Claire Connelly – Head Teacher of St. Aidan’s High School
Thu, Jan 23rd 2020 at 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Ms Connelly will be our guest speaker tonight addressing the members on 'overcoming poverty related barriers to learning'.
H&R: Callan Dick & Des Donnelly
VoT: Allan Scott
Tonight’s speaker at the Rotary Club of Motherwell and Wishaw was Claire Connelly, Head Teacher of St Aidan’s High School, Wishaw.
Claire's talk was on closing the attainment gap at St Aidan’s by breaking down the barriers that are created by poverty. Claire initially spoke about Pupil Equity Funding (FEP) which is additional funding allocated to schools based on Free Meal Entitlement and targeted at closing the poverty related attainment gap.
Claire advised that, at the moment, the current allocation is £1200 per pupil, in P1-S3, falling under the Free Meals measure for being used. This is a hybrid of current and historic data which is recognised to be imperfect and will be adapted over time.
The focus is very much on activities and interventions that will lead to improvements in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing of the pupils and the funding must provide targeted support for children and young people affected by poverty to achieve their full potential. Although the PEF is allocated on the basis of free school meal eligibility head teachers can use their professional judgement to bring additional children in to the targeted interventions.
As a head teacher, Claire must use the funding on a clear contextual analysis which identifies the poverty related attainment gap in their schools and plans must be grounded in evidence of what is known to be effective at raising attainment for children affected by poverty. She went on to explain the various initiatives that have been brought into St Aidan’s as a result of PEF and these include Makeup Masterclasses, Reading and Pizza Club, Cooking Classes and, with music being an important part of life at St Aidan’s, funds have been used to purchase music instruments for children who previously could not afford to buy them.
In closing, Claire said that you cannot go back and change the beginning, but, you can start at where you are and change the ending for all the pupils at St Aidan’s. Claire answered many questions posed by the members.
The vote of thanks was proposed by Allan Scott.
The winner of the weekly bonus ball was John McDonald.
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