School Self Evaluation Report 2014-15

Jimmy Lacey

School Evaluation report for 2014-15

Scoil Mhuire na mBuachaillí is a senior boys school catering for boys from 2nd to 6th class. It is a catholic school where the policies, practices and attitudes are inspired by our catholic ethos. It is a DEIS Band 2 school.

The philosophy of our school is to provide for the development of each boy’s religious, moral, intellectual, physical and social education.

Each boy being unique and coming from different homes and family backgrounds, our school strives to create an environment conducive to the growth and development, spiritual, intellectual, artistic and physical needs of each individual boy.

 

The Findings

On completion of our testing for this year and following on from the recommendation in our WSE-MLL report our staff has decided on focusing on the following areas for further improvement

Literacy – Launch reading pro in all classes in 2015-16 to further develop independent reading.

Set criteria for free writing.

Oral Irish – a whole school plan concentrating on a number of themes – 3 in 2015-16.

Numeracy – Reasoning and problem solving.

Attendance – Focus on the boys who have missed more than 20 days in 2014/15 for 15/16 and target them in particular on Aladdin for improvement. Ten boys missed 20 or more days and five of them will be in our school next year.

There is great use of I.T throughout the School and it’s advancement has seen the need to develop an e-learning plan commencing in 2016.

The following strengths and recommendations are gathered from the WSE-MLL 2015.

The school has significant strengths in the following areas:

 

  • The quality of pupils’ learning experiences is high.
  • The overall quality of teaching is very good and teachers demonstrate a high level of committment to the school.
  • Provision for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) is very good.
  • The quality of support for pupils’ well-being is very good.
  • The pupils are co-operative, respectful of each other and engage enthusiastically in learning activities.
  • The principal, in collaboration with the in-school management team (ISM), fosters an open, affirming and inclusive learning environment.
  • The board of management manages the school in an effective manner.
  • The school manages its communications with the community effectively and the home-school-community liaison (HSCL) co-ordinator promotes parental involvement very successfully.

From WSE :The following main recommendations are made:

  • Pupils’ writing skills should be further developed and additional emphasis placed on process writing and on its conventions.
  • To build on existing good practice in Mathematics, it is recommended that pupils’ reasoning and problem-solving skills be further developed.
  • Ní mór scileanna labhartha, léitheoireachta agus scríbhneoireachta na ndaltaí a fhorbairt a thuilleadh sa Ghaeilge. (Pupils’ oral, reading and writing skills in Irish should be developed further.)
  • The assessment policy should be reviewed to develop a whole-school approach to assessment-for-learning (AfL).
  • The school has engaged conscientiously with the school self-evaluation process and has developed a school improvement plan. To ensure that improvements impact on pupils’ learning outcomes, targets should be based on a finer analysis of evidence and actions clearly aligned to these targets. Greater use should be made of teachers’ monthly progress records to monitor improvement targets on a whole-school basis.

 

PROGRESS MADE ON PREVIOUSLY IDENTIFIED IMPROVEMENT TARGETS

Our target to improve overall average percentiles for Literacy and Numeracy over the period of time that children are with us worked out as follows for the 6th class of 2015:

Literacy

Average starting 2nd class 32nd percentile.

Average leaving 6th class 42nd percentile.

This is taken from Micra-T 2015 average percentiles

Numeracy

Average starting 2nd class 35th percentile.

Average leaving 6th class 70th percentile.

Taken from Sigma T 2015 average percentiles.

Attendance

2011-12 ——91.6{c710262f72a1b0e6a57c7266508ba7019eb1052d90bae344267f95b35e9c8f10}

2012-13—— 93.9{c710262f72a1b0e6a57c7266508ba7019eb1052d90bae344267f95b35e9c8f10}

2013-14——-94.7{c710262f72a1b0e6a57c7266508ba7019eb1052d90bae344267f95b35e9c8f10}

2015-15 ——95.1{c710262f72a1b0e6a57c7266508ba7019eb1052d90bae344267f95b35e9c8f10}

This shows that the interventions of the last 4 years have worked in all of the above areas.

Literacy – Peer mentoring Station teaching, First steps

Numeracy – Focus on mental maths and tables

Attendance- monthly awards for the class with the best attendance and end of year individual awards.

Focus for 2015-16

The focus for 2015-16 will be on further developing independent reading with the launch of Reading Pro throughout the school.

We will also focus on reasoning and problem solving in Numeracy to follow up on a recommendation in our WSE-MLL.

We will initiate a whole-school plan for Oral Irish from September 2015 starting off with three themes to be taught from 2nd to 6th.

We will continue the practices of the last number of years in order to maintain the progress we have already made.

Principal will commence the structuring of an e-learning plan during the year for our school to build on the ICT initiatives already in place.