Please check your child’s school bag for an information pack about school routines, reminders and policies. One pack was issued per family.
Nursery Care Inspection Success
As you know, in February our nursery underwent a Care Inspection under the new model of inspection.
They graded us:
- Quality of care and support 5 – Very Good
- Quality of management and leadership 4 – Good
Some of the positives from the report included:
- We found the nursery to be welcoming with a warm and friendly atmosphere.
- Children experienced kindness and compassion from staff that used physical affection, for example high fives and cuddles, to ensure children felt
supported and secure. - The service provided different opportunities for parents to stay and participate in their child’s nursery experience, including termly ‘stay and play’ sessions.
- A nursery blog, weekly newsletter and online learning journal were in place to share updates with parents.
- Children requiring additional support had individualised plans in place which were subject to regular review.
- Staff worked in partnership with other professionals, such as speech and language therapists and a link educational psychologist to ensure children experienced consistent and stable support.
- It was evident staff valued snack time and understood the learning opportunities and positive experiences it could provide. Children enjoyed an unhurried snack in a relaxed atmosphere with many different conversations and social interaction taking place.
- Children were encouraged to be active and had daily access to a well-equipped nursery garden.
- Staff supported children to risk assess independently by teaching them how to make judgments based on their
individual abilities. - Staff told us they felt supported by the senior leadership team and all newly appointed staff confirmed they had a mentor to support their integration into the team.
- Pumpherston and Uphall Station Community Primary School
had experienced a number of recent changes, including staff roles and responsibilities, and their overarching approach to play, learning and development. The changes had been well led and managed, and were having a
positive impact on children. - We found a strong commitment from senior leaders and staff to collegiate working within the setting and wider learning community.
You can read the full report here:
Nursery Care Inspecorate Report 2019
The positive finding of this reports reflects effectively our nursery team work together to provide high quality learning experiences and care for our children.
Tempest Group Photos – P1, P7 and Basketball Team
On Wednesday 1st May we will have group photos for P1, P7 and our basketball team taken by Tempest Photography.
Primary 1 children should wear their school uniform as usual on that day.
Primary 7 children should wear their school tie and a shirt, if your child needs to borrow a shirt from the office can you please let the office staff know in advance. We would request that the P7 children also bring along their leavers’ hoodie so that we can get a group photo of them. They can also wear their hoodie to their trip later that afternoon.
Any child who has played in our basketball team will also have a photo. We have school shorts and a team t shirt for these children to wear for the photo.
Thank you!
Thank you to everyone for your kind wishes this week, I am so delighted to have been made permanent here at PUSCPS.
Miss Burton
News from Miss Burton
It is with great excitement that I am writing to inform you that today I was appointed as Head Teacher of Pumpherston and Uphall Station Community Primary School.
Over the past 15 months, I have developed a passion, understanding and complete commitment to the PUSCPS community and I am delighted to be writing this letter to you as the permanent Head Teacher of our school. I would like to thank our whole school community for their support during my time as Acting Head Teacher here at PUSCPS. I know the last year has been a time of uncertainty for us all with acting posts but now Mrs Cougan and myself are excited about the road ahead and leading our whole school community through the next part of our journey to excellence and equity.
My vision will drive forward our school motto of ‘Positive understanding supports confident personal success’. As you know, I believe that every child deserves a champion to ensure that they can become the best they can be. I feel that our children should be at the centre of all the decisions we make, and that our school should continue to develop its positive reputation in our community.
This session we will continue with driving forward our school improvement plan, with a focus on enhancing digital learning, raising attainment in writing, developing positive mathematical mindsets, a focus on emotional literacy and improving our approaches to profiling.
I will endeavour to continue to improve our strong links and communication, with our families and wider community. I know that we will continue to work together in the best interests of our children. As you know, I believe in having an open door policy, so if you have any suggestions, ideas or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Ultimately, I hope that our children take away happy memories from their primary school experience and that they remember the events, people and the learning that made school memorable for them, enabling them to develop and demonstrate our school values.
It was lovely to share the news with our children this afternoon, and see the excitement and joy in their wee faces. Here’s to our exciting new chapter at Team PUSCPS!
Miss Burton
School Photographs – 26th February
The school photographer will be in school on Tuesday 26th February 2019 to take individual and group photographs.
ALL PUPILS will be photographed individually and in family groups where applicable, unless contact has been made with the school prior to this date.
A “proof” of the photographs will be sent home to you to and there will be several different photo pack options to choose from, if desired.
Morning nursery children should arrive at nursery promptly on this day as they will be the first to have their individual and sibling photographs taken.
Afternoon nursery children should arrive at nursery at the usual time of 12.18pm and they will be taken for their individual and sibling photographs by their teachers during the normal session.
I have arranged for the photographer to take photographs of pupils with younger brothers and sisters who do not attend the school. These photographs will be taken on Friday 1st March in the library, commencing at 8.30am. There will be a time slot system in place for these photographs and the school will inform you of your time.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the school.
Communication Survey Feedback
Following a recent Parent Partner meeting, we sent out a survey to all families from nursery to primary 7 to evaluate our approaches to communicate. 10% of families responded to the survey; a sample from each year group responded, including nursery.
Profiling @ PUSCPS
This session we are looking at improving our approaches to profiling. At our recent inservice day staff looked at our current approaches to profiling and some changes we would like to trial following some professional reading.
Please see below an overview of profiling in our school. We will be asking you for your feedback on some of our current and new ideas over the school session.
P4-7 Pupil Profiling Survey
As part of our school improvement plan, Primary 4-7 took part in a survey to evaluate our approaches to profiling. They were asked to score out of 6 if they agreed with the following statements from How Good Is OUR School? The feedback will support us with making improvements to our profiling approaches.
The results are as follows:
- Everyone in our school has opportunities to be able to develop a variety of different interests, talents and learn new skills. 5.13
- Everyone in our school can take part in a group, club, team or activity beyond normal class time if they want to. 5.26
- Our school keeps accurate records of pupil participation and achievements and helps us to recognise their importance of these. 4.85
- At all stages of school we have good opportunities to take responsibility through organising and leading activities. 5.13
- We can talk confidently about the skills we are gaining as a result of leading and organising aspects of school life. 4.91
- We are getting better at knowing when our skills are improving and being able to talk about this. 5
- We have a good way of recording our knowledge and skills and this shows how we are building on the skills we have developed. 5.3
- Our school knows and is interested in building on the skills we are learning out of school. 4.96
- Our achievements are recognised, valued and celebrated by our school and community through a range of ways which help build our self-esteem and confidence. 5.09
