Read our latest newsletter: Friday 25th January 2019
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SPA Newsletter 250119Consultation on the proposal that Solebay Primary Academy should continue to operate a nursery class
Consultation opens: Friday 11 January 2019, 9am.
Solebay Primary Academy (11 Solebay Street, London, E1 4PW) transferred to Paradigm Trust in September 2014. The predecessor school did not offer nursery places. Paradigm places great value on the importance of early years education and, given this, indicated to the Department for Education (DfE), prior to transfer, that it intended to open a nursery class at Solebay, as soon as the school had stabilised. DfE was supportive of this approach. Paradigm also corresponded with, and provided a business case to, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which also supported the provision of nursery places at Solebay. However, due to an administrative oversight prior to September 2014, the funding agreement between the DfE and Paradigm Trust specified an inaccurate age range (4 to 11 years, rather than 3 to 11 years).
In order to regularise the existing position, Paradigm intends, subject to this consultation process, to make an application to the DfE for its funding agreement to be retrospectively modified to state an operating age range of 3 to 11 years, rather than 4 to 11 years.
The proposal is that Solebay will continue to offer nursery places, as it currently does, beyond September 2019. It is envisaged that the number of places will be capped at 26 part-time places in the morning, and 26 part-time places in the afternoon, although the school is committed to working closely with parents/carers to offer high quality full time places and/or extended day provision, if there is demand from parents/carers for this.
The nursery class was mentioned very positively in Ofsted’s (March 2016) inspection report (which graded early years provision as ‘outstanding’): In the Nursery and Reception classes, children make excellent progress from their starting points. Ofsted also visited Solebay as part of research for an early years survey report. Solebay performs strongly as a school – it was graded ‘good’ overall by Ofsted and Y6 pupils in summer 2018 made progress in line with the top 20% of pupils nationally. In addition, the school was singled out by DfE for its excellent performance in the Y1 phonics check last summer.
No changes to admissions criteria are proposed.
The Trust has planning consent to operate provision for up to 350 pupils on the Solebay site. If demand for places in reception through to year 6 were to increase, we would reduce the number of nursery places offered to ensure that the planning conditions were respected.
If you wish to respond to this consultation, please email: consultation@paradigmtrust.org
Consultation closes: 9am, Friday 8 February 2019.
Year One pupils achieve reading accolade
Year One pupils are celebrating after 96% of them either reached or exceeded the pass mark in the 2018 phonics screening check.
The latest assessment of reading fluency puts our school in the top 7% of all primary schools across the country.
This accolade has been recognised by the School Standards Minister Nick Gibb who wrote to the school to congratulate our pupils on their excellent reading skills and acknowledge the work of the teaching staff.
Solebay Primary Academy Principal Janet Baker said:
“We were extremely pleased that our Year One pupils have been recognised for their excellent reading skills in the 2018 phonic screening. The skill of reading is one of the most important we teach our children. It is a life skill that enables them to extend their ideas and gain information as the basis for other learning.”
The school uses phonics which is an approach backed by Paradigm Trust to teach pupils how to learn to read. Decoding is an important skill that pupils have to acquire before they can read to learn.
A copy of the full letter can be found here: Letter from School Standards Minister