Manorfield Infant  and Nursery School has designed and shared with their families a great new poster to remind everyone how important every school day is, especially for our youngest learners. Attendance in nursery is just as important as attendance in every other year group. Some may argue attendance in nursery is even more important because this is when children learn the foundations of academic knowledge and skills, social skills and physical development.   These skills underpin their learning and development for the rest of their lives. Learning is much like building a house, if you get the foundations right then you are ready for success, but if the foundations are weak then whatever goes on top of them will simply crumble.     Every Day Counts.   Every child, and every adult in our Trust family of schools has an attendance target of 98% because lost learning days impact negatively on a child's education. Children will not make the required progress, and they may even lose their place in nursery or at school. Poor attendance also does not reflect well in a reference to another school, college or employer. 98% may sound like a lot, and if you achieved 98% as a test score you would probably be quite pleased with that. However, 98% attendance means you have already missed 4 days of learning and that's about 28 lessons. That's a lot of lost learning, so 98% is a minimum expectation, not a target.    Always remember Every Day Counts. Try not to miss any days.   High Attendance = High Achievement. 

Batley Girls' High School was delighted to host the PiXL Open Day event last week and share best practice with schools across our region. The event was coordinated by the fantastic Mrs Wilby, Batley Girls' Assistant Headteacher, and it was an opportunity for senior and middle leaders from Batley Girls' to showcase their exceptional work on school improvement to other school leaders. Batley Girls' school leaders presented their work on personal development, inclusion, careers and how they develop distributed leadership across their staff team, as well as how they develop and maximise learner leadership opportunities. Mr Scurr presented the bespoke and uniquely designed Batley Brilliance Bucket and how that is used to secure strong attendance, inspire learners to be the best version of themselves every day, and to play a positive and proactive role in school life, and their wider community.   Careers is a golden thread of the entire Batley Girls' curriculum and Mrs Mehat leads this area of school life exceptionally well. Batley Girls' High School was also graded as outstanding by Ofsted for its Personal Development curriculum.    Feedback from the open day was incredibly positive about how the school builds a culture where the curriculum and wider learner well-being drives high academic achievement and how this is empowered by the distributed leadership model. One learner summed the day up the best when they said; "Learner leadership isn't symbolic - it is a meaningful part of how our school operates."   Batley Girls' High School also received a letter from Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education last week praising them for their excellent results with learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. Batley Girls' has been recognised as achieving superb outcomes for these learners. This high achievement places Batley Girls' High School amongst the very best nationally. Really well done to Mr Kibble and the Batley Girls' High School team.