Dear colleagues,
We were pleased this week to welcome Rebecca Smith, our local MP and Shadow Education Secretary, to Woodlands Park Primary. Rebecca has supported education in the South West, and WeST in particular, for a long time and has been into our schools many times. She toured the school with Kate, our Director of Education, and the leadership team, and heard about both what the school is proud of and the challenges facing education in the South West. She then met the newly elected Pupil Parliament and took part in a Question Time session with Years 5 and 6.
The part I liked most was what she said to the children who didn't get elected. She told them about the elections she has lost herself and encouraged them to keep putting themselves forward. That is a better lesson in democracy than winning, and an important one at ten years old. Sarah Lakey, the headteacher, says the pupils asked thoughtful questions and spoke with real confidence, which doesn't surprise me at all.
I also carried on my work with the Key Stage 3 Alliance, the group the Department for Education has set up to bring more meaning and purpose to Years 7, 8 and 9. I've called these the lost years before and this still sometimes applies. It is the age when young people start to go off school a bit, which coincides with them growing up, so sometimes they go off everything a bit. Schools do a lot to keep them engaged, but there is a fair question about how well the curriculum for 11 to 14 year olds does its share, and that is part of the national curriculum review now under way.
Our conversation, with leaders from across the South West, came down to whether young people feel their education means something, how well we assess them in class and in tests, and how we make sure nobody falls behind. For me the last one comes first. A child who can't read or calculate well enough to get into the lesson won't always tell us, and it isn't always obvious. Sometimes it shows up as not wanting to be in lessons, sometimes as what we'd call challenging behaviour. The onus is on us to know who those children are when they arrive and to give them the top-up they need.
There is an open call for evidence running now. If you are a leader, teacher or parent, or a young person in Years 7 to 9 (or about to start, or just finished), please use the QR code and tell us what matters to you. It will inform what happens next, particularly here in the South West.
Thursday was census day, when we count everyone on roll, what they are studying and who is actually in the building. It is the basis of our funding, so we spend a long time checking we have it right. Like any census it is also a big body of evidence about the young people we serve, and it is interesting watching our numbers ebb and flow and the make-up of each year's intake change.
It got me thinking that we need to know not just who is in front of us but what they are thinking. We already run a trust-wide staff survey, and schools survey pupils and parents from time to time, but on an ad hoc basis. From 2027 we will ask the same questions of students, staff and parents across the trust and compare the answers: where they match, and where they don't and why. This is not about creating extra work for anyone. It is about checking that we are giving our communities what they need.
The people who will be most interested in those results are our WeST Community Councils, which are how we stay connected with the towns, villages and families our schools serve. We have well over 100 places on them and about 80 filled, so there is plenty of room. If you'd like a say, want to understand the trust better, or feel there is a disconnect between home and school, speak to the headteacher at your child's school (or your own school, if you work for us) and say you're interested. Woodford is one of the schools looking for a parent representative right now. It is a far better use of any frustration than grumbling about it privately.
Girls' football had a busy week. Eight girls from Years 5 and 6 at Woodlands Park played six matches against seven other schools at their local festival and finished fifth, with two wins and a draw. Oreston's Year 6 girls went to a tournament at Morley Meadow, and their newsletter says they showed real competitiveness and sportsmanship and did the school proud. At Plymstock, Year 9 student Tom has been selected for the ITCA (GBR) South West Regional Performance Squad. He started sailing with the cadets at Oreston when he was nine, so this has been a long time in the making.
Coombe Dean has the feel of a school where term has properly got going. More than 80 students have started rehearsals for A Midsummer Night's Dream, Languages Week is close, and the first Student of the Week awards went to one student from each year group in Key Stages 3 and 4, chosen by staff for living the school's values and rewarded with something chocolatey. The school also welcomed new Year 7 parents to its Academic Information Evening. Caroline Granville is encouraging students to be brave enough to say yes to an opportunity, because you never quite know where it might lead, and I'd say the same to the rest of us.
At Hele's, two Year 7 students, Molly and Jaxon, have made a short film, A Day in Our Life at Hele's, for Year 6 children deciding where to go next. I can't think of anyone better placed to make it.
Plympton St Maurice's headteacher took five Year 6 pupils to Long Brook Care Home, and by the school's account the afternoon was full of stories and laughter on both sides. The school has also launched RAISE Ambassadors to promote its values and a termly STEM challenge, and Years 2 and 6 have been doing Bikeability. Families touring the school for next September have commented on how calm it is and how well the children behave, which is a credit to the pupils as much as anyone. Oreston's Year 6 walked from school to Saltram and around the grounds as part of their English, geography and art work, about 9km in all, and came back tired. At St Breward, the children took harvest donations to their local church, hung their decoration on the prayer tree and talked about why the church is special to Christians. Manor Primary in Ivybridge has been thanking its children, families, staff and wider community for what they raised last year.
Today is World Smile Day, and I'll be doing my bit, as far as I can without cracking my face. On the community side, I've been out litter picking in and around Ivybridge, where I live. When I was a head I spent a fair amount of time with a litter-picker and a bin bag. Partly that was about the litter, and partly it was to show that nobody is above any job and we all muck in. The side effect surprised me. Walk round a school with a clipboard and everyone sits up straight; walk round with a bin bag and you blend into the background and get a very good view of what's going on. It was the nearest thing I've found to an invisibility cloak.
Warm regards,
Nat Parnell
CEO
