Staff and pupils at Fagley Primary School are celebrating being rated as outstanding in all areas by Ofsted.
In a glowing report the Bradford school was given the top inspection rating for the effectiveness of its leadership and management; the quality of its teaching and learning; pupils’ results; the personal development, behaviour and welfare of the children and for its early year years provision.
The report has been welcomed by the whole school community.
Head teacher Chris Parfitt said: “The report reflects the school ‘just as it is’ with sound statements reflecting the dedication and commitment of school staff and governors who are absolutely marvellous in their exceptional practice to enable every child to succeed and do their very best at school, at home and in the community, now and in the future”.
A group of Year 6 children read the report with a school governor and made the following comments:
“The report is fantastic – full of lovely comments about our school. The headteacher Mrs Parfitt, is a determined headteacher and she won’t stop until all children have achieved their standards. In her vision all pupils are stars in their own way”.
Inspectors said the headteacher’s vision that every pupil will make outstanding progress and aspire to be the best has helped to secure rapid improvements in the teaching and learning at Fagley Primary School.
The progress pupils make in reading, writing and maths by the end of their time in primary school is significantly above the national average.
Ofsted highlighted the exceptional curriculum which they say engages pupils very effectively. As a result, pupils at Fagley Primary thoroughly enjoy their education. The report also praises senior leaders for their work and governors who are said to be passionate in both their support for the school and their challenge of its leaders.
Inspectors say new staff are well supported in their roles and the quality of teaching is continuously improving.
Pupils and their families are cared for exceptionally well. Parents speak highly of the school and the support they receive from staff.
Ofsted said there are excellent relationships throughout school and behaviour is impeccable. Pupils are praised for respecting each other’s differences and work and play together harmoniously.
Judith Kirk, Bradford Council’s deputy director for education employment and skills said: “This Ofsted report is extremely positive about all aspects of school life at Fagley Primary School. Inspectors not only rate the education the school provides as outstanding but are also full of praise for the support and input of governors and parents and of the work and attitude of the pupils themselves. Everyone connected to the school deserves great credit.”
Head teacher Chris Parfitt said: “The report reflects the school ‘just as it is’ with sound statements reflecting the dedication and commitment of school staff and governors who are absolutely marvellous in their exceptional practice to enable every child to succeed and do their very best at school, at home and in the community, now and in the future”.
Sixth form students from Parkside School laid on afternoon tea for Jeffrey Roberts, one of Cullingworth village’s oldest residents to celebrate his 90th birthday.
A few days before the event the students assisted Jeffrey’s wife, Audrey, with the preparations for the celebration which was held at Cullingworth Thursday Club.
The students involved in the preparations were Cameron Allatt, Sophie Tankard, Charlotte Burton and Sophie Wood.
Parkside School sixth form has a long connection with the village’s club for senior citizens, and took over responsibility for running it when it was threatened with closure after 50 years. Students volunteer their time each week to help run sessions.
Pupils at Shirley Manor Primary Academy were rewarded for their Community Project following the support they provided to people in a local care home suffering with Dementia.
They won the Young Active Citizen Award in the Telegraph & Argus’ Community Stars Award at the end of last term.
The school’s Year 4 pupils (now in Year 5) had been taking part in the Archbishop of York scheme which required them to do a Community Project. This coincided with a visit to the school from Dementia Friends who taught the children about the effects of the condition and how to help sufferers.
Following the visit one of the pupils, Jake Lee, discussed this with his mum who works in a Dementia Care Home. Mrs Lee asked school if they would assist Rastrick Care Home with its Doll Therapy Scheme for Dementia sufferers – a non-pharmacological intervention aimed at reducing behavioural and psychological disorders in patients who are institutionalised.
The children originally chose to collect dolls and donations of money in order to buy some dolls for the home’s Doll Therapy scheme.
The School’s Learning Mentor nominated the class for the award which was presented to them by the Lord Mayor of Bradford, Coun Geoff Reid and Lady Mayoress, Chris Reid.
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Educate Positive, a regular publication which highlights excellence in education and across the district’s schools and settings. In this edition we look at another successful literacy initiative coordinated by the National Literacy Trust Hub in Bradford which is being rolled out to all schools, students’ success at the Rock Challenge, and how thousands of our young people have been educated in outstanding settings for a decade.
Thousands educated in outstanding settings
Thousands of young children in our district have been learning in outstanding settings for ten years. Both Lilycroft Nursery and Midland Road Nursery School have been given the top accolade by Ofsted for the fourth consecutive time.
Ofsted inspectors praise Midland Road for using its funding innovatively “through dance and outdoor play and teachers have woven the areas of learning skilfully into these sessions”.
Lilycroft Nursery School is praised for providing high quality teaching and provision for three and four-year-olds, and a safe, warm and exciting place for children to be. .
The two inspection reports mean that more than half of the nursery schools in the Bradford district are judged to be outstanding with the others all judged to be good.
Programme which tackles intolerance brings another win for Bradford
Bradford Council’s Strategic Manager for Education Safeguarding, Alina Khan, has been named as the 2016 Community Champion for Yorkshire and the North East in the first ever Remembering Srebrenica Charity Awards for the Stand Up Speak Out Make a Difference (SUSOMAD) Programme which has been running in our schools for the last seven years.
Bradford Council’s Strategic Manager for Education Safeguarding, Alina Khan, has been named as the 2016 Community Champion for Yorkshire and the North East in the first ever Remembering Srebrenica Charity Awards for the Stand Up Speak Out Make a Difference (SUSOMAD) Programme which has been running in our schools for the last seven years.
Via Alina (pictured above) and her team thousands of young people in the district have had the chance to be part of this Diversity & Cohesion programme which has helped them to challenge and reject hatred and intolerance.
This year the SUSOMAD work has enabled more than 100 Bradford school pupils to become young ambassadors to help raise awareness of the events in Srebrenica in which more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed.
Judges at the awards, run by the Remembering Srebrenica charity, said Alina’s work had helped inspire younger generations in Bradford to make their voices heard and to learn the lessons from history.
SUSOMAD has also been working in partnership with the Anne Frank Trust UK allowing pupils to help educate other children about Anne Frank’s life and the Holocaust, through an exhibition which tours Bradford schools. Since the launch of this project 1,400 Bradford pupils have become Anne Frank ambassadors and received training to help educate their peers.
For more information please contact Alina Khan, 01274 439384.
Raise in development levels in Early Years
A joint early years project in Bradford has raised low development levels in reception-aged children by more than double the Local Authority average.
The Early Language and Literacy Project was created by Bradford Council’s early childhood services and the National Literacy Trust’s Bradford Hub, in partnership with the Bradford Birth to 19 Teaching School Alliance (led by St Edmund’s Nursery School & Children’s Centre).
The project was rolled out to eight Bradford primary schools, with children’s centres across the district also being invited to take part, which promoted opportunities for joint working and information sharing between them and the schools.
The programme had a significant impact on those eight schools and findings have resulted in:
The number of children achieving a Good Level of Development (GLD)* score increased by an average of 9%, which is more than double the LA increase
The GLD scores across the eight schools increased by 12%
The gap between boys and girls achieving a GLD score narrowed by 18%
The programme was launched in response to the low GLD scores achieved by Bradford children, an issue which was particularly pronounced in schools in Bradford’s most deprived neighbourhoods. There was also a significant gap between genders, with boys achieving significantly lower GLD scores than girls.
The GLD measure is the most widely used single measure of child development in the early years. Children are defined as having reached a GLD at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) if they achieve at least the expected level in areas including communication and language, social development, mathematics and literacy.
For more details please contact Imran Hafeez, 01274 439246 or Lynn Donohue, 01274 01274 439606.
Great win for Grove House pupils
Children who attend the Additionally Resourced Centre (ARC) at Grove House Primary School entered the Living Paintings Great Cake Bake Challenge and won! The ARC helps children who have visual impairment, and the school’s entry into the competition was inspired by the publication of the latest book from author David Melling creator of Hugless Douglas and the Great Cake Bake.
David will be making a ‘virtual visit’ to Grove House Primary to talk to the children about how he creates his books and to give them a private preview of his latest project.
For more information please contact Grove House Primary School, 01274 636921.
Poetry success for schools
Following a successful pilot in four of our schools the National Literacy Trust Hub has announced that all other primary schools in the district will have access to the Our Stories poetry programme.
The aim of Our Stories is to engage pupils with lower literacy levels by fostering a love of creative writing, with a particular focus on boys. As part of the programme, pupils took part in innovative workshops with local performance poets, who encouraged them to explore their identity, personal challenge and ambitions through poetry.
To build on the excitement of these sessions, teachers were provided with a resource pack containing a wide range of poetry activities for the classroom. Local poets and spoken word artists including Joolz Denby and Dumi Senda donated their work to be included in the pack.
One of the schools involved in the programme was Horton Park Primary.
Data from the school shows:
The percentage of Year 6 pupils writing at the expected level doubled (from 46% to 92%)
36% of pupils are now writing above the expected level
100% of the pupils who took part in the programme made good progress, and 64% made outstanding progress
As a result of the success in the pilot schools, the Our Stories resource will now be provided free to all primary schools for teachers to use with their Key Stage 2 classes. A training session will also be held in the New Year for teachers who are interested in delivering the programme. This has been made possible by generous funding from Bradford Primary Improvement Partnership (BPIP).
There will be a training session in March for schools interested in taking part in the programme. Please contact Imran Hafeez on the number below for details.
The photo shows the pupils on a visit to a local museum using what they saw to inspire their writing.
Parkside student, Jake Taglione, proved that collaborative working between schools and hospitality employers pays off as he won a place to compete in the regional final of the Springboard’s Future Chef Competition in February 2017.
Parkside student, Jake Taglione, proved that collaborative working between schools and hospitality employers pays off as he won a place to compete in the regional final of the Springboard’s Future Chef Competition in February 2017.
The Future Chef programme directly relates to the national curriculum and gives young people a life skill whilst developing their culinary skills and their understanding of nutrition.
Jake’s winning menu consisted of Gressingham duck with flambéed passion fruit followed by chocolate fondant with a stout ice-cream and a caramel tuile.
Annually over 8,000 young people take part in this programme aimed at 12-16 year olds.
For more information please contact Parkside School, T 01535 272752.
Parkside students excel at Rock Challenge
Students at Parkside displayed immense team working when they won three awards of excellence for the soundtrack, entertainment and video performance at the Rock Challenge event recently.
Students rehearsed for hours whether it was for the performance, helping backstage or working alongside the light/sound/video crew. This was an excellent experience for all concerned. Well done Team Parkside.
For more information please contact Parkside School, 01535 272752.
Copthorne receives its Challenge Award
Pupils at Copthorne Primary School made the grade when presented with the challenge of “being the best that they can be.”
The school was visited by NACE (National Association for Able Children in Education) who presented its prestigious Challenge Award at the end of last term.
NACE is a not-for-profit organisation which supports teachers to provide teaching and learning for able, gifted and talented pupils, and also provides challenge for all pupils to help them reach their potential.
The Award was about how the school was challenging all pupils but, in particular, those identified as more able and talented. The NACE assessor visited classrooms to observe lessons, carried out scrutinies of planning and work to ensure that children were being stretched at all times, interviewed pupils, parents, governors and teachers to triangulate the evidence about how our pupils are challenged. The assessor explored the school’s policies, school development plan and subject action plans to ensure that provision for More Able learners and challenge were explicit.
For more information please contact Christabel Shepherd, Head of School, 01274 501460.
If you would like to share some of your success and achievement stories in a future edition of Educate Positive please contact Alyson.hardaker@bradford.gov.uk or ring her on 01274 434673.
Staff at two nursery schools in Bradford are celebrating being given a top grade by Ofsted for the fourth inspection in a row – meaning they have been rated as outstanding for ten years.
Lilycroft Nursery School and Midland Road Nursery School have both been judged to be outstanding in new reports praising the quality of early years education they provide.
For both nursery schools it is the fourth consecutive time they have achieved this – having first been rated as outstanding back in 2007 in their first inspections after this top grade was created by Ofsted.
Ofsted inspectors praise Midland Road for using its funding innovatively “through dance and outdoor play and teachers have woven the areas of learning skilfully into these session”.
The school employs a dance specialist and a forest school specialist to deliver these sessions and was able to demonstrate the significant impact on children’s learning and progress.
Parents say the nursery school is “brilliant” and staff are “excellent at treating children as individuals, developing their interest and helping them to make progress.”
Headteacher Sharon Hogan said: “I was delighted that the inspector recognised that the staff team is a strength of the school. We have a great mixture of experienced and younger colleagues who together ensure that Midland Road not only continues to be outstanding after so many years but has also been able to grow and expand the work that it does.”
Lilycroft Nursery School is also given glowing praise in its new report published today. Inspectors say the school provides high quality teaching and provision for three and four-year-olds.
The report says Lilycroft staff have created “a safe, warm and exciting place for children to be. Parents say how excited their children are about coming to school.”
It adds: “Teachers plan effectively to offer open-ended activities which allow children to take their learning as far as they are able, and children have the confidence to do this.”
It also praises the school for working hard to involve parents in their child’s reading and supporting them to do this effectively. Inspectors say parents have valued this support and comment on how well their children are progressing, particularly with language development.
The two inspection reports mean that more than half of the nursery schools in the Bradford district are judged to be outstanding with the others all judged to be good.
Two other Bradford nursery schools have been rated as outstanding by Ofsted. Canterbury Nursery and Centre for Children and Families, was given this rating earlier this year and St Edmunds’s Nursery School and Children’s Centre was rated as outstanding at its inspection last year – for the third time in a row.
Anne-Marie Merifield, who is executive head at both Lilycroft and St Edmund’s said: “Our successful Ofsted reports show the impact nursery schools can have. For us it shows the importance of having qualified teachers working with children to give them a good grounding so that they are able to make the most of school when they start their formal education.”
Coun Imran Khan, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Education, Employment and Skills said: “These reports are a credit to everyone involved at Lilycroft and Midland Road Nursery Schools. It is great to see that all of the nursery schools in the Bradford district are rated as good or outstanding giving us a great foundation to build upon.”
Dedicated volunteers who strive to make a difference in their local communities will be recognised for their hard-work in the sixth annual Community Stars Awards which open for nominations today.
The honours are organised by the Telegraph & Argus and Bradford Council in a bid to ensure unsung heroes across the district are properly rewarded.
We are asking for nominations for those people who have voluntarily have gone out of their way to help others.
Nominations will be whittled down by a panel of judges before a public vote from a shortlist of nominees.
Category winners will be announced at a ceremony at The Midland Hotel, on December 7, and presented with the Bradford Medal.
This year’s awards are part of the People Can Make a Difference campaign which aims to recognise the voluntary work already being carried out in the district. It encourages people to make a difference in a number of ways, such as being neighbourly, through community action or volunteering, as well as raising money for local projects.
The awards are sponsored by Better Start Bradford and this year include the Better Start Bradford Outstanding Contribution Award.
This is intended to highlight efforts made by volunteers working with children under four, their families and the wider community as part of Better Start Bradford schemes in the Bowling, Barkerend, Bradford Moor and Little Horton areas of the district.
The project aims to give babies and children in these areas of Bradford a better start in life.
Councillor Abdul Jabar, the council’s portfolio holder for neighbourhoods and community safety, said: “The people of Bradford have a proud tradition of volunteering and getting involved in helping their communities so we are delighted to be working with the Telegraph & Argus to acknowledge residents who go the extra mile.
“There are lots of people who deserve a Community Stars award and I urge local people to get involved and nominate someone who has made a real difference.”
A teacher at Shirley Manor Primary Academy in Wyke, Bradford has won a prestigious national science award.
Judith Carnelley has been chosen to receive one of the Primary Science Teaching Trust (PSTT) Awards for 2015.
The awards celebrate the outstanding teachers in primary science doing incredible work in inspiring children at schools across the country.
Judges said it is a major achievement by Judith, all the more so as they had considerable difficulty in choosing between the high-calibre nominations.
Judith is a Specialist Leader in Education (SLE) for the Bradford Birth to 19 Teaching Alliance and has had responsibility for planning and delivering the science teacher training modules for Initial Teacher Trainees in 2015 and 2016. This has involved four cohorts of trainees attending Shirley Manor for hands-on science training and active learning with pupils.
The awards were established in 2003 and they are presented during the Annual Primary Science Teacher College Conference, which this year takes place on 3-4 October in Bristol. This gives family, friends and colleagues the chance to join in the celebrations of these amazing teachers. A trustee from the PSTT will also visit Judith in school on another date to present the award.
Teachers who win the award support colleagues in their own and other schools either locally, regionally or nationally to raise the profile of science.
Maureen Neill, Headteacher at Shirley Manor Primary Academy, said: “Judith has worked at Shirley Manor Primary Academy (SMPA) since 2010 and has played a key part in our journey from Primary School to Primary Academy. She has embraced her role as Early Years Leader and Science Co-ordinator with great energy and enthusiasm.
“In 2012 Judith led our school to achieve the Primary Science Quality Mark at Gold standard; we were the first Bradford Primary school to achieve this. Judith is now working as a regional Science Hub Leader and trainer for the PSQM (Primary Science Quality Mark). She also works alongside colleagues in STEM to improve local learning and research opportunities for local students and young people.
“Judith works tirelessly to lead and further develop science within our school, across Bradford and the region. She trains teachers and student teachers and feedback from these sessions is consistently highly positive.”
Judith Carnelley said: “I am thrilled to have achieved this award. It is really nice to be recognised for all the science work I have done. Science is such an important part of the curriculum and I thoroughly enjoy my part in sharing my knowledge of science teaching and learning.”
Michael Jameson, Bradford Council’s Strategic Director of Children’s Services, said: “Congratulations to Judith on receiving the prestigious Primary Science Teaching Trust Award, what a fantastic personal achievement. This is in recognition of her outstanding contribution to development of science teaching and learning at Shirley Manor Primary Academy and in the wider community.”
Registered childminder Ann Corbet, from Bradford South, who was awarded a British Empire Medal in 2015, will be travelling to Buckingham Palace in 2016.
Ann, who was awarded the BEM for services to children in the Queen’s birthday honours list has been invited to a garden party at the palace which will take place in May this year.
Ann has been a registered childminder for 31 years and provided childcare and early education to over 300 children, including early education places for two-year-olds.
>Ann’s childminding has been graded as Outstanding by Ofsted, who said “The childminder is highly committed to working in partnership with others and takes a lead role in establishing effective working relationships with parents and other professionals. The welfare of the children is promoted exceptionally well and is significantly enhanced by the childminder’s policies, procedures and practice, which are implemented with a high level of consistency. Proactive systems are in place, which lead to continued improvement. Children’s learning and development is exemplary and they are achieving as much as they can. Therefore, the outcomes for children are excellent”.
Kay Holden, Sufficiency Officer for Early Childhood Services, said: “Ann is an inspiration and this is great recognition for all the hard work and dedication that she has shown in providing an excellent childminding service for children in Bradford South.”
Bradford Parents On The Go 