Wellbeing

Wellbeing

2.1: Wellbeing is excellent at LPS; this is evident through our external reports and self-review systems, highlighted in our MER Timetable – such as lesson observations, listening to learners and pupil questionnaires.

100% of children feel safe and secure at LPS, with 99.2% of pupils having positive attitudes to school; as a result, they behave very well and participate in lessons with confidence, enthusiasm and enjoyment. Nearly all pupils are courteous and show consideration and respect for each other and school property. Nearly all staff, pupils and parents conduct themselves according to the community generated ‘LPS Code’, which forms a large part of the LPS Community Agreement. Behaviour is excellent across the school, due to the effective application of the LPS Positive Behaviour Policy. We use an amalgamation of Good to be Green, House Points and Class Dojo systems, which enable all to strive towards our LPS Code and policy aims. These systems recognise and reward effort, achievements and positive attitudes within our community. This results in excellent wellbeing across the school.

Nearly all pupils demonstrate a good understanding of keeping healthy through regular opportunities to participate in health-related exercise, developing their awareness of eating a balanced diet and understanding the dangers of harmful substances. These opportunities are provided through our school curriculum, working in partnership with cluster schools, educational visits, community groups and external agency visits. For example, our Police Liaison Officer carries out a rolling programme across the school focusing on substance misuse, safety, stranger danger, anti-social behaviours and cyber bullying. These experiences provide all pupils with excellent opportunities to develop their understanding of health, safety and wellbeing issues. Lessons learned from pupils’ experiences inside and outside of school are used and reflected on with skills and understanding learned within these sessions. As a result, the content of these sessions enables pupils to develop their citizenship skills within our community. The school has received very positive feedback from families regarding these sessions.

The Healthy Class Award is now embedded throughout the school. Every day the Healthy Happy Helpers record how many children have healthy snacks. This information is shared and celebrated within our weekly awards assembly. This provides the opportunity to allow pupils to improve and promote their healthy choices and lead on whole school initiatives. Healthy lifestyle opportunities are further enhanced through after school clubs; inter school sporting events, cluster transition projects, residential centres and community events. For example, there are established weekly programmes, across the school, to promote health related exercise through our links with Swansea City Football Club (Premier League Primary Stars), Urdd sporting events and our cluster Rugby Development Officer. This enables the school to offer very good health, fitness and well-being education. Experienced staff are timetabled across the school for this quality provision to impact all learners.

Nearly all pupils continue to develop their awareness of respect, care and concern for others. Most children are confident in their approach to learning and social situations and have good levels of self-esteem. Through our development on the Rights Respecting programme, we have introduced a ‘Right of the Fortnight’ during a focused assembly. As a result, the school has achieved the Bronze Rights Respecting Award. Our Happy Healthy Helpers have set up a pupil drop in system, called ‘Turn your frown upside down’, and those who attended could talk about how it supports their understanding of emotions and social situations. Additionally, the school systems for supporting all pupils ensure effective strategies and support are put into place for those children identified as having low self-esteem and lack of confidence. Very good support is offered to pupils who are supported through our work with multi-agency professionals such as; Access to Learning, EWS, TAF, Social Services, Cahms, Health Service, Educational Psychologist and the LA Behaviour Support Team.

The Pupil Voice Groups (PVGs) are very strong, purposeful and successful when making decisions and improving provision for all pupils across the whole school. They contribute effectively during LPS Review Weeks, gathering and analysing information, organising events and gauging opinion. PVGs communicate with each other to utilise each other’s specialists’ skills. For example, the LPS iTeam to offer their technical support, such as generating online surveys, creating adverts and producing PowerPoints for the Criw Iaith assemblies. Furthermore, they were instrumental in steering the school towards achieving the Online 360 Safety Award, as stated within our final report from the SwGL Assessors,

"The iTeam are a strong pupil voice and stakeholder group within the school that have had external training via Three, to ensure the group have the appropriate skills. As well as dealing with a number of core ICT tasks, they are also effectively used to share Online Safety messages and develop resources such as assembly materials and posters. Staff are keen to point out how helpful the iTeam have been throughout the school for both staff and pupil training on different aspects of digital learning"

The impact of their work is also reflected in our pupil questionnaire responses where 98.5% of leaners state that our school help them feel safe whilst online.

PVGs communicate and present their work and achievements to the Parents, the Governing Body and Challenge Advisors effectively. They support our SLT to develop and improve aspects of school life and its environment, such as achieving the Healthy Schools Award and Eco Schools Award. LPS have recently achieved Phase 4 of the Swansea Healthy Schools Scheme, the Green Flag Status, Siarter Cymraeg Bronze Award and the Bronze Award Rights Respecting. They are also involved in local community decision making, for example the Humanity Heroes have been working alongside Local Community Councillors to redesign and improve their local park with an allocated budget. They surveyed the school to collate ideas, presented their findings and offered their opinions on how the development should look, giving reasons. The Creative Crew helped the whole school design art work for the pupil toilets, working alongside a local artist, in order to improve facilities for all pupils. The excellent work that our PVG groups are doing for the school is published on our school website.

The school has introduced many initiatives to improve health and wellbeing provision such as eSafety programmes. As a result, nearly all pupils are able to explain the reasons and importance of security online and the purpose of passwords. Towards the end of KS2 nearly all pupils are able to explain cyber bullying in great detail with clear understanding of what to do if they found themselves in such a difficult situation. Furthermore, the Happy Healthy Helpers have visited a local Primary School to receive Emotion Coaching training. This has enabled them to embed a ‘Turn your Frown Upside Down’ pupil drop in club, led by the Health & Wellbeing Leader. As a result of our success, the school has achieved the Online 360 Safety Award.

The curriculum is further enriched by the provision of a variety of extra-curricular activities. These have proved effective for raising self-esteem, developing talent, promoting health, developing entrepreneurial skills, broadening opportunity and social interaction. The school is consistently involved in a variety of activities within the local community. This has proved to effectively develop an understanding of citizenship and community responsibilities. Our Green House and Allotment Area is used to effectively to deliver Wellbeing sessions. This has been a great success in improving standards of wellbeing across the school. Children in each class are responsible for various areas within the allotment. They grow and harvest crops such as, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, herbs, radishes, beetroots and flowers to sell or donate to the community during our summer fete.

2.2: Attitudes to learning are very good at LPS; this is evident through our Self Review systems, highlighted in our MER Timetable – such as lesson observations, listening to learners and pupil questionnaires.

Learners at LPS are becoming increasingly independent within their learning, selecting their preferred approach and application, as reflected in our learner questionnaire feedback where 100% of learners believe that they are doing well with their learning and 96.9% believe that they receive interesting learning experiences.

Pupil led learning is embedded and successful in nearly all classes. Through these experiences, pupils use their own ideas, plan, make decisions and solve problems. During lesson observations, most pupils demonstrate the ability to sustain concentration and show resilience. A strong feature of the school is high level of enthusiasm for learning, as identified in our Regional School Improvement Report.

LPS has enhanced its approach to Pupil Voice through creating more opportunities for pupils to lead and self-determine their own learning through our LPS Matrix approach and our LPS Learning Projects. All learners can talk about how the questions they generate using the LPS Question Matrix at the start of each topic are used to develop their ideas and learning. Nearly all learners were able to talk about how they independently researched questions that were generated during pupil voice sessions. These strategies are contributing to child-initiated learning across the school and empowering pupils to have ownership over their learning.

The improved pupil voice and choice of learning provision has had a direct impact on improved PSD outcomes and wellbeing. This has been further enhanced by our Foundation Team working closely with various organisations throughout our community to develop the outdoor learning environment. Additionally, FP Parent meetings and workshops held to inform and educated families on new approaches, skills and developments has improved home/school links and clarity over policy and practice.

Pupil voice and self-determined learning is further enhanced with the application of our LPS Personal Learning Journey (PLJ), designed to develop understanding and embed the concept of the 4 Purposes, Cross-curricular and Integral Skills. The aim of the PLJ is to steer learners and teachers to adopt an Andragogical and Heutagogical approach. This strategy empowers all pupils to reflect, self-evaluate and improve themselves as lifelong learners. The development and work around this strategy is shared via our website in order to guide all stake-holders in developing, promoting and sustaining an environment that will enable all pupils to progress within the new curriculum.

There are weekly foci from the Personal Learning Journey, which focus on elements of the 4 purposes. This is introduced and modelled by members of the SLT during weekly assemblies. The focus of the week is discussed, applied and evaluated within learning, across the school, and throughout the week. Success on progress and application is celebrated in weekly assemblies and good practice is shared via our school website.

The introduction of the PLJ has led to a number of significant improvements in important areas of the school.

Pupils set their own learning targets, demonstrating a greater understanding of the learning process.
Pupils are able to demonstrate their improved understanding of learning strategies during plenaries and through verbal and written evaluations of their learning.
Pupils have an increased knowledge of what makes an all-round learner and are able to identify their strengths and recognise how and where they can improve.
Improved quality in self and peer assessment.
Improved standards of Oracy skills.
Improved communication of curriculum and learning with school community.
It is providing all learners with the opportunity to develop the skills required to access the Curriculum for Wales.
It is enabling teachers to recognise and provide opportunities to develop and prepare learners for life and the wider world.

Workbook Scrutiny activities demonstrate that nearly all teachers ensure skills have a clear focus and ensure opportunities for learning are not missed. Half termly workbook scrutiny demonstrates that nearly all pupils are able to apply and develop their Cross-curricular Skills within their learning projects across Areas of Learning. Nearly all teachers ensure skills have a clear focus and ensure opportunities are not missed. Most pupils recognise the skills that they are proficient with and are beginning to select their own approaches. Most pupils make connections to previous learning and transfer these skills effectively in a range of subjects across the curriculum. Nearly all learners experience high challenge and respond with enthusiasm. As a result, nearly all pupils make good, and in most classes, excellent progress.

Learners are increasingly involved in their own progress. Teachers and pupils co-construct strategies for peer and self-assessment. Due to good teacher modelling pupils are regularly shown how to assess their own work and that of others. Most identify ‘next steps’ with increased precision and act on achieving them with success, which is fully in line with the LPS Marking Policy. However, in some classes pupil progress is excellent due to pupils independently selecting strategies for peer and self-assessment. Within these classes, the success and accuracy of self and peer assessment enables nearly all learners to be confident about their learning progress, to achieve very well and do so with increased independence.

The high level of care and very good working relationships between staff and pupils has a positive impact on pupils' wellbeing and engagement in learning. All staff strive to be good role models for children through their use of language and relationships with colleagues, parents and children. This enables all pupils to realise the LPS vision, ‘Play, Learn and Grow Together’. This has a positive impact on behaviour and attitudes to learning. This is a very strong feature of the school. Nearly all pupils behave well in all aspects and contexts of school life, both inside and outside of school.

Improved wellbeing and attitudes towards learning is reflected in the continued upward trend in our attendance data over time. However, there is evidence that persistent absenteeism is increasing. The school has developed systems to address this, such as attendance awards, raffles and the reintroduction of a behaviour (attendance dependent) reward scheme.

The school receives a Pupil Deprivation Grant due to 8% of pupils receiving Free School Meals entitlement. This is a very low figure compared to the Local and National Average, however we demonstrate value for money with the limited resources received. This grant provides the school with a very skilled HLTA which focuses on daily Intervention and Boost Groups. As a result, all FSM pupils make good or very good progress in all areas of learning across the school. Where FSM pupils do not achieve their expected outcomes and levels over time, this is related to specific learning needs. However, our internal tracking systems demonstrate that over recent years these pupils are making good progress.

Areas for Further Improvement: