Maindee Primary is our School of the Week

HEADTEACHER Jo Cueto joined Maindee Primary in September this year, after spending six years as head of Waunfawr Primary in Crosskeys.

Ms Cueto, of Newport, explained that the prospect of a fresh challenge drew her to Maindee, where 520 children speak a combined total of 32 languages.

A reflection of the diversity of its catchment area, many of the children at Maindee Primary are temporary students at the school, enrolling and leaving as their parents find work elsewhere.

“I think that the school are very, very talented in supporting those children," said Ms Cueto.

"We focus on real life experiences, trips, visits, visitors and cooking. That fits with the new curriculum which is about authentic learning experiences.

“At Maindee that’s something that we do really well, because it actually suits the needs of our children.

“Throughout the school there’s quite a focus on music too. Our juniors are doing drumming every week, and it helps with language patterns because they speak words while they drum.

“All of the year one children are currently involved in the Strings project. It’s teaching language skills and rhythm with violins. They absolutely love it.

“We benefit from the support of the Gwent Ethnic Minority Support Service (GEM), which is a Newport based service who offer first language support for children depending on their needs.

“We lose children regularly and new children coming in. It’s a constant cycle of getting to know the children’s needs.

“It is a big challenge but it’s something that Maindee have faced for a number of years, and they’re very good at meeting those needs.

“We have a teaching assistant from Slovakia, for example, and another who speaks Romanian. We have a lot of Roma Traveller students.

“Lots of our families have extended holidays, which can impact on our attendance, the same as every other school in Wales.

“So this year we’re focussing on engagement and excitement, so that the children actually want to be here. Our attendance in the last two terms have been very good, so we think the buzz is going around.

“We try to get the kids outdoors as much as possible, and some teachers will empty all the chairs and tables from their classrooms to have classes that really engage with the children.

“We have a big forest school area, so they do quite a lot outdoors.”

The school’s current theme is ‘The Streets Beneath Our Feet’, which is also focussed on learning outside the classroom and getting the children engaged .

Children have completed projects including comparing Maindee shops with Friars Walk and litter surveys.

Students have been allowed to present their work in their own ‘learning journals’, with the freedom to demonstrate their work in whatever way they want.

“We’ve found it’s really engaged the children, rather than make them stick to rigid lines that we would remember from our schooldays,” said Ms Cueto.

“Year five and six have been comparing Maindee to Friar’s Walk. Year three and Four have looked at what's going underneath the ground, looking at fossils and dinosaurs and even visiting Dan-yr-Ogof caves. The younger children have been working around Maindee, looking at different types of houses and mapping their routes to school.

“The school has really good links locally, which is great. We’ve recently secured funding from Refreshing Maindee to revamp our entrance with some plants and signs and things, after we were told by a governor with strong links in the area we could apply.”

Students have also been focussing on the traffic outside the school gates.

“It linked to parking issues we were having, and the Streets Beneath Our Feet theme.

“The children have been counting cars, noting car colours and getting ready to compare the current level of parking with the level after double yellow lines are installed.

“The kids have loved doing it. They’ll chose how to present their findings in their learning journals. It teaches them maths and data handling skills.”

Parents are also targets for engagement at Maindee too. The school uses an app, See Saw, which parents can use. Once they give permission, teachers can send individual pictures to individual children. Parents have the facility to comment on that too, which creates positive dialogue between parents and teachers. We use the app for the younger ones, while we tend to tweet more in the older classes.

Another thing that’s noticeable walking around the colourful halls of Maindee Primary is the amount of cooking going on in the corridors and classrooms.

“It’s a huge part of life for us here,” said Ms Cueto.

“The kids all love it, it brings in their maths and measuring skills, and helps them with their language. It’s everywhere here, even in the junior classes. Everybody’s always making something at some point, even if it’s just clay dough.

“It’s a big community thing too. We have a big Eid celebration for example, as we have a lot of Muslim children. That’s something that many of our families are very familiar with, so we make a big deal of it.

“We’re trying to develop a community allotment too, using our great relationship with the people of Maindee.

“The school motto is Learning and Living in Harmony, which fits perfectly with Maindee and suits our school. But we’ve done lots of talking about making sure the commitment excites and inspires the children.

“To that end we’ve been talking a lot about three words, equity, excitement and excellence. Making sure the children have what they need to succeed, regardless of their starting points. Making sure the children are excited and raising attendance. And then excellence, because we do want children to be achieving excellent results, and for some of them that might not the level or the outcome that we measure by but in terms of progress they make for however long they are here.

“We’re a very happy school. The wellbeing and happiness of children and staff is the most important thing to us. Some of the children are living in very extreme poverty , and that’s hard for staff too.

"But we work together as a team to make sure it’s a happy school. That’s been really lovely to come into, that’s what Maindee is like.”

Head boy Rizwan Hussain, 11, said he liked that the school had lots of different people from different backgrounds.

"We can learn about other cultures and we can learn about lots of stuff," he explained.

"It helps us outside of school in the community too."

Head girl Chanel ,10, added: "It helps us to make friends out of school."