The trip to Robinwood probably seems a long time ago, but it’s certainly not been forgotten! It was a 3 day adventure holiday at the Robinwood Activity Centre, Todmorden for all Key Stage 2 Children in December 2011.

There have been many reports of it being the ‘best trip ever.’

The activities included ‘the leap of faith’, night line, Piranha Pool, Canoeing, Climbing, Bouldering and lots more. Even the parents gave it the thumbs up because the children came home with freshly laundered clothes!

Definitely a place to consider again for the future.

The survey results have been collated and were available for us to review.  The responses were reasonable in number and we are glad to report that they were positive.  A number of the parent responses specifically asked for a Mathematics evening.  We believe this is partly as a result of the positive feedback from the recent reading evening.  One shall be arranged so please keep an eye out for the invitation.  The results from the children’s survey was a delight to read and very positive.  The children shall receive their feedback directly from Mrs Webster and you all should have received a summary letter that was sent home with the children by now.

If you have an issue to discuss with your child’s teacher you do not have to wait until parents’ consultation. If you have a concern please contact school and they will arrange a meeting as soon as possible. In a similar way teachers will inform parents if they have a concern.

Every Governing Body has a statutory responsibility to establish and monitor its school’s policies and evaluate the effectiveness of the school and its curriculum. Governors are also held to account for their own school’s performance.  The Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED) assumes that Governors know the strengths and weaknesses of the school, and will test that assumption during a school inspection.  One of the best and most effective ways in which a Governor can get to know about their school is to visit during the school day and see it at work, talking to staff and pupils and finding out what happens in the school and the classrooms.  We have tentatively agreed the plan for this academic year.

Lastly, many of you may have noticed that there have been some changes to class 1.  If you have not seen the alterations to the building I do recommend you take a look.  As you enter from the stairs you will find the toilet has been moved into the right hand corner. The corner which used to house the toilet is now substantially glass.  This is primarily designed to allow complete visibility of the children who choose to be outside under the new covered area.  I think you will agree that it also brings much more light into the room.

Please feel free to leave me any comments below.

Regards Paul Cotton

We are currently running our annual school survey.

The parent questionnaire is now available to complete at the Survey Monkey site, a text will be sent out to all parents with the unique code needed to access the questionnaire.

If you miss the text please contact school for the code.

Click on this newsletter to open up the full document as a PDF

Safer Neighbourhoods is about the Police giving us a dedicated local team to make our area safer, cleaner and a more pleasant place to live.

At the last Safer Neighbourhood meeting some of the parents and governors attended and we asked the police to focus on some items that would make our children safer. As you can see from the newsletter above these were made police priorities over the last 3 months.

The meetings give us the opportunity for us to set the agenda in our area. The meeting has historically been in Heage or Sawmills but we have asked for the next neighbourhood Panel meeting to be held at Ambergate school. You can have a look at the web page that shows our school children speed testing on Newbridge Road and other local updates here.

Please come along if you can to support this meeting on 25th October 2011 7:00pm-8:00pm at Ambergate Primary School.

We started the year as we mean to go on.  Specifically we are reviewing strategies and potential options for improving the road safety of the children and indeed yourselves along Newbridge Road.  The Children have been surveying the traffic with the police for us and we hope that the police will continue to support this activity throughout the year. Please can you make every effort to park your car with the safety of others foremost in mind.  It is beneficial if people arrive, collect and leave with a minimal stay.  The Governors will be talking to those considered to be parked inappropriately.

This month we are pleased to report that the new class one shelter is complete and we will post a photograph shortly for those of you who don’t get the opportunity to visit the rear of the school very often.  This is a fantastic new resource for the early years children.

Being the new year we have reminded ourselves of the role and responsibility of a governor and in particular we have paid attention to the schools safeguarding policy. This is available on the schools policy page.

We received the school improvement plan which is quite substantial and will be reviewed in stages throughout the year in the various committees we attend.

As always I am interested to hear from you.

Regards

Paul Cotton