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July / August Review: The State of Play in the Primary Schools

In case there is anyone who has heard of this article and comes here for the first time, it might be worth reiterating that the point of these ‘Reviews’ is to focus the eyes of our readers on particular aspects of Rochford and Ashingdon to ‘bring the community to the community’. We have, again, often noted that even though we live here we can be oblivious to what is here under our feet, so to speak. No more is this true than in respect of our schools.

Now our experience, as Rochford Life, in respect of these schools has been totally varied from those who refuse to answer our e-mails, to those who want just a little contact, to one who has opened their doors widely to us and received the publicity that goes with that.  Those at what we consider are at the bottom end of the ‘willing for contact’ spectrum, we suspect, consider themselves too busy or too protective to give us a quarter of an hour from time to time. Shame, but understandable.   

Trying to make an outside assessment is a nigh on impossibility and so the best we  an hope to do, is present to you, the reader, a (hopefully) simple summary of information gleaned from www.education.gov.uk, which is open to view by all the public, and make one or two clarifying comments. Using ‘the word on the street’ as a guide to the state of any particular school is a somewhat dubious approach because, although there is plenty of gossip out there, it isn’t always accurate. In respect of accuracy, the best we can say is that the figures on the education site is theoretically up to date, but where things have only happened in the last month or so, the details may not be there. All we can say is that we have used Government figures that appear as at the very beginning of July 2013. It may also be worth reminding readers that every school’s page here on Rochford Life, also now carries an extract from their latest Ofsted report.  Here are some figures about our local schools.

So there they are but the headings need a little explanation:

Pupils = number on the roll (we think from beginning of this school year, but we know for instance that Waterman’s has gone up and they are anticipating, we believe, in excess of 80 this coming September). The word on the street, from one mother we know, seems to indicate that virtually everyone is full up already for this coming September. Very little room for manoeuvre.

Eligible = those who are eligible for free lunches (as a percentage of total) which gives an interesting insight into catchments and affluence or lack of it, and which are the more needy areas.  An interesting social indicator perhaps.

Level 4 = the Percentage achieving Level 4 or above in both English and mathematics. This, of course, does not apply to Holt Farm Primary who only take them up to 7. Although most heads would wish us to be aware that such figures can be limited or influenced down depending on the numbers of children with learning difficulties, or for that matter the size of the intake, the overall trend is encouragingly upwards, with one exception. We have used the comparison with 2009 as a reasonable indicator of change (4 year period). The high changers are Ashingdon and Rochford Primary but taking into account their incredibly low starting place (when they were in special measures) Waterman’s stands out as THE success story of the last four years - not to take anything away from Ashingdon and Rochford.  Stambridge’s figure appears the anomaly.   The figures from St. Teresa’s and Holt Farm Junior, suggest part of the reasoning behind their Ofsted reports.

Ofsted & Date = the measured state of play according to Government inspectors.  For those who are negative about  modern education, the fact that 4 out of the 7 have in this year scored ‘Good’ is encouraging for local parents (and one ‘Good’ back in 2011). Having watched Waterman’s come through special measures about two years ago, one can take encouragement that two schools have been pulled up and are now taking measures to remedy their scores. If it can happen at Waterman it can happen here.

To conclude this very brief review, we would wish to make just two final comments. The first is that these days all schools have their own web-sites which are open for anyone to go and look at - which we have done - and any prospective (and current) parents would do well to go and spend a half an hour or so browsing your potential or current school’s site and read the news letters, and even governors meeting minutes! It is an enlightening experience,  and you wil find considerably more about the school than you will find in this brief review.

And a final comment. Your editor knows or has known quite a considerable number of teachers and heads and we, at least, are aware of the hard work, the burdens and the shear hours you put in to your job, jobs we would add with salaries that do not match many other jobs hat might have similar demands on them. If we may risk sounding pompous, from all the talking with people that we do here at Rochford Life, we are aware that we live in a changing society and many of those changes have brought pressures on teachers. The fact that you are still there and faithfully doing all you do, makes us want to commend you and say thank you on behalf of the community. And before anyone sends us e-mails of where you have fallen short, we are aware of human inadequacy and we are aware you get tired and even exhausted and put in more hours than we do, so again we would wish  simply to say thank you for all you do with the children of our community so that, so often, these figures show our children’s improvements. Thank you.