The Dassett End of Year Report

At the end of an academic year it is always good to look back at the highlights of the year. There are many things that make The Dassett a special place, not just academically but also as a centre of the community and as a place of inspiration for the children, and here is my selection of some of the many outstanding happenings this past academic year:

We are delighted that our academic results are significantly above the National Averages across the school and really demonstrate where The Dassett is now and where we are heading. We had our amazing ‘Creation’ Arts Week and Exhibition, our participation in many inter-school sporting events, our visits and visitors, including Driver Dave (MBE) from London Transport. We have established pen friends both within the UK and around the world in most classes and have introduced pen licences and our presentation award, which have inspired so many of the children to even greater heights. We have opened our Lending Library for all to use and have built a truly, terrific trim trail on the field for the children of the school and village alike. We continue to actively contribute to our communities by singing and dancing at events.  Our Year 5 and 6 pupils spent a weekend together on the Isle of Wight and our ‘Friends’ have organised many, many magnificent fun, fundraising events. Every child from Year 1 to Year 6 has been taught PE by professional coaches, enjoyed and thrived with our ‘oh so many’ after school activities and musically our children are excelling, with so many of them engaged in the huge array of music tuition now available at The Dassett.

Finally and most importantly, we have seen our amazing children progress, develop, grow and continue to flourish, whether they be at the beginning, middle or end of their time at The Dassett.

 

SATS Results

We are delighted to report that our Year 2 and Year 6 pupils achieved absolutely fabulous results in the end of Key Stage SATs. Well done to them all – we are very proud of them.

 

Key Stage 1

This year we had a cohort of 24. The school results are shown below, along with the National Averages for 2013 as a comparison.

 

	Level 2+	2013 Nat. Average	Level 3+	2013 Nat. Average
Speaking & Listening	96%	89%	58%	23%
Reading	92%	88%	54%	29%
Writing	92%	85%	13%	15%
Maths	96%	91%	50%	23%
Science	100%	90%	38%	22%

 

Key Stage 2

This year we had a cohort of 18. The school results are shown below, along with the National Averages for 2013 as a comparison.

 

Test Results	Level 4+	2013 Nat. Average	Level 5+	2013 Nat. Average
Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling	89%	77%	72%	46%
Reading	100%	89%	78%	44%
Maths	100%	86%	72% (22% at L6)	42% (7% at L6)

 

Teacher Assessment	Level 4+	2013 Nat. Average	Level 5+	2013 Nat. Average
English	100%	86%	67%	38%
Maths	100%	87%	67% (17% at L6)	42% (6% at L6)
Science	100%	87%	78%	38%

 

A huge thank you to so many of you for completing the parent questionnaire that we sent out recently, it really does help us to continue to drive forward ideas and  make further improvements with regard to everything we do.

We are obviously delighted that everyone is so supportive of The Dassett and all that we are striving to do here.

When taking an average percentage of parents who strongly agree or agree within the six category scores we now have our highest approval rates ever for General Education (97%), Learning(90%), Communication(99%) and Enrichment(97%), and both Wellbeing(96%) and Christian Distinctiveness(96%) are still scoring very highly.

Homework again proved to be the major focus of comment by parents this year but, unlike in previous years, the balance has shifted somewhat.

67% of parents agree or strongly agree with the quantity and level of homework given and of the 33% that disagree, 58% think there should be more or it made harder and 42% less. We are looking at ways of further differentiation.

Within communication several things were asked of us, which we will be implementing to varying degrees:

A separate date sheet for the term’s events is attached to this newsletter and will be updated and distributed as necessary.

A phone tree and/or email notifications at the end of trips/residentials or for certain events was suggested. We have already been organising the setting up of a text messaging service to keep parents immediately informed of specific items and more details will follow in the new academic year.

Trips, activity days and clubs are even more popular than ever. We do have to say, please trust us, Reception children are too young for clubs – they get too tired to take on these as well.

Communication from the teachers/school has been seen to have improved dramatically and the newsletter and website are still seen as excellent, in fact outstanding, methods of communication.

Headteacher Surgeries are being introduced.

Everything that we see from these results and all of the feedback received indicates that we are driving the school forward very strongly across all areas of the children’s education and this, coupled with the excellent recent SATs figures, should demonstrate to everyone how strong, vibrant and dynamic a school The Dassett has become.