Dear Parents/Carers,

Our school is committed to the safety and wellbeing of all our pupils and our priority is to keep the children safe at all times.  I am writing to remind you about our Lockdown emergency procedures, we have in place, should our school ever need to go into ‘Lockdown’.  A school lockdown is the opposite of an evacuation.  In a ‘lockdown’ children and staff remain inside the building for their safety.

It is standard health and safety practice for schools to have lockdown procedures in place as it is good practice for schools to prepare for all situations regardless of how unlikely their occurrence may seem.

As you may know, there have been a couple of local incidents, in previous years where we have had to initiate the partial lockdown procedure, in real life circumstances so staff and children are familiar with lockdown procedures and we always inform the whole school community after the event.

Please read a brief summary below.

The Lockdown procedure is available on the school website and all staff have been trained on the procedure.  We will be refreshing our awareness of this procedure with staff and children in coming weeks and carrying out a practice exercise of a ’partial lockdown’.   Primary Schools are not advised to complete ‘Full Lockdown’ drills due to the children’s age.  We will talk to the children about this in assembly and in classrooms with class teachers in a sensitive manner.   It is obviously not our intention to make any child feel anxious, however it is important that we have procedures in place and practice these to ensure everybody is clear on what they need to do.

Our school site is extremely secure and access is restricted, so we are almost operating on ‘partial lockdown’ as a normal everyday routine.

Please discuss this with your children and we will continue to update you on all important safety matters. 

Yours sincerely,

 T Larkham

Tom Larkham

Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers,

OFSTED INSPECTION OUTCOME & REPORT

I am delighted to be able to share with you all the outcome and final report from our most recent inspection, conducted in March.  This inspection was a full, graded inspection, as apposed to the 2021 inspection which was not graded.  This was the first graded inspection since 2013.

Ofsted have graded Coleham School OUTSTANDING in all areas: the best possible grading for a school.

Ofsted look at 5 areas when inspecting a school:

• Quality of Education
• Behaviour & Attitudes
• Personal Development
• Leadership & Management
• EYFS

To be graded outstanding in all these areas is a huge achievement for all the staff and the children, past and present, who have worked hard every day over the last decade to make Coleham School the special place it is.  As a school, we have not put things in place or done anything special for the sake of Ofsted, neither before the inspection nor during it, and it is important that we are recognised for doing what is in the best interests of our community.

Thank you to everyone who completed the parent survey and spoke to the inspectors: they have certainly seen Coleham for what it is!  We will now continue our journey, making sure that Coleham remains a great school at the heart of the community for many more years to come.  Please enjoy reading the report: we will be releasing the report to our wider community on our website tomorrow, alongside a special, short celebratory video in true Coleham style! The report will also be available on Ofsted’s website in a week or so.

Thank you, from all of us, for your ongoing support.

Yours sincerely

Tom Larkham

Headteacher