Latest News and Weekly Newsletters

• Money raised towards school defibrillator!

  Fri 06 Oct 2017 S Peters

  Money raised towards school defibrillator!

  Oldcastle Primary School is delighted to receive a donation of £500 from the Hub and Intel departments in South Wales Police towards a defibrillator.

   

  The money has been raised by PC Ceri Francis, PC Rea Stephens and DI Dean Taylor from sales of their Tuck Shop within the police station. They have been hugely successful with their fundraising for charity and have also recently made a donation to the SCBU in the Princess of Wales hospital.

   

  “Oldcastle Primary School is keen to purchase a defibrillator for the school to ensure the safety of our children, staff and other users of the school. The school is often hired privately by various groups so we wanted to ensure we could help someone in need of assistance with a cardiac arrest. We are so grateful to the officers in South Wales Police for this donation”. Jeremy Malessa-Thompson, Headteacher at Oldcastle Primary School.

   

  “We were keen to support Oldcastle Primary School as our children, and other family members, attend the School or have previously attended. It has provided our children with a great start to life and when we heard about the fundraising efforts for a defibrillator we were keen to support something that is close to our hearts”. PC Rea Stephens, South Wales Police.

   

  Oldcastle Primary is a busy primary school with over 400 children and the school is grateful for any assistance with fundraising and grant funding.

  

• Oldcastle Primary Estyn Report

  Wed 06 Sep 2017 Sara Peters

  Oldcastle Primary recognised as an innovative school

   

  Oldcastle Primary School has been recognised as a highly innovative learning community following an inspection by Estyn in June 2017.

   

  Estyn, the Education and Training inspectorate for Wales, is instructed to inspect the quality and standards of schools, colleges, and local authorities’ education services. All schools are inspected at least once during a six year cycle.

   

  Estyn inspectors examined many aspects of school life, and Oldcastle Primary School is pleased to have been recognised as a good school with excellent features as defined through the Common Inspection Framework utilised by Estyn.

   

  In particular the school has been identified as being excellent for its care, support and guidance, researching and implementing bespoke and innovative programmes for the benefit of the pupils. Including its use of Mabel tele-therapy to support pupils with speech and language needs. The inspectors noted that the quality of care, support and guidance has a very positive impact on pupils’ standards and wellbeing.

   

  The report recognises through creative and innovative leadership that the vision to inspire, educate and motivate was at the core of the schools work. This ethos had a strong impact on securing high levels of attendance and promoting pupils wellbeing. It goes on to describe the excellent resource management stating that “in view of the innovative and imaginative way in which leaders manage the school’s resources, the school gives excellent value for money”.

   

  Partnerships were another area where the school was judged to be excellent. Parental questionnaires identified that 98% of parents strongly agree or agree that they are satisfied with the school. Children also provided very positive feedback to the inspectors with 99% of children feeling they were doing well at school. Further partnerships with the University of the West of England also received praise along with links to local business, the school enterprise work and the schools science, technology, engineering and mathematics program.

   

  “As a school we welcome the positive feedback from the Estyn report, I am delighted that the teaching and support staff are recognised as providing highly effective purposeful learning experiences which enrich pupils spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. It was also pleasing to note that the inspectors recognised our excellent working partnerships with businesses, which has led to an enriched curriculum. Inspection reflects a snap shot of the life of a school and the strength of any school is in the staff who serve the children and community in which it is based”. Mr Jeremy Malessa-Thompson, Headteacher at Oldcastle Primary School.

   

  The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations identified in the report. A copy of the Estyn report for Oldcastle Primary School is available from www.estyn.gov.wales or by clicking here

• Governors Report to parents 2016-2017

  Wed 19 Jul 2017
  The annual governors report to parents is now available to view on our website. Please click here to view.

• Oldcastle children enjoy fruit and veg at break times!

  Wed 24 May 2017

   

  Oldcastle Primary School has a brand new fruit and veg shop courtesy of the Tesco Bags of Help scheme. The wooden shop is situated in the main playground and year 5 children have been tasked with selling fruit and vegetables during their morning break times.

   

  Children in the juniors are thoroughly enjoying purchasing fruit throughout the break times. The year 5 children are really getting into the enterprise project and look forward to selling to the friends. As a school we encourage all our children to adopt a healthy lifestyle and it is fantastic to see so many children purchasing the fruit.

   

  The school were delighted to receive funding from the Tesco Bags of Help initiative. As well as the fruit shop Oldcastle has seen further improvements to the school garden and developing their cob oven area. We have made improvements to the cob oven area by developing a preparation area and providing wooden bench seating for our children to participate and enjoy learning in the outdoor environment.

   

  “It is amazing to see the children so enthusiastic about our small enterprise project and also encouraging children to eat healthy. It is pleasing to see so many children enjoying apples, pears, bananas, carrot sticks and oranges throughout their break time. Our wooden shop provides a perfect location for our children to sell the fruit and we look forward to using the space for lots of other events in the future”. Rebecca Taylor, year 5 teacher.

  

• Hire our facilities

  Fri 10 Mar 2017 S Peters

  Our School offers excellent facility areas that are available for private hire.  These include our two halls, classrooms, meetings rooms and 4D interactive room. 

   

  

• Oldcastle Primary bags £5000 from Tesco carrier bag charge

  Fri 10 Mar 2017 S Peters

  Oldcastle Primary School is delighted to announce it has bagged £5000 from a Tesco funding scheme.

   

  Tesco teamed up with Groundwork to launch its Bags of Help funding initiative, which sees grants of up to £5,000, £2,000 and £1,000 – all raised from the 5p bag levy – being awarded to thousands of local community projects every year.

   

  Millions of shoppers voted in stores in the South Wales region throughout January, and it can now be revealed Oldcastle Primary School has been awarded £5000. Work will now begin on bringing the project to life. The funding will allow the School to develop our school garden and cob oven project. Our aim is to allow children to prepare and cook food in the cob oven, and ultimately learn more about heathy eating. The cob oven is an exciting addition to the School and is a low carbon process in which you can bake bread, pizza, roast vegetables and meats. We are keen to utilise the oven and develop the garden area as much as possible, and we are pleased to receive the grant from Tesco to allow us to inspire, motivate and educate children and parents.

   

  Jeremy Malessa-Thomson, Headteacher at Oldcastle Primary School, “We are delighted to receive the funding from the Bags of Help initiative and we are looking forward to developing our school garden so that children can enjoy learning in the outdoor environment. The School is grateful to all the Tesco customers who voted for us throughout January”.

   

  Lindsey Crompton, Tesco’s Head of Community, said: “Bags of Help has been a fantastic success. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response from our customers. The great thing about Bags of Help is that local people are invited to decide how the money will be spent in their community. We can’t wait to see the projects come to life.”

  

• Schoop Communication App

  Fri 10 Mar 2017 S Peters

  Oldcastle Primary School is one of the first schools to sign up to the new communication app called SCHOOP.  Its easy to use and allows parents to keep up to date with news and events. 

   

  All you need to do is download the free app from your App store / Google Play. Run the app and register with our school number 11040.

   

  It's as easy as that!  If you have any problems please contact the Admin office on 01656 815790.