Headteacher of the Year Award- March 2017
Miss. Smith was named as ‘Headteacher of the Year 2017’ in the Northern Echo Education Awards after being nominated by Mr. Paul Wheatley. It is a huge honour to be considered for this award and Miss. Smith is over the moon to have been chosen as the winner.
Intermediate International School Award- July 2016
I am thrilled to announce that I received an email saying that we had been successful in gaining the Intermediate International School Award. They have sent us information as to what we need to do to achieve the full accredited award with the following congratulations:
Thank you for applying for the International School Award Intermediate Certificate on behalf of Oxclose Nursery School, and the assessor is pleased to inform you that your application successfully passes all criteria. It is very evident that your participation in a two year Comenius project with a number of European partners has enabled considerable development of the international dimension in your school through a rich variety of activities, events and actions. The evidence of parental views gathered in surveys about changes in awareness and attitudes of your children is of particular value in demonstrating this improvement. It is noted, however, that the majority of the many activities you have included in the application were completed by July 2015 and, although this satisfies the criterion related to activities within the last year, there is relatively little evidence of ongoing activity at the present time. It appears that there is continued contact between teachers and you mention the intention to engage in a project with a leadership and management focus, but in order to apply for full accreditation it will be necessary to ensure that collaborative curricular and / or pedagogical projects are currently taking place with partner schools. You have created an excellent platform for further development by such commendable enrichment of your curriculum and it is hoped that you will now be able to progress to the accreditation phase by working on a Statement of Intent. Congratulations on achieving the Intermediate Certificate.
Support Staff of the Year Finalist- March 2016
We are very proud of Mrs. Douglas who was nominated in the Northern Echo Education Awards for ‘Support Staff of the Year’. She was a very worthy finalist and we are over the moon that her hard work and dedication has been recognised and celebrated. Well done Mrs. Douglas!
Investors in Children Award- February 2016
We are delighted to announce that they have been successful in gaining the ‘Investing in Children’ award. Chris Affleck visited the nursery on Thursday 11th February 2016 to make his assessment. On arrival, Chris was shown around the nursery and he was “really impressed by the amount of space both indoors and outdoors and the range of resources available to the children”.
Chris spent the morning chatting with the children to see if they thought that they were listened to and could make choices at nursery. “We can do whatever we want, I like playing games but we do loads of stuff”, one child told him. The report states that, ‘children were free to pick and choose what they wanted to do during their time at nursery. Workers were always on hand to support the children to do whatever it was they wanted to do. During some observations I heard various requests from the children during my visit and it appeared that nothing was a problem to the workers, they were happy to do whatever they could to support and enhance the children’s learning and freedom to play.’
The children have to provide the evidence for an organisation and endorse the membership report because it is a children’s and young people’s award. The children all agreed that the nursery deserved the award and one little boy also added that he thought the nursery deserved “a giant medal”.
Investing in Children (IiC) is a UK initiative that promotes the human rights of children and young people. Over the last 17 years, IiC has developed a range of different ways in which children and young people are supported to say what they want to say, and help to improve services used by them, by discussing their ideas with the adults who run the services.
The children and their interests are at the heart of everything that we do here at Oxclose. All staff work really hard to skilfully lead learning in a challenging but supportive way, to ensure that all children are focussed and following their own interests. We are very proud of our boys and girls and they did a great job of proving how well they are listened to by staff and most importantly, they all reported about how much fun they have at nursery.
Learning Outside the Classroom- Bronze Award- March 2014
We are thrilled to announce that we have been successful in achieving the Bronze Learning Outside the Classroom award. We are the first school in County Durham to achieve this award. We place huge importance on learning outdoors and offer a vast range of experiences for our children.
Basic Skills Quality Mark- July 2014
We are thrilled to announce that we were awarded the Basic Skills Quality Mark for the third consecutive time on 26th July 2014. The assessor looks carefully at how we teach reading, writing and maths in particular.
She praised our outdoor area for its wealth of learning opportunities, the thorough tracking of progress, the strong Governor support, involvement of parents and the support children with SEND receive among other things.
Rights Respecting Schools Awards- January 2012
I am delighted to announce that we were successful in passing the level 1 assessment process to become a Rights Respecting School on January 24th 2012. We are now working towards achieving level 2 in the future. We believe strongly that every child has a right to play and to receive the best education possible, to feel safe and well cared for, to be heard and to be healthy.
These beliefs guide us in all we do here at Oxclose Nursery.
Awards for All – Big Lottery Funding
Details of the Big Lottery Funding …….. Miss. O’Keeffe submitted a great bid to the Awards for All Lottery Funding and we were so thrilled to be awarded £9,915. Well done Miss. O’Keeffe! We used the funding to create a ‘Secret Garden’ at the back of our Nursery garden. A path was created, entering the garden through a pergola. This leads to a little bridge (where the Troll lives, of course) and then down to a set of steps and stepping stones beside the wildlife area. We also used the funding to create vegetable patches for the children to learn about growth and harvesting of vegetables and we created a large herb wall too. This gives the children access to herbs to add to their lotions and potions made throughout the year. A patio was laid and an open-ended structure was errected to provide a space for a car wash, shop, cafe etc outdoors. We also planted a willow tunnel and lots of bull rushes, bamboo, corn and fruit trees to give our garden lots of interest throughout the year. A meadow mat was also placed in one of our grass circles to give the children long grass to run through and hide within. Lots of different meadow flowers grow throughout the year. A maze of miniature trees was placed in our other circle. This has created an area where the children can build dens and camp in the ‘forest’. This made such a difference to our outdoor provision. The impact has been much improved ‘Being Imaginative’ attainment.
