Agenda item

(a)          To receive, for information, the monitoring form in respect of schools’ self-evaluation for the Summer to October 2015 period.

(b)          To present a summary of the following schools’ Self-evaluation:

(i)            Morfa Nefyn Infants’ School

(ii)          Beddgelert School

(iii)         Hirael School

(iv)         Llanaelhaearn School

(v)          Llanelltyd School

(vi)         Ysgol y Traeth School (Barmouth)

(vii)        Dyffryn Nantlle School

(viii)      Ysgol y Gader School

(a) The SACRE Clerk guided Members through the sheet submitted giving a summary of school findings and attention was drawn to the fact that five primary schools had been inspected by ESTYN during the 2015 Summer term.   Reference was made to extracts taken from ESTYN reports under indicator 2.3 and heading care, support and guidance of the Common Inspection Framework.

Miss Bethan James explained the vocabulary used specifically by ESTYN about collective worship and they had to be careful regarding how the sentences were interpreted e.g.  "successful" meant good, "appropriate" meant sufficient.   Members were also reminded that they should not be too critical of the schools that had received unsatisfactory /sufficient for the care, support and guidance element as it was possible that this referred to other elements apart from collective worship and pupils’ spiritual and moral development.    

(b) Members were guided through the self-evaluations of the schools of Morfa Nefyn, Beddgelert, Hirael, Llanaelhaearn, Llanelltyd, Y Traeth and two secondary schools namely Dyffryn Nantlle and Y Gader by referring to the three key questions, namely:

1.    How good are outcomes in Religious Education?

2.    How good is provision in Religious Education?

3.    How good is provision for collective worship?

SACRE Members appreciated the self-evaluations and Miss Bethan James gave an explanation regarding the gap that notes the standards of literacy, numeracy, ITC and thinking skills and this had been included to encourage schools to differentiate between religious education standards and skills and to be more specific regarding the type of elements presented in the report.

Attention was drawn to interesting elements in some schools and they would welcome schhols to attend future SACRE meetings to share good practice with Members.

RESOLVED:    (a) To accept and note the contents of the inspections and self-  evaluations. 

                           (b) To approve for Miss Bethan James, GwE Challenge Adviser, to invite a school to give a presentation on any element of the self-evaluations that would be of interest to SACRE.