St John’s RC Academy

Standards and Quality Report 2016-17

School Aims and Values

Mission Statement

In St John’s RC Academy, we seek to grow together as a community of faith and learning in which every member feels welcomed, valued and safe. Guided by the gospel values of Jesus Christ, our staff will work to provide the highest quality of education for the young people in our care. In doing so, we will help them to become successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors to our school and to society.

Aims

The work of everyone associated with our school is directed by the following aims:

we will help each other to grow in faith and to develop our values and spiritual lives we will inspire in each other a lifelong love of learning with a positive culture of

achievement we will encourage our pupils to take responsibility for their learning and lifestyle we will support our families and the life of the wider community we will promote self respect and show consideration for others we will develop our gifts in the service of others promoting a spirit of peace and

forgiveness

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Achievement

Attainment

In session 2016-17, we have continued to make good progress in pupil attainment. In Nursery, most

of our pre-school pupils met their developmental milestones. In Primary 1, all children are making

good progress at the expected level, with most of our pupils secure at early level numeracy and the

majority within literacy.

In Primary 4, most children are making very good progress at the expected level or better across all

areas of Literacy and Numeracy.

At Primary 7, most children have achieved at second level in reading and almost all have achieved

second level in listening and talking. Almost all children continue to make very good progress at the

expected level within Numeracy and Writing.

This session, primary staff have used the new Perth and Kinross trackers which allows us to better

track pupil progress in Literacy and Numeracy as they move through the school and to ensure pupils

make good individual progress

towards their predicted levels of

attainment.

In S3 the majority of children are

achieving at the expected level

across Numeracy, Listening and

Talking, Writing and Reading.

Pupils in S4 studied National

Qualifications, mostly at National

3, 4 and 5. Our pupils across S4-6

are achieving better than their

comparators in literacy and

numeracy at National 4, with S5

and S6 pupils achieving better in

National 5 also. In S4, pupils are

doing better than their comparators across all the key measures such as achieving at least 5 awards

at National 3, National 4 and National 5. Our pupils from the most deprived households continue to

exceed their comparators as we aim to ‘close the attainment gap’ arising from issues of poverty.

In S5 pupils gaining at least 5 Higher awards increased to 16% and this is well above the

comparators. 53% achieved at least one Higher, with 32% of pupils achieving at least 3 Highers. One

third of pupils from the most deprived households achieved at least 3 Highers, 12% more than the

comparators.

Our S6 pupils continued to be a record breaking year for the school. In S6 22% achieved 1 Advanced

Higher, with 70% achieving at least 1 Higher (17% more than the comparators), 50% achieving at

least 3 Highers and 28% achieving 5 Highers.

Almost all of our pupils continue into positive destinations after leaving St John’s RC Academy.

93.4% of leavers from 2015/16 were in a recognised positive destination in the last year – a figure

which is above our comparators and the national average. We are particularly pleased to note that

once again 100% of our S6 pupils entered a positive destination after school.

Wider achievements

Our nursery department continues to build on our very successful visit from the Care Inspectorate,

highlighting the excellent use of the environment both within and around the school. Parental

engagement in Nursery and Primary continues through Soft Starts and has developed through

opportunities to engage with their child’s literacy development and the use of digital learning.

In our primary, highlights in 2016-17 included the excellent P2 nativity play and Christmas Show, P7’s

performance of Ali Baba and the Bongo Bandits, and the P3 toast café. Primary 7 again worked with

SCIAF’s Talented Fundraisers Initiative, which helped them to develop creativity and enterprise skills

while raising awareness and funds for the work of SCIAF. In addition, 48 of our Primary 7 achieved

the Pope Francis Faith Award, an award by the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland. This award is

designed to help children to show ‘signs of love’ in their daily lives and be active members of their

local Church or faith community. P7 also participated in the transition week at Dalguise with pupils

from Our Lady’s, Perth and St Stephen’s, Blairgowrie. As always, a particular highlight of the year

was the reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist for many of our P3 and P4

pupils. Our partnership with our local Catholic parishes continues to be strong throughout the

school, aided by our chaplains and youth workers.

As a school and campus, 2015-16 saw us celebrate our 5th birthday since our official opening. We

celebrated a special family mass together and the Depute First Minister celebrated with us. We had

parties across the school and enjoyed a Christmas Fayre and Panto. Money raised went to our

Pennies for the Playgrounds appeal. Through fundraising and grants we reached our target of

£35,000, helping to enhance our own playground and the playground at the Recuperare Clinic in

Bucharest. Pupils also supported SCIAF, MacMillan, CRY UK and SHIP and Splash (through the YPI

programme) this session.

Almost half of our S1 pupils took part in our S1 Residential Experience at Lendrick Muir and many pupils across the school enjoyed our annual pilgrimage to Iona. Looking internationally, almost half of our S2 pupils developed their winter sports skills in the Italian Alpine resort of Pila and many of our S4 pupils travelled to the Battlefields of Belgium and France to mark their respect and deepen their understanding of World War 1. Pupils also visited Hong Kong in an exchange programme, and once again a team of S6 volunteers travelled to the Recuperare Clinic along with staff in October 2016. As the first all through school in the UK to gain the Level 2 Rights Respecting School Award, we aim to treat one another with unconditional positive regard. We are keen to promote the rights we all share, and have worked with other schools (including Our Lady’s, Perth) as they develop as Right Respecting Schools. As a school, we became the 2000th school in Scotland to achieve the Eco-Schools Green Flag and we welcomed the head of the Foundation for Environmental Education and Keep Scotland Beautiful to the school to celebrate with us. We also renewed our Fairachiever Fairtrade School status. Participation in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award continues to grow at St John’s RC Academy. In 2016/17, 35 pupils completed their Bronze, Silver or Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, accumulating 2000hrs of volunteering, skills development and physical activity and over 150 days on expedition. 13 pupils in S4 also achieved their John Muir ‘Discovery’ Award and 43 pupils achieved a National Navigation Award at Bronze, Silver or Gold level – a 100% success rate. 20 pupils in S1 spent over 600hrs on personal development and leadership activities for their Scottish Dynamic Youth Award and thousands of volunteering hours have been recognised via the Saltire Awards. In partnership with Save a Life Scotland over 750 pupils were trained in life-saving CPR skills, and we once again provided opportunities for S6 and staff to give blood in partnership with the NHS. Music and drama participation continues to grow, with Perform in Perth and other opportunities to publically perform. The bi-annual secondary show (Grease) was a great triumph too with our pupils performing to enthusiastic audiences.

Learning

As a school we continue to focus on the primacy

of improving learning and teaching, enabling our

teachers to prioritise that which has the greatest

impact on learners. Through tracking,

monitoring, moderation and SQA verification

processes we are confident in our teacher

judgements and aim to use assessments

formatively to improve learning and as a

means of assessing progress. Lesson

observations help to ensure quality and these take

place across all stages and departments by peers, line

managers and senior leaders. This year we have had a focus on self-

regulation led by Primary teachers in collaboration with our Educational Psychologist.

There’s been an increased focus on pupil voice. This is impacting on the current curriculum and

tutor group consultation which will conclude in 2017-18.

Learning and teaching is enhanced through effective partnerships. We have been improving our

partnerships, including developing links with the community garden and our nursery, being

enthused by partners from Strathearn Science Festival, judging the design of spaces for children with

Children in Scotland, achieving our Green Flag with Keep Scotland Beautiful, improving employability

skills with Career Ready, and many more.

As an inclusive school, our aim is to meet the learning needs of all. This is everyone’s responsibility

and the support staff are committed to ensuring that every member of staff is equipped to do this.

The support staff and DHTs have improved our systems of recording and tracking, effectively

ensuring that child’s plans, when appropriate, are in place and regularly reviewed.

Leadership

As leaders of learning, our young people have grasped opportunities for pupil leadership roles

through pupil councils, groups such as Fairtrade and Eco, mentoring and ‘paired reading’ with

younger pupils in both the primary and secondary. Maths peer mentoring continues to have an

impact on learning, while pupils have been learning about meta-cognition and recognising their own

achievements during tutor group in the secondary, and via our new ICE programme in the primary.

Our primary and learning support staff have been undertaking action research around effective

literacy strategies following ‘Model for Improvement’ methodologies, with the most effective

strategies being shared and developed. Our early years vocabulary intervention saw significant

impact on learners and we will continue to develop this approach.

As the National Improvement Framework has developed and the Pupil Equity Fund has been

introduced we have been discussing our priorities with the Parent Council, pupils and staff to jointly

set priorities.

We are always seeking to improve and our self-evaluation processes are embedded and have been

updated in line with recent national toolkits. This is helping us to understand the impact of our

changes. This is supported through our evaluations against the ‘Developing in Faith’ toolkit for

Roman Catholic schools. We have extended the number and depth of consultations to be more

transparent in our decision making.

Our outgoing Head Girl, Katie Henderson, and Head Boy, Adam Chudzinski, were supported by a

team of deputes, house captains and prefects, and our new team, led by Louise Ford and Albert

Krakowski, have made a great start to their term in office. Senior student leadership opportunities

have included daily duties to enable the school to run smoothly, supporting parents’ evenings,

hosting special guests and representing the school at various events, including the local and general

election counts, and the Kirking of the Council.

In this session we concluded our consultation on our values. This consultation included our pupils,

parents, staff and partners. The values we choose to promote and live by are:

Please note: staff, learners, parent council members, and local authority staff have been consulted in

the compilation of this report.

Key Priorities for Improvement Planning 2017-18

Our focus for 2017-18 and beyond will be to build on our current work, focusing on the following

four strategic aims: