Caring Curious Courageous

Enabling all children to learn and grow

Dear all families,

Reflecting on the events of the week, I am sitting here feeling overwhelmed about the enormous support I, and the school, have been given by the entire community. There were over 480 replies to the Ofsted parent survey - that's a record for the lead inspector. The staff team were incredible! The governors and local authority dropped everything to come in and be there for the school.

I am extremely proud to be the headteacher at The Vineyard, knowing that every single person works together to provide the best possible educational offer for our wonderful Vineyard children. Sitting in meetings with three His Majesty's Inspectors (HMIs), listening to their feedback about well-mannered, polite, industrious children was an absolute honour and discussions of our school staff that work so incredibly hard.

What happens next? In about three weeks, the school will be sent the draft report to agree. It then has to go through various processes in various departments. We should have the final outcome and report in about 7 weeks, which will be shared with The Vineyard families. Until then, we are under the instructions of HMIs to not discuss judgements/ details of the inspection, and we know that you will understand this.

Thank you to all who generously donated to the collection for staff. We will be enjoying it on Friday! And to those who spent Monday afternoon and evening helping tidy and sharpen pencils.

Thank you to everyone - families, staff, governors and all the children!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Frances Bracegirdle

Headteacher - headteacher@vineyard.richmond.sch.uk

A message from Antony Cook, Chair of Governors

I would like to thank the whole school community for their continued involvement and support of each other to make The Vineyard a very special place, especially this Ofsted week. I spent the whole day in school on Wednesday and could see the children were being so polite and well-mannered, focused and inquisitive.

The whole staff group and governing body have worked really hard, and I’d like to say how much I appreciate that.

Finally, thank you to the parents and carers. The lead inspector shared he had never seen so many responses to the parent survey. The community is better when we lean in and take an active interest. 

This week has reinforced what we know: that we are an inclusive school that lives our values. 

Thank you, 

Antony Cook, Chair of Governors

Safeguarding

Mental health in children is on the rise in primary age children. Please see this link for some useful information from the NSPCC website 

Teaching and Learning at The Vineyard

Please click the link to see your child's learning bulletin for this half-term.

EYFS, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6

We would love to hear more about your children's music lessons inside and outside school. Please can you take a couple of minutes to complete the survey. Thank you.

Ms Reilly and Mrs Dempster 

Assistant Headteachers for Teaching & Learning

Black History Month Poster Competition Results!

We were so impressed with all the entries that we received for our Black History Month poster competition! Such creativity and care had been taken with the posters and judging them was a challenging task for the Headship team. The children chose to celebrate and learn about some amazing black women including Katherine Johnson, Lilian Bader, Wilma Rudolph, Alicia Keys, Lizzo…

But the winners are:

In Reception: Martin Lerones Perez

In KS1: Ada Unsul-Aktas

In LKS2: Ben Bamber

In UKS2: Sydney Cross

Congratulations to all our winners!

We will ask the winners to share what they learned about their chosen inspirational black woman in our next celebration assembly. 

Introducing the Parent Portal (School Screener) -Parents in Reception and Year 6

School Health Services will be using a new electronic way of communicating with parents and carers through a secure web-based portal. Parents and carers of children in Reception and Year 6 are being asked to register on the portal to receive information and register on the 2023-2024 NCMP (National Child Measurement Programme) and to opt out should you wish to, using the following link:

https://app.schoolscreener.com/Portal/#/36378/p/WR259/102906

It’s a really quick process and all you need is an email address which you have access to. Once registered, you can login and add your child/ren’s details. We request that 4–6 weeks after the measurement has taken place you log into your School Screener account to view your child’s result letter. The parent portal is GDPR compliant, so both parent and child’s personal data is safer too.

Attendance

Well done to all the year groups getting above 96%!! 

The classes that have got a slice of pizza on their chart (no lates) are Emerald, Ruby, Carnelian, Moonstone, Starlite and Kyanite! Some classes only have one more slice to get before they have earned a pizza party! 

Miss McArdle- Assistant Headteacher 

PTA News