Thoughts on a Hospital Stay and the children at St Jude's

Well, it has been an interesting, challenging and thought provoking few weeks, some of which I feel is worth sharing with you! During my short stay in hospital earlier this month, I met three fascinating people, each of whom taught me something very different but equally important. One  of these people was a  medics, the other two were fellow patients.
The first was a junior doctor who tore onto the ward as if he was just about to miss the closing doors of the underground train. His first words to me, without looking at me at all, were, "We must get these forms filled in quickly, then you will be ready for theatre." I said nothing but waited for him to shuffle his papers for a couple of minutes, talk to himself a little and then look at me; it was here I smiled at him and simply said "Hello". At which point he breathed and said "Well I got that all wrong, didn't?" An interesting conversation resulted as he explained to me the pressure he felt under to achieve and get to the top to be 'just like his brother'. I have to admit that I said very little as this highly charged young man shared is fear of failure. My reply to him was very simple..."You have to be true to yourself and never try to be what others want you to be." That too was when I first consciously thought of the children at school feeling a huge sense of deeply wanting that for them too!
Secondly I met two amazing ladies who would never consider themselves as such, Rosie and Clare. Rosie was an older lady who had been in hospital since August, following several surgical procedures following the loss of her lower leg in the summer. I first spoke to her as she came round the ward offering us cakes she had made as part of her very slow rehabilitation. Since the loss of her leg, this one time headteacher told me how her confidence had completely gone and the most difficult thing she was finding was to work hard to restore the 'tiger that had helped her transform schools'. Daily I saw her struggle to get up, dressed and ready to face the day. Tears of determination could be quietly heard as the once simple things had become a huge challenge. She was having to re-learn things all over again and it was taking genuine determination. So back to school. Often learning new things can be really difficult and as part of our journey to becoming an outstanding school, I want the children to learn to be determined as they try out new things, new learning and new ways of working. Giving up at the first hurdle never really got anyone anywhere!
Clare was waiting for similar surgery to Rosie's, having just two weeks before been told of the need to lose her right leg at the age of 24 and just 3 weeks after her wedding to Rob. "Well life will be a bit different from now", Clare said with an infectious grin. "I am so lucky to have learnt early in my life, to relish, celebrate and enjoy every day and every opportunity I will be given." And 'yes' I would love to see that quality in our children too!
Since being home, getting mobile again is proving to be a real struggle and far from a 'breeze'. My legs appears to be defiant in refusing to follow the instructions from the brain, but I am sure we will get there. There is much to get back to and enjoy in the new year, all of which I will share with you in my next blog, before the end of term which will, I assure you, be entirely school focused!
Many thanks for all your very welcome good wishes
Joy Waelend

All Change!

The title of this post has again been generated by my morning train journey to work. As the guard asked us all to change this morning, I reflected on the further changes that came to us last week in the form of another new inspection framework and another new curriculum. To be honest, neither of these concern or worry me greatly; they are all challenges to be enjoyed and in all things my first concern is "will these changes make things better for the children?" Well, I genuinely think the answer to that is that we need to make them so.
Many of you will have heard of the curriculum which the government are keen to introduce from September 2014. It will, if we let it, remind me of my primary school days during the 1960s. Sitting in rows, learning facts, pages of maths questions, formal English, History from texts books and delivering learning to our children.
Now forgive me if this sounds a little maverick, but this is not the kind of education I could possibly wish on our children. Therefore the trick here is to make certain we are able to please Ofsted by proving we are covering the legalities of the curriculum as set out in law, but doing it in such a way that inspires the generation of children we have in our beloved school; and that is precisely what we are planning to do.
Last week we began the process of designing a brand new curriculum for first teaching in September 2014. This will take a great deal of time to get right and a large team of skilled teachers to do so. Our Inset Days in January will give us some time to focus on this together but a great deal of preparation will need to take place before then in order to ensure we create an outstanding curriculum for our children. As for the new Ofsted framework by which we will next be judged, we will leave that for another blog! In my next blog I will offer you an outline of the new curriculum and the ways in which we are planning to make it very special to our children.

Twitter and Facebook?

Just really quickly to begin........Saturday was wonderful! Thank you so much to all the parents, grandparents, children, staff and friends from the community who came along to school on Saturday to support our first Environment Improvement day of the year. After four hours of work and 100 burgers and sausages later, plus another full skip the improvements are hopefully clear to see and enjoy! We will certainly be holding another such event early in January!

And so to the promised main point of this blog and it is a subject on which I would really value your thoughts. At St Jude's we work really hard to achieve the best possible communication with parents and the wider school community. Internally this is a challenge, with over 50 staff, a number of whom work part time, this is far from easy and it remains the one thing we still struggle a bit with. To counteract this some schools have set up their own staff "Facebook" groups or "Twitter" accounts and this has become their main form of communication. Now this is not something I can ever see us doing at St Jude's, but it has come up many times recently as a question from parents and colleagues who feel the school as a whole should have a Facebook page or Twitter account. I really would be very keen to hear your views, as parents, on this. My perspective as head is that we already do a great deal to communicate widely and increasingly effectively with yourselves as parents and I am uncertain as to what either of these forms of communication would bring to us. Our website is good and, providing it doesn't crash, remains a reliable method of communication. Parentmail is, I think, effective when we need to use it, provided we have the correct contact information for the recipients. We aim to make the newsletter comprehensive and informative and the information that comes from classes is now more consistent. In addition to this we are developing our school intranet for launch after Christmas and the "Meet the Headteacher / School Improvement Team" sessions give you regular opportunity to ask those questions which have been nagging away! As well as all of these methods, Rachael Osborne and I try to accommodate any request for short notice meetings and of course there is the 24 hour email access. So the purpose of this blog today is to actively seek your views on the suggestion that we should set up a whole school "St Jude's CE Primary School" Facebook page or Twitter Account. The question then is, should we do this and if so why should we? Thank you for your help with this!

Another year begins!

I do sincerely hope you all had a wonderful summer break with the children and that the first few days of the new term have been positive for both them and yourselves. For me, personally, it feels almost impossible to consider the fact that September 2013 represents 33 years in this amazing profession and therefore 33 new year starts. I can honestly say I have enjoyed each and every one of the years I have worked in education and yet each one will have been filled with centrally imposed changes which at the time we thought we would struggle to absorb. This year is no different!
We have a brand new Curriculum which we need to begin to get used to ready for the official first teaching in September 2014. You may be aware, through the national news, of the new 'performance related pay' regulations which we now have to make our way through during the coming months as well as yet another new Ofsted framework to become familiar with. These developments will give you an idea of a few of the things which will captivate our time and attention during the coming few months, all the while keeping clear our intention of creating an outstanding place of education and development in which we want each child to flourish.
In addition to these projects, this year will see the start and almost completion of the long awaited building project to improve the Foundation Stage classrooms and the Admin Areas as well as create a new, larger staffroom for all who work at St Jude's. It is undoubtedly going to be a busy year and we want you all to be as involved as you can be. This is why we thought it would be a really good idea to invite you and your children into school on Saturday 21st September, where we will share on a project together for the morning and picnic together at the conclusion of the planned activity.
The idea came about after the Year 3 Garden day last term and we thought it would be a great idea to get together and work on something very special for the school. The plan is that school will be open from 9.30am to 2pm, and together we will spend some time, clearing areas of the school grounds and making them as beautiful as they have the potential to be. Then at the conclusion of the morning we will offer a barbecue lunch or you could bring a picnic and we could share some time together, getting to know each other and developing our sense of community. I really do hope you will be able to join us in a couple of weeks time for this special event.
I am certain we can make this year a very special one for our children and our school community as a whole and I am looking forward to working with you to enable this to become a reality!

Exhibition Week

We are really looking forward to this week and having the opportunity to share with you some of the really superb work the children have prepared as they have thought about the theme of "Loving God's World". It has been a really busy half term but that is a small picture of the vibrant school community we are becoming and we are really delighted that we are able to share so much of this with you on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. The hall will be packed full of children singing, dancing and presenting to you their perspective on our theme, the classrooms will all be open for you to look at the work the children have been doing, the shared areas too! I am pleased to say that you will even be invited by some year groups to be taken on a tour to see the outside areas they have developed and watch video footage of the whole process too. The doors will open at 9.30am on Wednesday but tea and coffee will be available from 'drop off time' and throughout the event in the afternoon. The same will be the case on Thursday afternoon, so do please join us if you can. Performances in the hall will take place throughout the exhibition and a programme will be available for you on the website under News and Events, from tomorrow afternoon once we have confirmed everything with the staff.
We look forward to seeing you during this vey exciting week.

What a stunning few days we have had with the weather! It has been lovely to see the children eating their lunch outside and having a really good time together.
Passing by some shops on the way to the station today I saw in one the inevitable sign "BACK TO SCHOOL" and smiled to myself as I wondered how early those signs might first appear? I know we are not quite there yet and as I consider the final 9 days of term, they will probably going to be some of the most hectic we have enjoyed this year, with two Exhibition days to put on, three performances of "Porridge", an Attendance Party, Year 6 Leavers Dinner and Awards Evening and the Leavers' Service to enjoy. The newsletter will clearly give you all the details you will need for each of these events so do please make sure you have a look at this on Friday.
Nationally, next week sees the final launch of the New Primary National Curriculum which is due to be legally taught from September 2014. For some areas like English and Maths, there will be little change to what we have been doing although more will be expected of the children at a much earlier stage. In other subjects the Department of Education's intention is that the curriculum should be and will be more heavily content and 'knowledge' driven. This is where you may have heard that the children will be expected to learn the Kings and Queens of England off by heart for example. Many schools across the country will follow the curriculum as it will be stated but our intention at St Jude's will be to design a curriculum during 2013 / 14 that will meet the needs and interests of all the children whilst also fulfilling our legal requirements. It will be quite a challenge but one in which, by September 2014, we will be ready to go.
Next year will be a very busy one as we continue to chart our path towards being judged as an Outstanding School. During the summer break, the hall will be completely re-furbished and Year 1 and the Front Entrance will be re-carpeted. From September we will begin detailed preparations for our Church Inspection, which although not until 2015, will require a great deal of time to prepare for. The building work will begin in May 2014, the plans of which can be seen in the front entrance of the school. We already have the Year 6 Production planned and are possibly going to be looking for an external venue in which to hold this, due to the anticipated size of the production. Mr Kirby has also 'booked' the timing of the whole school production for the Spring Term 2014. Much more will happen too and we will keep you informed every step of the way! Before we know it it will soon be Christmas!

A very busy and exciting day!

What a very special day we have had today and so busy! The children in Year 6 have been putting the final touches to their adaption of "The Tempest", Year R have been on a super trip to the beach and Year 2 have been out also, this time to Harold Hillier Gardens. I really do hope your children come back tonight reporting a good time was had by all!
The Year 6 production of "The Tempest" will be shown to the school in the morning and then two performances follow at 1.45pm and at 7pm. All parents and friends are warmly invited to join us for this special production.
This afternoon I was almost literally overwhelmed with very enthusiastic Year 3 pupils who were desperate to show me the Beach Garden area, all ready to be transformed. What a wonderful reflection of our 'Loving God's World' theme. Thank you so much to all the parents, teachers and friends of the school, who worked so hard last Saturday to do so much of the groundwork needed to begin the transformation of the area. You see.... it is true.....Together WE can achieve anything. So a thought from Mrs McEvoy. "Lets do this more often and finish the morning off with a barbecue or picnic." Great idea we think! So look our for the first date early in September!

Reflections from a morning train journey

Travelling to work on the train, offers me a generally enjoyable opportunity to reflect on many things. Reading the paper as I journeyed to Barnham this morning, I was captivated by an article about a primary school in Croydon where 10 of the teachers had resigned following an expectation that they would, from September, be required to 'clock on' at 7am. I had many thoughts on reading this! Firstly, very grateful for the team of teachers we have at St Jude's many of whom are at school before 7am, when we usually unlock the school. Then I thought about the fact that the Croydon's school's belief was that the teachers needed to work very long hours in order to teach better and therefore get the school out of 'special measures' more quickly. Really good quality teaching is not about working very long hours; instead it is about knowing the children individually and being able to meet the needs of all of the children, all of the time. It is actually all about developing very strong and positive relationships with the children, enjoying learning together, believing that together you and your children can achieve amazing things and of course rigorously tracking their progress every step of the way!
Then, finally I reflected on the government's desire for all schools from 2015 to set their own term dates. Well... so much could be said about this but all I will say for now is, be assured we will watch this proposal as it unfolds and keep you informed about it as we journey through every twist and turn!
Thank you so much to the parents who came to 'Meet the Headteacher' yesterday. It was really good to see you and to share some very interesting conversation and discussion together. We will put some notes about our discussions in the newsletter on Friday. As it is now 6.49am my day must now begin!

I just wanted to let you all know of the huge success of "Ahoy". This really was a magnificent evening in the Guildhall and our Year 6 children were truly superb! They had the rather tricky job of opening the entire show and did so with real quality. You could clearly hear every word they sang, could feel the joy in their faces and see the pride in the way they performed. It really was incredibly moving and yet another one of those moments where we all felt very proud to be part of their triumph. Thank you to the parents who, even late last night, sent emails of congratulation for the children and today others have arrived too. Thank you so much once again for you support as parents with this really important event and for getting the children up on time and into school despite a very late night for all!
Thank you too to the parents who are beginning to add comments to the blog! Please do continue and encourage others to join in. I love being able to share much more with you now and hopefully you will find this way of communicating equally positive and enjoyable.

What a wonderful end of the week we had on Friday with the Summer Fair and Family Barbecue; it was absolutely delightful! We have had so much positive feedback and we are really grateful for this. So many people need to be thanked for the success of this super event, particularly the members of the PTA, staff and parents who worked so hard to make the event a success. We look forward to the next event with great anticipation.
Preparations are now in the final stages for the Portsmouth Festivities tonight and the Year 6 participation in 'AHOY'. They have worked so hard with the contributions they have made to this important, high profile event. Yesterday's afternoon rehearsal went very well and the children not only looked very smart but sounded super. We look forward to the performance tonight at the Guildhall at 7pm in front of a thousand strong audience! We will, of course, let you know how the whole evening goes!

Welcome!!

Welcome to our new blog! This is an exciting development at St Jude's which gives us the opportunity to keep you even more informed with all we do at school on a day to day basis and more. We will use the blog for a number of different and exciting reasons but mainly a place for me as Headteacher to express my thoughts and views on things which have happened at school or to do with the wider world of education. The blog will undoubtedly grow and evolve with time and I look forward to hearing your comments in return.

St Jude's has a new blog!

Welcome to our new school blog! We will be posting news and much more here.