Transforming Lives Through Learning 1 September 2015 Dear Parent/Carer

1 September 2015 Dear Parent/Carer Marybank Primary School and Nursery Class Highland Council Recently, as you may know, I inspected your child’s school. During my visit, I talked to parents and children and worked closely with the headteacher and staff. I wanted to find out how well children are learning and achieving and how well the school supports children to do their best. The headteacher shared with me the school’s successes and priorities for improvement. I looked at some particular aspects of the school’s recent work including numeracy and children’s learning profiles. As a result, I was able to find out how good the school is at improving children’s education. How well do children learn and achieve? Marybank Primary School has a positive climate and a caring ethos, where children learn and achieve very well. Children in the nursery are active and inquisitive. Staff support their learning well by asking questions and encouraging them to try new things. Children have an impressive range of learning opportunities in the playroom. These are enhanced by frequent and relevant visits into the local community. Staff involve children fully in discussing and planning themes and learning activities. Children are becoming aware of their own progress. They make books and wall displays about their achievements. At the primary stages, children are friendly, hard working and ambitious. Lessons are interesting and enjoyable. For example, children told me excitedly about a recent Skype conference with a real arctic explorer. Many learning experiences extend beyond the classroom into the school’s grounds and on visits which help make learning more relevant. Children have well-developed thinking and learning skills. When they are given complex problems to solve they are good at breaking these down into steps and using what they know to help them. This has enabled them to develop an enterprising approach and helps them to learn and remember, particularly in mathematics. Children have high expectations of themselves. They continuously check their own progress and achievement against personal goals. The school’s wide-ranging links with families and the community support and enrich children’s learning, and the school’s learning blog ensures effective two-way communication with parents. Staff in the nursery work closely with parents to ensure that children’s experiences build effectively on their learning at home. Children’s literacy and numeracy skills are developing well. They were measuring Gilbert the shark and comparing his size to familiar objects. They are good at counting in daily routines and describing textures and patterns in free play. Children are developing new vocabulary from discussions Education Scotland T 0141 282 5000 The Optima F 0141 282 5040 58 Robertson Street E [email protected] Glasgow Textphone 01506 600236 G2 8DU This is a service for deaf users. Please do not use this number for voice calls as this will not connect. www.educationscotland.gov.uk Transforming lives through learning with staff, and experimenting with these words and phrases in role-play activities. They are becoming interested in print and pretending to read and write. Children demonstrate growing self-awareness and positive attitudes to their own health. Children explained how people can help them, including the local police constable and her police dog. At the primary stages, children achieve widely within and beyond school. Their achievements are tracked and their growing skills and competences monitored by staff. The school works closely with the local community to provide a remarkable range of opportunities for children to achieve. For example, they have developed the school grounds into a learning and growing space. Children are very physically active. At play times they organise co operative games, involving running and climbing. In music, children perform confidently using a range of instruments. The school’s strings group achieved success at the Inverness music festival. The innovative Friendship Games encourages children at Marybank Primary and St Clement’s Special Schools to work together to achieve. This regular event won Ross-shire Innovation of the Year award. The standard of children’s literacy and numeracy is very good. Children write very effectively and produce imaginative poetry, inspired by interesting scenarios. In numeracy, I was impressed by children’s strategies for mental calculation. Older children had used negative numbers competently to make graphs of the weather at the North Pole. Children are very good at discussing, explaining, listening and asking questions. They apply many of their new skills for real purposes in events such as money week and book week. Children design and carry out regular scientific investigations and technological challenges and are developing a good range of critical thinking skills. How well does the school support children to develop and learn? Staff at all stages track children’s progress closely and monitor the choices they make. They are very good at designing activities around children’s interests, and the way they prefer to play and learn. For example staff in the nursery introduced messy activities which have successfully engaged boys in developing their early writing skills. At the primary stages, staff designed mathematics and mental calculation games and activities which met children’s learning needs very well. They have adopted reading texts and contexts for writing designed to motivate and engage children. Staff often join the two classes together. This enables children to work in different groups and ensures that they receive plenty of challenge. Staff have identified where they need to support or challenge children with individual programmes. Links with partner agencies form an effective team around vulnerable children, and involve children and their parents in decisions about how they are supported. The curriculum is designed around the school’s motto Learn to live, live to learn. This is evident in practice because high quality learning is taking place in class, in the playground and at home. The school takes full account of Curriculum for Excellence, providing children with progressive learning experiences in all areas. One of the key features of the school’s curriculum is the extent to which it helps children make links across different areas of learning, and to apply what they know in new contexts. Literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing are evident in most learning experiences in a natural way. Themes and projects are taken from children’s interests in the nursery. For example, scientific experiments had been conducted in response to children’s questions. At the primary stages, children are also involved in planning their own learning. They can make choices about what and, increasingly, how they learn. 2 The close working between classes and the extended family feel of the school supports children moving between stages. They are supported through the transition to Dingwall Academy by various visits and a programme of activities. Staff plan to work more closely with colleagues at Dingwall Academy to ensure children continue to make progress in their learning between P7 and S1. How well does the school improve the quality of its work? Marybank Primary School has sustained high standards and continues to improve. Much of the school’s work is based on current educational research. Staff put considerable effort into developing their skills and improving children’s learning. Teachers work well as a team to make improvements, for example, the successful development of approaches for teaching numeracy. They use assessment well to ensure that improvements are having a positive impact on raising achievement. Pupil and parent councils work together to support school improvement. The headteacher leads the school very professionally. She monitors children’s learning experiences closely and works with staff to ensure that each child is being supported and challenged. Where the need for improvement is identified, she adopts a coaching approach that involves everyone and values their ideas. During the previous Care Inspectorate inspection, the nursery had no requirements and no recommendations. As a result of this inspection, there are no requirements and no recommendations. This inspection found the following key strengths. Children’s enthusiasm for learning. Standards of children’s attainment across all curriculum areas. The ethos of inclusion and ambition in the school. Extensive partnerships with parents and the community which enrich children’s learning and achievement. I discussed with staff and Highland Council how they might continue to improve the school and nursery class. This is what I agreed with them. Continue to develop opportunities for children to take responsibility for learning and developing their skills independently. What happens at the end of the inspection? We are satisfied with the overall quality of provision. We are confident that the school’s self-evaluation processes are leading to improvements. As a result, we will make no further evaluative visits in connection with this inspection. During the inspection, we identified an aspect of innovative practice which we would like to explore further. We shall work with the school and The Highland Council to record the innovative practice and share it more widely. Jacqueline Sinclair HM Inspector 3 Additional inspection evidence, such as details of the quality indicator evaluations and national care standards gradings, for your school can be found on the Education Scotland website at http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/inspectionandreview/reports/school/primsec/Mary bankPrimarySchoolHighland.asp If you would like to receive this letter in a different format, for example, in a translation please contact the administration team on the above telephone number. If you want to give us feedback or make a complaint about our work, please contact us by telephone on 0141 282 5000, or e-mail: [email protected] or write to us addressing your letter to the Complaints Manager, Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park, Livingston EH54 6GA.

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