This is the direct link for you to fill in the questionnaire for ESTYN:

https://vir.estyn.gov.uk/questionnaires/pages/ParentLogin.aspx?lang=en-GB&id=08551

Please note all questionnaires need to be completed by April 6th.

Many thanks,

Mrs Robbins

Dear all,

We have received notification that we will be inspected by a team of ESTYN inspectors from May 8th-11th. We will be sending a letter home this week and posting on this website a link for you to access a parent questionnaire. Please can we ask all of you to take the time to fill these in as they are a really important part of the Inspection and your views are important. Some of the children in the Juniors will also be filling in questionnaires for the inspection during school time. The deadline for all questionnaires is April 6th, so they all need to be done by the time we finish for Easter.

During the first day of the Inspection (May 8th) there will be a meeting for parents with the inspectors at 3.45pm in the Junior School Hall. We will provide a crèche type facility for any parents who would like to attend but have younger children. This will be in the Nursery. Any parents who wish to attend and have children in the school we will provide care for them in one of the Y3/4 classrooms. We really hope that as many of you as possible will be able to attend.

We are all looking forward to the inspection and are sure our children will impress them!

The inspection will be taking place during National Test Week for Y2-6 but the tests will run as normal during this time.

Thank you!

It is time for Y5 to start French Club. If you filled in a permission form at the start of the year your child automatically has a place.

This will take place on a Wednesday after school from 3.15-4pm. This will start for Y5 pupils on Wednesday March 15^th and run until the end of the summer term.

Welsh Government's Categorisation of Schools

School's are given a colour rating based on a number of factors. The ratings are explained below:

Green - highly effective schools

Yellow - effective

Amber - in need of improvement

Red - in need of greatest improvement

The rating a school gets, also reflects how much support the school is entitled to from the local authority and the school's advisor.

Green - 4 days

Yellow- 10 days

Amber - 15 days

Red - 26 days

We have been rated as amber - in need of improvement. This rating is based on two key areas. The first is on the data of the school and the second is based on the school's capacity to improve.

The school's data is always very tricky. We are compared with other schools across Wales. However, most other schools we are compared with don't have a Special Needs Resource Base. Our data will always be lower than other schools, therefore it is not really a fair comparison.

However, we have made considerable improvements in our data. For example at the end of the Juniors the % of children reaching the expected level in 2015 was 78% and at the end of this year we are on track for 83%. This is a real improvement, although we would like the figure to be 88% next academic year.

Our advisor in his categorisation report is really pleased with the improvements we have made over the last 2 years as a school and has said,

"This school now feels like a yellow school and I'm sure it will be in the next round of categorisation."

The amber rating acknowledges that we still have improvements to make but we are certainly on track and going in the right direction.

We have included some sections from our advisor's report about the categorisation that we hope you will find encouraging.

• Leadership at the school has developed into a strong partnership. The Head and Deputy have a clear vision and strategy for improvement and work effectively to achieve these aims. This vision is shared by staff and governors.

• Staff have clear expectations and all are now responding to the greater challenge.

• The school has comprehensive monitoring procedures in place to support effective self-evaluation. There is a clear monitoring timetable in place which is closely adhered to. Issues identified through the monitoring process are followed up to ensure a direct impact upon teaching and learning.

• The monitoring of teaching is effective and has been externally verified. Teaching staff have improved practice and nearly all teaching is at least good.

If you have any further questions about the categorisation please don't hesitate to come and ask us.

Mr Saunders and Mrs Robbins

We are really pleased to share with you that due to all the hard work on attendance, working with you as parents,  we have raised our whole school attendance to 95%! This is a huge improvement on our previous attendance figure and we would like to say a big thank you for helping us with this. We know that now we have better attendance the children will make more progress with their learning. If we could just raise attendance by 1 more % to 96% we would then be in line with the local authority target

We really hope we can keep this figure at 95% and even improve to 96% as we go into the Summer term. Attendance in school is so important.

Thank you very much!

There will be no French club on Wednesday January 25th as I  have to go to a meeting in another school.

Thanks very much,

Mrs Robbins

Please can we ask all parents and guardians to be respectful with their use of social media and especially Facebook?

Whilst these sites have many things that are great about them, they can also cause a large amount of damage.

As a school we will not be prepared to tolerate any personal comments about members of staff on these sites. These will be referred to our Chair of Governors in order to consider how they should be dealt with.

If you have any concerns or complaints please come and see us. We also have a Complaints Policy and Procedure which can be found on this website or a copy requested from the school office.

Thank you.