Dear colleagues,
Today is National Teaching Assistants' Day, and I wanted to begin there. I know from home what a demanding job it is. My wife works as a teaching assistant in a primary school, supporting children with high needs, and I have watched how much it asks of a person and how much it gives back. In our schools I see the same thing everywhere I go. Teaching assistants and HLTAs are not simply an extra pair of hands. The best classrooms work because the teacher and assistant read each other, share the load, and between them make sure the children who need most attention actually get it. Sometimes the teacher takes those pupils, sometimes the assistant does, and the point is that the decision gets made in the moment, quietly, by two adults who trust one another.
I want to widen the thanks beyond the classroom. Our support staff hold a great deal together and are too easily overlooked. The pastoral teams, attendance officers, ELSAs and family support workers who catch children before they slip. The site teams, cleaners, kitchen staff and midday supervisors who keep the buildings warm, fed and running. Office and reception staff, exams officers, technicians, librarians, our IT and data colleagues, and the business managers and finance officers who make the sums work. Central Services in HR, payroll, estates, governance and communications sit behind all of it. None of this appears in a headline, and none of it is optional.
A special word for our unpaid workforce. Trustees, members, local governors and our West Community Council members give their time for nothing but a belief that the children matter. So do our PTAs, PTFAs and Friends groups, the parents who hear readers or help on trips, the coaches and club leaders, and our faith and community partners. As a former head, I can tell you the strength you draw from people who turn up simply because they care is hard to overstate.
Much of my own week was spent alongside leaders preparing for Ofsted. We are expecting twelve or thirteen inspections this year, against three last year, so the rhythm has changed noticeably. We take the accountability seriously. As custodians of public money, and above all where the safety of children is concerned, proper scrutiny is right and we welcome it, even on the weeks it feels heavy. It is also a chance to let inspectors see the work our staff and pupils do every day.
I was also glad to join leaders from across Plymouth alongside councillors and the local authority, with whom we work closely. Without pre-empting the published figures in October, the early picture on outcomes across the city looks healthy at all key stages. Next week brings the launch of the Key Stage 3 Regional Alliance, which I sit on the board for. Those middle years of secondary school get forgotten too often, and they matter enormously, both academically and for everything else going on in a young person's life at that age.
Onto the schools, where the theme of this week showed up in some lovely ways.
Woodlands Park Primary turned 35, and the celebration was exactly the kind of thing I mean when I talk about community. Children spent the day looking back at photographs, learning what life was like in 1991 and hearing memories from staff and families, including one story about the chairs still being unwrapped as the first pupils arrived. It turns out Mrs Cooke was one of those very first children herself. The day finished with cakes from the WPFA and some of the old assembly songs. Generations of families and staff have shaped that school, and it showed.
Our primary settings have made a warm start to the year more widely. At St Breward, the new Reception children have settled beautifully into Seahorses Class and begun their reading and phonics with real enthusiasm. Boringdon and Chaddlewood are opening their doors to prospective families, and it is our office and reception colleagues, alongside pupils acting as guides, who make those first impressions count. Over at Woodford, the PTFA is already planning its Pumpkin Hunt, another example of volunteers giving up time so the children have something to look forward to.
In our secondary schools there has been plenty to be pleased about. A group of Year 12 and 13 students at Ivybridge completed their Gold Duke of Edinburgh qualifying expedition in the Lake District over the summer, which is no small undertaking. Callington awarded the first Year 11 hoodies of the year in recognition of two weeks of genuine effort, a small gesture that says a lot about how they want that year group to feel. At Plymstock, fifty Year 11 students gave up a Friday to revise Weimar and Nazi Germany with Mrs Davies ahead of their History mock, and the school's Musical Theatre Group continues to meet each week for anyone who fancies it.
Hele's welcomed prospective Year 6 families to a busy Open Evening, and Coombe Dean has opened a Spanish trip to Granada for next year's Enrichment Week, the sort of experience that widens a young person's sense of what is possible. South Dartmoor's Sparkle Project has been chosen for the Tesco Fruit and Veg Grants vote, so a blue token in the right box between now and November would help.
What connects all of this, from the 35 candles at Woodlands Park to a Friday revision session, is people choosing to show up for children. Paid and unpaid, named and unnamed. Next week I will be thinking about our Key Stage 3 pupils and the support around them, but this week the thanks belong to the wider workforce who make everything else possible.
Warm regards,
Nat Parnell
CEO
