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How Ainslie Wood Works

Now you know where we've come from and where we're going, I guess we should tell you a bit about how we plan to do it and what this looks like day to day.

Throughout each year, Ms Scott gathers up a huge amount of information about every single thing in the school and writes an evaluation of where she thinks Ainslie Wood is and how she thinks we are doing in lots of different areas.  This helps her to work out what the school should work on next.  She also looks closely at the vision and thinks about the next steps the school could take towards meeting it.

This year (2019/20), we are in the 3rd year of the 5 year vision and our whole school is focused in different ways on just 3 things:

  • Communication
  • Applying Skills in Context
  • Personal Development

Keep a check on the minutes from our Governor meetings to see how we're doing it and how well it's going.

People

We design and constantly evaluate our staffing structure to ensure that every element of the school meets the needs of our children and community, while we continue to support our staff to develop and innovate.

The Board of Governors oversee the running of the school to make sure that all of our children are getting the best experience possible.  They ask lots of questions and come in to school to see that what they find out is what is happening.

The Senior Leadership Team oversee everything and make sure everyone has everything they need to keep everything running smoothly.  Ms Baldwin (our Leader of Learning) oversees everything child focused, Mrs Phillips (our Leader of Adult Development) oversees everything adult related, Sharon Teasdale (our School Business Manager) looks after all of our systems and the things we own, and Ms Scott tries to make sure all of those things can happen at the same time!

The middle leaders in the school are focused on specific areas of focus - this year they are working in agile teams on short term focuses.  See the leadership pages to see what this actually means and to find out what focuses are happening right now.

We are lucky enough to have an incredibly talented team of teachers and support staff who deliver inspiring and purposeful, personalised learning to all of our children, day in day out.  Our team are supported on their own personal development journey through our award winning system.  Find out more about that on our Development of Teaching page.

 

The school is physically divided into 4 Quads which help us maintain a separate focus on the different needs of the children at the different ages and stages of their school life. Each Quad has worked out its own key driver which will help us to move our children through their own development journeys towards them meeting their own boundless potential.

  • Blue Quad (Nursery and Reception) is focused on developing Child Led Independence.  Our aim here is that our youngest children grow and develop while making decisions and taking responsibility and risks in their own learning.
  • In Green Quad Years 1 & 2), our focus is Widening Experience.  After the children have made so much progress in Blue Quad by leading their own learning, it is now time to show them things they may not have learned about before.  This is the time for us to really expand their understanding of the wider world and our place in it.
  • Red Quad (Years 3 & 4) puts a real emphasis on Collaboration.  The ability to work with other people who have different perspectives and ideas to our own is an invaluable asset which we want our children to develop.  We even designed Red Quad around this principle - the flexible arrangement of the walls and classroom spaces mean our children have the opportunity to collaborate in lots of different ways.
  • By the time our children reach Yellow Quad (Years 5 & 6), our focus is on Aspiration.  It is here that we really want our children to recognise that the world really is their oyster and that with the right combination of focus, determination and hard work, they could do anything.