NGCFI. Their gardener Charlotte has already started fortnightly sessions with every class. Charlotte plans and leads each session with the support of class teacher where pupils will learn about food technology and science, in addition to literacy and numeracy. We continue to try to ensure pupils are learning outdoor as much as possible. It is fun, healthy and provides an exciting stimulus for learning.
School Improvement Plan
Every year we write a school improvement plan to keep us on track with the improvements we identify as part of our self-evaluation processes…surveys, questionnaires etc. Some of the work we will be doing…
- Increasing our attainment in literacy and numeracy – what will we do next to keep this moving in the right direction.
- LCFE – Language and Communication Friendly Establishment accreditation. This is to ensure effective communication for all learners throughout the school – no matter their level of need.
- Continue to increase our skills around digital literacy – everything changes at such pace…I think we will always be working on this!
- Continue good work on our LGBT journey with all pupils. Often with our primary pupils this focuses on ‘What makes Me Me!’ We celebrate our differences… eye colour, hair, hobbies etc.
- Engage in some new research and development work around ‘Anti-bullying’. We will never be blasé about bullying in Royston Primary, and we seek out consistent knowledge and understanding around the theme.
- Increase our parent/child working groups…as we now move away from lockdown and C-19 restrictions, we are able to welcome many of you back into school for all sorts of purposes! Look out for information on this! Lots of exciting opportunities for family learning.
Parental Partnership
In keeping with the above theme, I wish to thank those who participated in our parental partnership survey in June 2022. This information is really useful to us. We had 29 responses.
Everyone felt they had a trusting and respectful relationship with staff. The individual comments were very positive.
The majority (20 out of 29) felt they could contribute to their child’s learning. We wish to support parents in this more effectively by engaging in more parent and child learning activities. We hope to see an increase in this number over the coming session. There were a few comments about learning only being for ‘in school’ time. As suggested above, we all work together in the learning journey
Almost all (28 out of 29) felt that school are responsive to their child’s needs. This demonstrates that we have a good knowledge and understanding of your child and their learning style.
Almost all (28 out of 29) felt their child was happy and safe coming to school.
This is extremely positive feedback for us and helps us to strengthen the good work we have been engaging in. I would really like for more parents to engage in surveys. In this instance we had 29 responses out of a possible 88.
Homework
As a result of parental and pupil feedback, we are reviewing our homework procedures. There are aspects of our current homework plan that work well and others needing updated and refreshed. As a staff, we will be addressing this, using the information you shared via survey to help us. In the meantime you can expect reading and spelling homework to be coming out very soon. We will keep you updated on developments.
Sponsored Skip
We will be doing a bit of fundraising between now and Christmas! We have already booked some Christmas treats for the pupils and we need to up our school fund to support this!!
Pupils will take part in a sponsored skip on the 6th October. Pupils will engage in a range of skipping type activities, learn some skipping games etc over the course of the day. It will be great fun and I hope we will raise a bit of money!! Sponsor forms will be handed out nearer the time!
Parent Council
Our parent council is beginning to grow! It is great to see some new members join…still room for more though! The parent council support school in all sorts of ways and we rely on their input.
The parent council will be holding the Annual General Meeting on the 21st September at 9.15am in the school dining hall. All parents will be made very welcome. This is an excellent opportunity to strengthen parental partnerships. What better way to find out about your child’s learning in school than to be in the building and see!
A few usual items…
- Please remember we are a nut free school. We cannot have any products containing nuts at school. We have people with severe allergies and cannot be in the vicinity of nuts.
- Royston Primary promotes healthy lifestyles. We only allow water to drink in school – best for the body and best for the teeth. Pupils should not bring fruit shoots, fizzy drinks, capri suns etc into school – these things contain high levels of sugar. We also encourage pupils to bring healthy snacks – fruit or vegetable for example. Some pupils are shocked that we would ask this of them because they do not eat fruit and vegetables. It would be great if you could introduce your child to some healthy foods.
- Dress down day is ALWAYS the last Friday of the month. If we are on holiday the last Friday of the month then we miss dress down day, it does not get carried over to the following week! Usually dress down day costs 50p per pupil – this money goes straight to school fund!
- We have a soft entry system in Royston Primary. This means that pupils can arrive at school any time between 8.45 and 9.15am, and their teacher will be ready to welcome them. We do encourage pupils to aim for 9am though! This is good practice for having a time schedule and means that formal teaching input will begin a little quicker!
- Jewellery is not permitted when taking part in PE. This is not a school rule but one imposed by council. In order to satisfy our school insurance, all jewellery must be removed. If your child is unable to remove their own jewellery, please remove it before they come to school on gym days. I also get a little concerned when pupils wear jewellery to school in case it gets lost. Some items of jewellery are very precious and should always be kept at home.
Jane McShane
headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk
0141 552 2872
