MINUTES OF MEETING 30 MAY 2012

COWIE PRIMARY SCHOOL PARENT COUNCIL

Meeting Wednesday 30 May 2012

·          Attendees and Apologies

Attendees: Mrs McClure, Julie Moran (Secretary), Tammy Pollock, Amanda Arkell, Zandra, Mandy

Apologies: Mrs Innes, Sherry Houlihan, Jeff McGhie (Chair), Anne Williamson (Treasurer), Barbara, Christine Fairbairn

The minutes of the previous meeting on 25 April 2012 were approved and signed and no changes were made.  We welcomed the new members Zandra and Mandy to the meeting.  

• Head Teacher’s Report

This is attached for your information.  Julie agreed to link in with Mr Stevenson about the plans for the Primary 7 Graduation Ceremony on 20 June 2012.  She also agreed to provide details of the profits the Parent Council had made in the past school year to Mrs McClure, for this information to be included in the School Newsletter.  The leaflet on ‘How to get parents involved with their child’s school’ was emailed by Julie to Mrs McClure to update, as we thought this was a good way to target parental involvement and recruit new members for the Parent Council in future.

The invite for the Primary 7 Graduation was passed around the group and for members that weren’t at the meeting everyone is welcome to attend on Wednesday 20 June at 1.30pm.  Please let Julie know if you are interested in attending for numbers to be collated, as refreshments will be served. 

• A.O.B

Mandy asked why the school website was never updated for class and other school information.  Mrs McClure mentioned the difficulties in updating information on the website and the future tool for displaying this will be ‘Glow’.  Curriculum evenings are a good way to show the work children have done in class.

Amanda asked if the group were happy to donate a gift voucher for £30.00 to the raffle at the school Fun Day.  We all agreed with this and Amanda was happy to organise from the Parent Council funds, as well as making fruit cups that the school could sell at the Fun Day.

We spoke about arrangements for the end of term Shorts & Shades school disco.  The date agreed was Tuesday 12 June and Christine confirmed to Julie she had booked the DJ at a cost of £50.00.  

Julie agreed to do the communication to parents and print off tickets.  The ticket price and times are the same as before and this includes snack, drinks and party game prizes, as well as prizes for best dressed. 

Christine will get snacks and cups, Amanda volunteered to do party games and get prizes.  Mrs McClure will organise the school ‘let’, invite teachers and have the accident report to hand.  Tammy and Amanda will sell the tickets to children in school time.  

• Dates of the Next Meetings

These are planned for the following months and further details will follow on the school calendar, issued at the start of the new school year.  As before we plan to hold two main fund raising events during the school year, one before Christmas and one after, still to be decided.  This is as well as two school discos!

September 2012 – AGM (Annual General Meeting) where roles are decided.

October 2012

November 2012

January 2013

March 2013

May 2013

MINUTES OF MEETING 30 MAY 2012

HEAD TEACHER'S REPORT 30 MAY 2012

Parent Council – 30^th May 2012

Headteacher’s report

Staffing

We have appointed a permanent teacher to the school, Chris Farrell who will start in August.  We still have three temporary posts to fill; two to cover RCCT and one to cover Cristina Press who is going on maternity leave.

Dates not already in the diary

Monday 4^th June – jubilee celebration in school

Tuesday 5^th June – jubilee holiday

Wednesday 20^th June – P7 graduation at 1.30pm, all Parent Council members invited.

Thursday 21^st June – P7 day out - This includes bowling, cinema and a meal.

Reports will be given out to parents on 15^th June instead of 8^th June as previously indicated on the calendar.

Newsletter

Newsletter will go out tomorrow and will have teachers and classes allocated for next session.

Restorative practices briefly explained in newsletter.

Cursive handwriting will be introduced next session.

Self evaluation

All consultation is complete and the Standards and Quality and School Improvement Plan will be completed by the end of June and will be issued to parents in August/September.

Main developments next session

Further work on engaging parents

Cursive handwriting

Grounds works following our award of £15000

Curriculum – literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing

GIRFEC (Getting It Right For Every Child) - paperwork will change, joint working of agencies to support children and families.

Community /Joint working

Following the children’s presentation to CRAG, the two schools have been asked to organise some further consultation across the community about small developments to improve the area e.g. benching, improvement of paths. This will take place in August ’12. CRAG will focus on developing a skate park.

HEAD TEACHER'S REPORT APRIL 2012

Parent Council – 25^th April 2012

Headteacher’s report

Staffing

It has been very difficult to find supply teachers to cover absences.  The authority is aware of the problem.

We will have 9 classes next session and we are currently leeting for a permanent post.  We will also have temporary posts to appoint.

School roll will rise next session; predictions suggest that it will continue to do so.

Dates for diary

Wednesday 2^nd May - CRAG 7pm at Community Centre

Friday 11^th May – SNAG in the school, 11am

Events for classes

Nursery children will be going to Blair Drummond Safari Park on Tuesday 29^th and Thursday 31^st May.

P1 classes have visited the Toy Museum in Edinburgh.

P2 are visiting Callander House on Friday 25^th May

P3 are going to Stirling Castle on Monday 18^th June

P4 and P6 are going to Hampden Park on Tuesday 12^th June

P5 will be visiting Dynamic Earth and the Parliament on Wednesday 16^th May

P7 have had a fantastic time at Dalguise - “best thing I’ve ever done” and are planning their end of year activity.

Nursery ran a very successful French day last term.

P6 were part of an excellent Think Dance performance this week, a Soundstart concert and a Divided City performance with St Margaret’s pupils.

P7 pupils won a local basketball tournament and were invited to Kelvin Hall where they met the Rocks and took part in a final between Stirling schools.  We came in 3^rd.  They have also visited Stirling Albion.

Jubilee Day

On Monday 4^th June we are planning a Jubilee Day.  We are still at the planning stage but are hoping to have a garden party with traditional games and activities.

Parent engagement

We have had a very low response to our curriculum evening on 1^st May and may need to cancel.  Ideas for how to engage parents would be very welcome.

Self evaluation

Parental questionnaires have been returned.  Children’s consultation will take place this term.

Community

We had a successful joint pupil presentation to the CRAG to explain the children’s aspirations for the village open spaces.  They did a great job and presented confidently to a large group of adults.

Development of grounds – we have been awarded £15000 of government money to improve the school grounds.  We are clear that the area should be available for community use, including St Margaret’s Primary School.  Once we have developed the area we will look at ways of making the space available to others in the community.

Joint working

P4-7 pupils from both primaries will have a presentation form the author, Chris Mitchell on Wednesday 9^th May.

Health and Safety

Parent Council asked for feedback on traffic issues around the school at the parents evening consultation in March.  We are keen that we work together to address issues.

MINUTES OF PARENT COUNCIL MEETING 25 APRIL 2012

COWIE PRIMARY SCHOOL PARENT COUNCIL
 Meeting Wednesday 25 April 2012

·          Attendees and Apologies

Attendees: Anne Williamson (Treasurer), Vivienne Innes (Headteacher), Julie Moran (Secretary), Tammy Pollock, Jeff McGhie (Chair), Barbara, Christine Fairbairn, Amanda Arkell, Steve (Grounds for Learning Playground Project Group)     

Apologies: Sherry Houlihan

The minutes of the previous meeting on 22 February 2012 were approved and signed and no changes were made. 

  

• Playground Improvement Plan

A joint application, completed by both the school and the Parent Council, was recently submitted for £15,000 of government funding to help design and develop the school playground.  Three schools were successful in the Stirling district in securing this funding (Cowie, Borestone and Crainlarich Primaries).  We are delighted with this news and Steve from the project group came along to our meeting to discuss the next stages of the project.  He showed us some pictures of playground improvements carried out in other schools, to give us some ideas of what was possible with the money that is available.

Steve confirmed that his team will work closely with the school and the Parent Council, from the consultation stage to the design and construction of this.  The emphasis is on supporting the school, providing time, training and help from the start of the project to when this is finally completed.  Communication updates are important and will be regularly given to parents and carers, to keep them informed with what is happening.  Steve has a copy of the playground development plan the school had already drawn up.  This will be considered along with other ideas that are put forward for the development of the playground.  If any other funding is made available this can be used together with the £15,000 to complete the work we decide on.  

Steve has since been into the school and attended a recent assembly to speak to the children about the playground development project, which will shortly be underway.  It is hoped the work will be carried out from October 2012 to March 2013.

• Head Teacher’s Report

This is attached for your information.  As you know, the curriculum evening on 1 May was cancelled due to a low response and the school hope to run this event in June sometime.  Feedback given by parents on the traffic issues around the school will be discussed at our next meeting.

• A.O.B

Amanda spoke about the Bunny Drive in March and confirmed that this raised approximately £268.00.

We spoke about accessing other funding for playground development and Jeff confirmed that he would look at the Landfill Trust, as he did last year, as the school managed to get a small amount of funding from this.  Every little helps!

The Parent Council confirmed that they are able to subsidise school class topic trips, £5 per child for all children in Nursery to Primary 6, amounting to approximately £885.00.  They will also subsidise the Primary 7 leavers’ trip amounting to £148.00. 

We spoke about having an end of term disco for the children, Shorts and Shades, like we did last year.  The date mentioned was Tuesday 12 June and we will discuss details of this at the next meeting.  Christine will enquire to see if the DJ she used last time is available for this date/time. 

• Date of the Next Meeting

The date of the next meeting is Wednesday 30 May 2012 at 7pm in the school.  Hope to see you all there.