Welcome!
We have had a fast paced and busy start to our new school session. Pupils and staff are back and raring to go! A huge well done to all our fantastic primary 1 pupils who have started their school career with real confidence and focus!
I do hope everyone had a lovely summer break and I look forward to seeing and chatting to all parents and carers in due course. As always, please do not hesitate to get in touch if you want to speak to me for any reason. Many Thanks for your continued support.
Jane McShane (Head Teacher)
Headteacher@royston-pri.glasgow.sch.uk
Tel 0141 552 2872
Staffing
Our staffing this session looks plentiful. We have managed to secure more than our allocation using our pupil equity fund money. I believe that the best resource pupils will have in school is staff and I am looking forward to some new initiatives we are set to put in place to ensure equity for all. Our parental surveys supported the plan for additional staffing and this is what we have undertaken to do. In addition to class teachers, we welcome back our play therapist Beverley Allen. She will be working very closely with some of our pupils. We are considering which pupils and groups Beverley will work with this session and will be in touch if this may relate to your child.
We welcome Miss Carmichael P4/3 and Miss Kelly P6/5 to our teaching staff team. The have come in full of energy and enthusiasm and I know you and your children will enjoy getting to know them!
I am delighted to tell you that Mr Steer and Miss Fraser have now been appointed principal teachers. This unfolded on the very last week of term due to Ms White’s retiral. Mr Steer and Miss Fraser join myself and Mrs Young as the management team and I’m sure you will agree they will be a superb asset! Our parental surveys tell us that you find all staff approachable in school – this is very positive. Remember if you wish to make an appointment to speak about sensitive issues, Miss Fraser, Mr Steer, Mrs Young or myself will be happy to arrange to meet you.
At the moment we have a support staff vacancy. I have already interviewed for this position and await council concluding all checks before confirmation of employment. I hope our new person will be in place soon!
COVID-19
Sadly we still have to concern ourselves with this challenge. At the present time according to the new guidance on safe opening of schools, we continue with all mitigations which were put in place last session. This is to remain for at least 6 weeks. I e-mailed a letter from Public Health out to all parents at the beginning of this session – 12th August. Please have a read at this if you haven’t done so already.
In short, if your child has Covid 19 symptoms, please continue as before by keeping them off school and booking a PCR test. If the test is negative, they can return immediately. If the test is positive they must isolate for 10 days.
If a household member tests positive please self-isolate and book tests for others in the household. If your child’s test is negative they can return immediately to school, even although they may be living with a person testing positive.
If a child in your child’s class tests positive, there will now be no requirement to isolate a whole class or groups of class – this is the biggest change.
Parental Views Term 4
I just wanted to give you an overview of the most recent parental survey from June. Thank you very much to the 38 parents who responded. Your views are extremely important to us and we reflect carefully on them.
Everyone felt their child was safe and achieving well in school. Almost all parents felt their child was supported and challenged well in school in addition to being active enough. 37 responders felt that their child was respected and included in school.
Almost all parents felt that our strengths were – relationship building, approachability and attainment. There were numerous very positive comments following with a few small things for us to consider.
I plan to send out a survey at the end of each term and would ask that you take a few minutes to complete this please. All staff have the chance to read these and reflect; this ultimately helps us to get things right for your child in true partnership working style!
Meet the Teacher
I issued a letter to you on Wednesday about our ‘Meet the Teacher’ event – Tuesday 31st August 1.45-2.45pm. This is a very informal chance for you to have a chat with your child’s teacher/s and find out a wee bit about how class works.
I hope you will manage to come to that. If you cannot come at the day/time and you would like to chat to the teacher, please let me know and I can arrange another time.
North Glasgow Community Food Initiative
Our partnership working with NGCFI continues to go from strength to strength. Our P7 pupils will begin cookery lessons next week with our super sessional cook Maggie. All P7 pupils will have the opportunity to work in the kitchen.
Gardening sessions will commence next week too. Our new youth gardener Yaz will start work with classes – exploring the outdoors and engaging in a variety of curriculum for excellence science, technology and social studies outcomes, in addition to literacy and numeracy. Using the outdoors to engage in crucial learning is very motivating and engaging for pupils and as such we welcome this work. If you want more detail on learning outdoors I am happy to provide this for you – please just ask!
Bullying
We are not so naïve to think that we never have any bullying incidents in school. If your child speaks of bullying I would urge you to get in touch without delay. We will do our best to work closely with you and your child to support and ultimately stop the bullying. However, often we hear the word bullying used frequently and freely in situations where this has, after investigation, clearly not been the case. With 115 children in school all day every day there will be feelings of frustration and annoyance amongst children and we need to work at supporting all our pupils to develop emotional regulation – being able to understand how they can cope with feelings of frustration and annoyance for example. This is a life skill- there will always be people in life who will annoy you! As an adult you will know this! It is absolutely crucial for pupils to develop these life skills themselves as they will have to manage this without a parent always advocating on their behalf. I look forward to your continued support and partnership in this matter.
Healthy drinks and snacks
I am a little disappointed to see the variety of unhealthy snacks and drinks some of our pupils are coming to school with. We continually try to pass messages of healthy eating and drinking onto pupils. Pupils can drink water at school. During class time pupils can drink plain water. Research proves that this actually enhances performance in the classroom – class teachers will encourage this. Pupils can bring flavoured water (eg lemon lime, strawberry) for break times although we do try to dissuade them from this as there is some sugar contained. We also try to encourage pupils to bring healthy snacks to school. A piece of fruit or chopped vegetables are excellent choices. Pupils are rewarded for making healthy choices in eating and drinking and can win a special active treat if their good choices become consistent.
Please try to provide your child with something healthy each day for a snack. Many pupils go to the shop on the way to school and I don’t think parents always know what they are buying to eat and drink! It might be worthwhile ensuring snack etc is bought in advance and then you will know what they are consuming! If snacks are in odd shaped packaging or strange colours/heavily dyed, we may look after their snack for them to bring home at 3pm to allow you to see what they had at school!
Nuts
Following on from above, please note that this is a nut free school. We have pupils with severe allergies to nuts and we cannot allow them in school. Buenos, nutella and peanut butter all contain nuts. Please avoid sending these into school.
School Improvement Planning
Every year, each school in Glasgow creates a School Improvement Plan. We must always do this in partnership with parents/carers, pupils and staff, and I wish to thank all parents/carers who took the time to complete our evaluation requests prior to the summer holidays. I know these are a chore for people but I cannot stress enough how much we need these to guide the way forward in the service we provide to our families.
This year we have 4 priorities and these are:
- Learning and Teaching – very simply to raise attainment in core areas – literacy and numeracy whilst threading work on health and wellbeing throughout. We feel our attainment data is not demonstrating slow and steady increase at the moment – mainly due to lockdowns and school closure. This is our year to strengthen and deepen our teaching and learning across the whole school.
- Curriculum – we wish to look at our given curriculum – Curriculum for Excellence – and personalise it to the pupils of Royston Primary. We will start off by refreshing our aims and school values and hope to engage with you and your children to do this. Our overarching question being – What matters in Royston Primary?
- Equality and Diversity – We look to increase knowledge and skill in staff and pupils of COP26 and Children’s Rights, considering how we thread these throughout our already busy curriculum in order to sustain a streamlined approach.
Snapshot Week
Feedback last session on snapshot week was very positive and so we have planned these in again for this session. During snapshot week your child will complete all tasks in a particular jotter. At the end of the week your child will bring this home and will need around 20-30 minutes with a parent/carer to speak about their learning. Please do make time for this. We know that when parents/carers engage in their child’s learning and development, their progress will be much better. It will also give you an insight into their work in school and what the get up to here!
Sorry for the overload of information! Start of term is always fairly busy!
Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss anything or ask any questions.
Jane McShane
