The Governor’s blog – Part 1

I’ve been undertaking school visits to see how the new year 7’s have been settling in. I made my first visit in September and met with Brenda Ralston, Head of Key Stage 3.  We focussed upon the school induction. Brenda has taken on the role of co-ordination and responsibility for induction as a whole this year. The roles and responsibilities for school induction were historically split between various teachers.

The starting point for young people at primary stage is an initial offer of placement from Sonia, our head teacher.

Brenda visits each primary school where the young people currently attend. A pupil information sheet is completed for each young person and their needs are discussed with the relevant teacher at the primary school. If there is an annual review Brenda will try and attend this at the same time.

This year we have a mix of young people coming from both mainstream and special schools. After 2 transition days attended by the new intake, staff meet to review and provisionally agree class groups. This is then adjusted, where necessary, after the next 2 transition days, which are in the class environment.

During this school visit I popped into Claire McErlean’s class – 7CM. Due to the complex needs of the young people, there are 4 teaching assistants who support Claire. The class is clearly very interactive and the use of visual aids is very important in developing the young people and meeting their curriculum needs.

I then made a follow up visit in October to see what progress the young people were making.

Kate Parrick was working with her Year 7 class, encouraging all the young people to measure the length of each other’s legs in order to test whether this had any bearing on how fast everyone was. I got involved and was then told we all had to sprint as fast as we could to test the assumptions!

A great time was had by all – especially me!

If you have any queries or would like to talk to any of the governors about our work then please contact us through the school on admin@osborne.hants.sch.uk

Mark Steward, Osborne School Governor