Anti-Bullying Week
EPINAY SCHOOL supported Anti-Bullying Week through a range of innovative and exciting lessons, which started off with everyone wearing ‘odd sock’ -such a variety of colourful socks, we all had a fun day wearing our odd socks.
Our whole-school assembly not only identified issues but the impacts too. The school choir sang ‘Brother’ beautifully and our sixth form students contributed with a thought provoking bullying drama which really hit home.
Throughout the rest of the week, the school council attended the FAB event at Boldon School where our year 11 pupil received second place in the distinguished Role Model Award for work with bullying. Our primary pupils completed amazing poems around “all different, all equal” and Class 1 made some friendship stone soup in forest school. ‘READY TO LISTEN, ready to learn together’. What a wonderful start back we have had to the Autumn Term, children and staff have made a very positive start to the year- it feels like we have done so much already. We are very excited about a potential visit from Ofsted, December marks the 5th year anniversary of our last inspection where we were graded outstanding. Our school has progressed significantly since 2012. We now have 20% more children, our attendance is a huge 9% higher than it was in 2012.
We are all working really hard across the school to make sure we have the highest expectations and that we offer a creative and challenging curriculum for all of our children - from those in year one all the way up to our sixth form students. So far this year we have had Jazz musicians, Kidscape, Zulu dancers, Christian and Sikh guest speakers into school to work with the children. Outside of school we have visited various places including The Key Project to deliver food to the homeless and we are now packing off shoe boxes to children in faraway countries. We like to make a difference to children’s lives.
The school has recently been awarded with some prestigious awards, this includes a gold award from The Woodland Trust and the Investors in People award for creating a positive working environment for staffwe are now busy working on several other awards that we hope to have completed this academic year, this includes awards in the Arts, PE and in Anti Bullying.
School attendance is really important at Epinay, we have seen significant improvements since January, our attendance is always over 90%, we have a target of 93.5% for the year, our attendance data in comparison to schools of similar type in the North East and nationally is statistically better.
Our school children love to compete in interschool competitions as part of the special schools Wanderers Association. We are currently holders of various cups including U11’s boys, U14’s and U16’s Athletic winners and U14’s Boys and U16’s girls crosscountry winners.
Monitoring progress in school is really important for us, so far 82% of children in Maths 76% in English (writing) and 82% in English reading are making expected or better than expected progress across school.
We closely scrutinise data so that we can set intervention for those who are not progressing- these children are quickly getting back on track!