Welcome to Southway Primary School
A message from Mr Westgarth, Principal . . .
Dear Parents
With such a short spring term we are doing our very best to make the most of every single day. Already, the spring term has seen a wide range of trips and visits to support the children’s learning. Teachers are building on this throughout the term and trips are already underway! This week our Year 6 pupils have made a visit to the Titanic Museum in Southampton to support their work on ‘Storms and Shipwrecks’, building on a recent trip to the HMS Victory last half term resulting in some truly stunning work in project books. Results are well on track this year to be above the national average for the first time in our history! It is now over a year since our last OfSTED inspection so we are awaiting a call for a repeat inspection – this time we are aiming for a judgement of good or better!
Following our consultation last year we have now been open for almost half a year as an Academy and many of you will probably not have noticed much of a difference. Behind the scenes we have been moving forward with a range of new projects.
What difference has our academy status made so far?
- We have recently appointed a Family Link Worker – Jools Eden. Jools is able to support parents with improving children’s behaviour at home, for instance by working on setting boundaries, improving routines or working on rewards and sanctions. Jools is also able to ‘signpost’ families to other services or agencies who might be able to help.
- We have appointed a Polish speaking Teaching Assistant. We currently have just under 100 pupils who have English as an additional language. There are 17 different languages spoken at Southway with Polish being the second most prevalent to English. Clearly we are committed to supporting all children who walk through our doors, and we greatly value the opportunities that diversity brings for our children. We are keen to make sure that all pupils make the same good progress and so have appointed Mrs Kamila Sokolowska who will be ensuring that our Polish speaking pupils learn English quickly and so make good progress.
- We have increased the amount of time that our Counsellor Linda Doughty is in school. We have seen real benefits for children who work alongside Linda. Whether it’s promoting high self-esteem, supporting bereavement or separation, promoting independence or dealing with more complex issues, the school counselling service has helped a large number of children overcome issues that might otherwise have caused their progress to slow.
- We have increased the amount of time that our Speech Therapist, Debbie Lamb spends in school. Referrals to the NHS are slow and we felt that it was taking too long to access this service for children who needed it. By having our own therapist in school, children can be seen days after a referral – helping them to get back on track quickly.
Referrals to the above services are made via Sarah Holland
(Vice Principal, Inclusion & Learning Support) sarah.holland@southwayprimary.co.uk
So, what are we planning next?
- We have a 5 years strategic plan which sets out where we are heading and what we want our school to be like in 2017. The next step for us is the development of a team of specialist teachers to give the children really outstanding teaching in PE, Art and ICT alongside the rich and vibrant curriculum we already provide.
Kind Regards
Mr M. R Westgarth - Principal -Southway Primary School 
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Our school has seven key words, called 'The Southway Seven', that form the basis of our ethos and values.
