Story: Priya Blackham
Pye Bank Primary School welcomed new headteacher Mo Andrews in September, following the retirement of Paul Hopkinson in January.
In an interview with the Messenger, Mo spoke enthusiastically about joining the school:
I've received an amazing welcome already from parents and I know interest in the school is high in the local community.
Mo has been a headteacher for 10 years. She was first appointed as a Head at a school in Barnsley in 2005 where she stayed for 5 years. She then came to work in Sheffield and was Head of Longley Primary School (now called Pathways Academy) for another 5 years.
Mo maintained her connection to the Burngreave area by being involved with Pye Bank as a School Improvement Partner. It was then Mo felt Pye Bank’s “huge potential to be outstanding and its warmth” and when the post became available she felt as if the post was right for her.
At the end of last year Pye Bank's Year 6s achieved their best ever Key Stage 2 results, placing the school above the ‘national floor standard’. Mo aims to ensure that all their students leave Pye Bank at the highest level they can, as well as ensuring that they have the appropriate skills and support to help them in terms of lifelong employability.
The school aims to do this by ensuring the curriculum is engaging. Mo believes that “if children enjoy learning they do achieve really well.”
Community and parent involvement is also another priority for Pye Bank. The school aims to maintain the high level of involvement in family learning, ESOL courses and coffee mornings. Mo emphasised the benefit of the coffee mornings, saying:
At the coffee mornings you can talk to parents, which is good because we can have open and transparent relationships to find out what the parents want. It's the goodwill and relationship that is powerful here and by maintaining that we can serve the needs of the school.
Mo recognises that Pye Bank has an important part to play in the wider community, particularly around the development of Verdon Recreation Centre, which the school manages:
It is an amazing facility and we want to work with the local community to develop it as a community hub. We will be looking to develop adult learning for parents and the whole community. We will also be holding our winter fair in the centre so the whole community can join in.
Mo Andrew’s personal goal, in partnership with Samina Qureshi, the Deputy Headteacher, is for the school to be ‘outstanding’ in 2 years' time. She told us:
This community deserves an ‘outstanding’ school, so that the children can move on into the future and achieve their goals, whether that's to make a positive contribution to their community or to go to university and meet other aspirations.
She hopes this can be done by Pye Bank supporting the parents to support the children