The Undiscovered Country

——-—————What’s Next?———————-

Academy Status:

It is incredible to note that on the schools 20^th anniversary the governing body formally met to have its final meeting as Larwood School. Having concluded that meeting, we now wait to open as Larwood School and as part of Larwood Academy Trust. You may recall that last academic year I wrote to you to make the point that your children will not notice the difference as we end the half term and start the new one with a different status. This remains the same, but during the next year or two ahead, there may be some additional changes that continue to make our school the best it can be for all of our pupils.

As we are open as Larwood Academy Trust, this means that we a single school within a multi academy trust (commonly referred to as a MAT) but to begin with we will be on our own. Having completed the work to be recognised as a multi academy trust, we are in an excellent position to assess where we go next and with whom.  I will keep you updated as and when anything happens.

Staffing:

We start the year fully staffed and with some notable changes. Please note that Mr Reid (Head of Care) is also overseeing the management of the site this year. We also welcome Mr Scales who is classroom based teacher with pupils in years 5/6.

School self evaluation:

During the latter part of the summer holidays, my colleagues and I have assessed our own performance in a variety of ways. This includes pupil progress, behaviour, attendance, standards of teaching, assessment procedures, the curriculum, and leadership and management. This helps us identify success and areas of improvement and these reports are available for you to read in the following section of the schools website:

How effective are we? - What we know about ourselves

Please do contact the school if you have any feedback related to any of these areas. As part of our ongoing school improvement plans we are currently working on the following:

Using a system called Behaviour Watch to record information Using telephone /email/or diary to communicate with parents Improving writing using The Big Idea New additions to the curriculum Running parent courses to support behaviour improvement Classroom displays

Extra-curricular clubs allowing residential and day pupils an opportunity to socialise.

This is not the complete list but will give you a flavour as to some of our key themes for the year ahead.

The start of every year is always an exciting time at Larwood! This is definitely the case this year. We have much to look forward to and the best bit is always seeing your sons and daughters make the progress they do as they year moves on.

Sean Trimble
Headteacher