Minute ofthe AGM of the Dounby Community School Parent Group held on 21 September 2017

Present:

Caroline CorrigallAnna Davidson

Geraldine FergusonDawn Flett

Lorraine FlettAlastair Forsyth (Headteacher)

Avril HayPamela Johnston

Charis Pottinger (Early Learning and

Childcare Manager) Sarah Scarth

Margaret Sinclair (Chair) Alison Sundholm-Durkin

In attendance:

Rachael King, Councillor for the West Mainland

1Chair’s welcome and apologies

There were apologies from Pamela Johnston, Corina Taylor and Lorraine Sandison.

The Chair welcomed Charis Pottinger to the meeting and explained that, following the Councilassuming direct management of all school nurseries,Charishad been appointed to the post of Early Learning and Childcare Manager for the Dounby Nursery and would be attending future meetings in the same capacity as the headteacher. It was agreed that the Group’s constitution would be amended to allow Charis to attend as of right.

ACTION: Geraldine to draft the amendment to the Constitutionand pass to Margaret for forwarding to the Council.

22016–2017 Annual Report on the activities of the DCSPG and Friends of Dounby School

The Annual Report, which had been circulated to all parents and carers prior to the meeting, was approved by the Group.

3Approval of accounts and appointment of auditor

After a brief discussion and explanation from the Treasurer, the accounts were duly approved and there was a vote of thanks to Steven Sinclair for again providing his services to the group free of charge. The hope was expressed that Steven would be willing to certify the accounts for the following year when the time came.

4Election/Confirmation of office bearers

There were no changes to the office bearers,all of whom had another year to serve.

5Election/Confirmation of Year Group Representatives

The Chair confirmed that while she had been able to fill some of the 16 available positions, for some classes only one representative had signed up.

ACTION: It was agreed that Margaret would continue to canvas for parents to fill the remaining positions. The following representatives were duly elected:

Year Group / Rep 1 / Rep 2
Nursery/Pre-school / Hannah Rendall / Caroline Corrigall
Primary One / Shauna Stockan
Primary Two / Lorraine Sandison / Margaret Sinclair
Primary Three / Lorraine Flett / Pamela Johnston
Primary Four / Avril Hay
Primary Five / Sarah Scarth
Primary Six / Anna Davidson
Primary Seven / Dawn Flett / Alison Sundholm-Durkin

6Invitation to co-opted members

It was agreed that this item could be revisited at a subsequent meeting should the need for specific expertise or experience arise. There was a discussion about the value of having a health visitor as a co-opted member as this had proved useful in the past, and it was agreed that this should be explored further.

Action: Chair/Parent Group Representatives

7Approval of minute of last meeting (meeting held on 25 May 2017)

The minutes of the meeting held on 25 May 2017 were approved as proposed by Anna Davidson and seconded by Caroline Corrigall.

8Matters arising

Compositing of classes

A good turnout of parents had attended the meeting with James Wylie of the Councilat the end of the previous term to discuss the compositing of all the classes except Primary 7. Many of those present had expressed concerns, but while these concerns had been acknowledged Mr Wylie had explained that due to economic considerations the decision could not be reversed. The Group agreed, however, that the level of anxiety amongst parents about the changes had lessened now that the new term was well underway and the new arrangement up and running.

School doors

There had been a few problems with the new school doors at the main entrance, but they were now working reliably and overall the new entrance was a great improvement. The same could not be said for the nursery doors, however. Charis confirmed that these now definitely needed replacing and that incidents of malfunction or accidents with the doors were being logged. Alastair confirmed that he had logged on the Council’s computerised maintenance system a request for all of the school’s doors and windows to be looked at as there were problems with sticking fire doors and locks failing, leading to security and safety concerns.

The Group agreed to monitor the situation and to contact Councillor King should the Council response prove inadequate.

Play Dounby and Scrap 4 Play/Scrapstore

TheScrapstorewas proving a great success and had been inundated with donations of scrap –so no more scrap was required at present.

A letter had been received from the Harrayand Sandwick Community Council in which the Community Council pledged its support for the redevelopment of the Community playpark and expressed the hope that the Parent Group would be represented at future meetings of the new Dounby Development Group. Alastair said that he believed the new Communities Officer at the Council, Cheryl Rafferty, was very keen to help take the playpark project forward.

The Group were very pleased to hear that Stuart West and Margaret Sinclair had put their heads together behind the scenes and had devoted a considerable chunk of their time to working on and submitting an application toThe People’s Project,which is a partnership between the Big Lottery Fund, ITV, STV and The National Lottery that gives the public a say in awarding National Lottery funding to local projects across the UK.The application for funding towards the next phase of the playpark improvements had had to be in at veryshort notice and so the Group expressed its thanks to Margaret and Stuart for giving up their time in this way.

‘Keep Safe Online’ meeting/workshop for parents

The workshop had been scheduled for 28 September.

9Correspondence received by Chair

Margaret had received a letter from Alistair Carmichael MP congratulating her on the Group’s successful application for a grant from Awards For All.

10Matters arising from Headteacher's Report for September 2017

There was a brief discussion about the Council’s forthcoming review of levels of Support for Learning staff. Alastair feared this would be bad for the school as it looked likely that where staff left the school(as was due to happen in Dounby) they would not be replaced, despite the school having levels of pupils needing support that were higher than the national average. If and when thesestaff members left it appeared that Dounby would be in line to lose three and a half days of Support for Learning. The Group concluded that this would be highly unfair and opportunistic on the part of the Local Authority, and the view was that there should be greater transparency so that it could clearly be seen whether there was equity of provision in accordance with a standard assessment of need across all Orkney schools.

ACTION:Alastair agreed to report back to the Chair following a meeting he was scheduled to have with the Council in the coming week.

The rest of the discussion concerned the section in the Headteacher Report entitled ‘School Improvement Planning’. Alastair emphasised that parents were invited and encouraged to comment on the proposals outlined in his report or to suggest other areas of work which could be scheduled in to the future development work of the school.

ACTION:To facilitate this it was agreed that Alastair would arrange for the September Headteacher Report to go on the website together with the draft minutes, for parents to refer to.

The proposed areas for improvement for 2017/18 were Support for Learning, Reading, Maths, Moderation and Assessment (i.e. looking at ensuring children’s attainment is measured consistently both within and between schools and developing systems to track children’s progress and attainment), and, finally, parental and pupil involvement in school.

11Parental involvement: Focus Groups initiative – progress report from headteacher

Alastair reported that he found this to be a very successful initiative which had given rise to some constructive discussions. Parents who had taken part had been positive about the new Well-being School Policy and Alastair hoped to use focus groups as another way to engage with parents over the School Improvement Plan. It was noted that it had been agreed at the last meeting that this should be a standing agenda item for every meeting.

12Reporting to parents: End-of-year reports, or other methods of reporting?

Alastair explained that there was a general agreement that it would be better to ‘speak more, write less’ when it came to reporting to parents on their children’s progress and involving parents in their children’s learning. Therefore it was planned to do away with the end-of-year report and have three parents’ evenings. Most people in the Group felt that an early meeting was important as it enabled parents to meet the teacher and raise any concerns or ask any questions at the outset. Increased use was also to be made of the learning folders to allow parents to see three pieces of work sixtimes per yearwith the facility to have adialogue with the teacher about any observations they might have. Finally, the Seesaw app was being trialled in Primary 2/3. The app allowsteachers to keep digital portfolios of student work and to communicate with parents easily and share student work with them. It was recognised that there would be a teacher workload issue with using this app and alsothe risk that parental expectation of the number of pieces of work/snapshots of activities they would see would be quite high. There was also a cost implication, which would probably mean FODS being approached for a contribution. The Group agreed to await the outcome of the trial and then discuss the app further.

13Self-evaluation using HGIOS 4 and HGIOELCC

Again it was noted that it had been agreed that this should be a standing agenda item for every meeting. Alastair explained that the HGIOS documents were documents that asked teachers questions about their school/early learning facility (the letters standing for How Good Is Our School/ELC). HGIOS provides a framework of quality indicators that support staff to look inwards, to scrutinise their work and evaluate what is working well for learners and what could be better.The framework consists of a set of 15 quality indicators (QIs) designed to help staff answer three questions linked to important aspects of the work and life of theirschool. The quality indicators are therefore divided into three categories:

  • Leadership and Management: How good is our leadership and approach to

improvement?

  • Learning Provision: How good is the quality of care and education we offer?
  • Successes and Achievements: How good are we at ensuring the best

possible outcomes for all our learners?

Since self-evaluation should be an ongoing process, many schools have been finding it useful to use HGIOS 4 challenge questions as part of Parent Council activities. It was therefore agreed that at the next meeting the Parent Group would look at the challenge questions from one of the quality indicators under the main question Learning Provision: How good is the quality of care and education we offer?QI 2.3 (Learning, teaching andassessment) was chosen.

Action:The headteacher agreed that before the next meeting he would circulate to Parent Group members the two-page spread from the HGIOS document, which listed the relevant features of highly-effective practice and challenge questions which members could think about and then discuss at the next meeting.

Action:It was also agreed that Alastair would circulate to all parents a questionnaire on one of the themes listed under that QI (e.g. ‘Quality of teaching’). The Pupil Council would also be invited to work through some of the challenge questions for the various QIs.

14Nursery building redevelopment

Because of the government’s 2017–18 action plan to expand early learning and childcare in Scotland and its vision to almost double the entitlement to free ELC to 1,140 hours a year by 2020,which had led to the changes already see in the nursery, there was now the need to increase the floor space in the nursery.Work would probably begin in early 2018 to extend the nursery building outwards towards the front, which would mean that the existing outside play area would be lost and so the nursery car park would have to be changed into a play area. This would of course have a knock-on effect on parking provision and so the headteacher, who was still responsible for the management of the nursery building, would be working closely with the local authority to ensure that suitable alternative parking in and around the school was availableto users of nursery services and to minimise the operational difficulties that the works would give rise to.

15Outdoor education and visits programme: impact of funding issues

The headteacher explained that because of cuts to its budget the school was having to review its outdoor education provision, in particular looking at the cost of school trips. The main issue with the P7 Lagganlia trip was the cost of paying for supply cover for teaching staff who accompanied the children on the trip. This had never been passed on to parents but was paid for using the school’s own budget. As for the Westray trip, the issue here was one of safety concerns given that some pupils traditionally camped in the grounds of the hostel. There was no desire to cut the programme down, in the sense of doing away completely with the traditional trips offered in P4, P5, P6 and P7, but it was hoped that new possibilities could be explored, e.g. day trips to closer islands, e.g Rousay, and mountain biking and walking on mainland Orkney. Group members were concerned that children would be very disappointed if these traditional and much-loved trips were no longer on offer.

Action:Alastair agreed to provide as soon aspossible more information and a plan so that parents would know what was happening.

16Agenda items for next meeting

  • Outdoor education and visits programme
  • School Improvement Plan 2017–24
  • School logo
  • School Self-evaluation (HGIOS 4, etc.)
/
  • Focus groups
  • Report on Keep Safe Online workshop

17Any other competent business

A parent had expressed a concern about seeing grass-cutting taking place on the pitches while children were at play there. The headteacher confirmed that he was aware of this and had given the local authority all the times when it was not safe for grasscutting to be done, but that this information was being ignored.

ACTION:Alastair said he would pass on to the Council that Parent Group was concerned about the situation.

Alastair confirmed that he had spoken to the children about their school meals following concerns raised by some parents that children were not getting enough to eat/didn’t like the choices on offer school meals. He had found that after some initial confusion things had settled down and as far as he was aware children now understood the new choices and things were going well.

18Date of next meeting
It was agreed that the next meeting would be held on Thursday 23 November 2017 at 18.30.