Today we spent the day at the NCCS and had a number of presentations about community schools. The Director of the Children's Aid Society spoke about how the organisation works with schools and their pupils who come from quite poor families. In New York they have built a system of community schools where each school (which is involved) has a School Based Health Centre. That means that children can have regular Health checks and vaccinations when they need them. They can also go there if they need to see a doctor or feel unwell. This means that parents do not need to miss time off work and it means that everything that children need to help them to be healthy and ready to learn is under one roof. We heard from a psychologist who works with children who have troubles at home and he explained how he works with their parents sometimes too to make things better. The way schools are organised (to solve some of the problems that they have) is very different here and this is one of the reasons for the visit. We also heard a presentation from a principal (headteacher) and she told us how she had organised her school and changed it from a school with a lot of problems and difficulties to a community school which has wonderful support for its pupils.
It was good to hear that a lot of the things we do at Trellech Primary are done here too. Sometimes it's very hard to change things so that they can be improved and make a difference because of rules or the way things have always been done. It's great to learn about different ways of working and organising things.
There has been a lot of information to take in today and we are having a short break now before meeting again as a group to talk and think about key points that we've learned today. It's been really great to learn these things with other headteachers and to talk about how things could, should and hopefully might change in the future. The leader of out group is called Professor Harris and she is the senior policy advisor to the Welsh Edudation Department. We've had some fantastic discussions already about learning and how schools can get even better at doing what they do. I think we're doing really well at Trellech Primary School.
