Exercise in achievement

IT IS a good day to visit Millbrook's Mason Moor Primary.

Head teacher David Martindale is ecstatic after receiving a joint visit from four parents making enthusiastic suggestions on how to improve school life.

"I've never had four parents come to see me with ideas before. It's brilliant," he beams. "We'll put them in place and they'll work because they come from the parents."

It's just the latest in a clutch of signs that Mason Moor has turned the corner.

In December's primary league tables, Mason Moor was the only school in the city and the region to feature in the bottom 200 nationally.

On the surface, the figures made bleak reading - just 19 per cent of the children there achieved the government-recommended level in maths.

But all that is already changing.

Since his arrival in April last year, David, together with his team of talented staff, has created a barrage of new initiatives to boost standards and get parents more involved.

"Standards are going up," he insisted. "And within five years I would expect to see the results meeting national targets."

And he should know, because he has done it before. David arrived at Mason Moor fresh from a triumph at Southampton's Bevois Town primary.

He arrived at a time when the inner city primary was seen as a failing school and, together with staff, he turned it around by pioneering the use of computers in the youngsters' education.

Since April last year he has been at the helm of Mason Moor and is putting some of the lessons learned earlier in his career into practice.

The first thing is to get the parents on board, and regular meetings get the lines of communication flowing.

"We are learning a lot from them about the families and the community. They help us learn what will work and what won't," he pointed out.

"They have been fantastic. Like most families, they just want their children to be happy and to learn. I have had overwhelming support from the parents."

David spent the first term at the school watching and found a lot that was right.

"The school has a lot to build on. It has a history of keeping good teachers and we have good teaching here, all the reports say that. It also has a strong community."

But David has identified behaviour as a key area for improvement.

"We have to do some work on behaviour. What the school needed was a behaviour policy that says these are the guidelines.

"If you disturb the education of other children, there are consequences to that and they are called sanctions.

"Later in life if you break boundaries you get arrested, so it's important they understand."

There have also been big changes to the way the school handles the National Curriculum.

Every school has to teach the National Curriculum, but David is bringing the information technology approach he developed at Bevois Town to Mason Moor.

A hefty £45,000 IT investment followed his arrival at the Millbrook school and each teacher was given a laptop with a projector which beams lively images onto a whiteboard.

It's a vital tool in the battle to keep the PlayStation generation interested, reckons David, and one which is already having a big impact on the way Mason Moor youngsters are learning.

"Where we are competing with TVs and PlayStations, and we are, we now have programs on the laptops which are in colour and move around. But we back that up with a rock-solid commitment to work- books.

"Every child who sits in these lessons will not move from their seat or waver in their attention because they want to be part of it. Now we can bring things to life."

Underpinning all of this is a renewed commitment to reading.

"I believe every child wants to read in the same way as they want to learn to talk and walk. If you deliver reading in an exciting and multimedia way then you can motivate them.

"If you can read it opens everything to you."

The school now has a reading club which invites parents to become a Mason Moor Word Muncher and "read, read, read" with their child. And it's having an impact.

"We measure each child's progress each term and there's been a startling recovery. Some children have done more than a year's work in two terms."

David has a chart showing youngsters' reading age and their progress, and he proudly points to several who have gone off the scale.

The signs are everywhere that Mason Moor has a bright future.

"Staff are motivated by what they are achieving and parents are feeding back to us that this is good because they get excited by what they are seeing their children do," added David.

"The work ethic is now very strong in the children and standards are going up.

"Within three years, and we are very nearly at the end of the first one, I would hope to have the whole of the internal workings of the school delivering success.

"By that I mean an exciting, stimulating and pleasant environment for children and their families to come to and for my

colleagues to work in.

"But the important bit is to make a big impact quickly.

"I enjoy coming here every day, but what I also love is knowing that this school will achieve. I know it will happen. Expectations are high and there's an upbeat feel here."