Dear Families

Today, Mrs Wood and I have led an assembly to introduce our new first name policy for school staff. I’d like to explain this to you so that you are aware of these exciting changes and can talk about them at home.

At Southill Primary, we’re proud of our inclusive culture and welcoming environment. We aim to nurture happy, confident children by encouraging positive relationships between adults and children, relationships which depend on trust and mutual respect.  Over the past couple of years, we have been researching schools where positive relationships help improve children’s learning and development. What we noticed is that, in these schools, pupils address their teachers by their first names. We did some more research on this and found that pupils benefit from using adults’ first names in school because:

🔹it breaks down unproductive barriers between adults and pupils and encourages mutual respect
🔹it creates a more inclusive classroom environment, where anxious pupils or those with SEND feel more involved and comfortable
🔹it supports a more effective emotional adult/child relationship, which can enhance the wellbeing and motivation of both
🔹it promotes a closer sense of belonging and community among the pupils and the staff and the parents
🔹it can help build friendlier and more collaborative relationships between the teacher and pupils as well as teachers and parents.

It also removes gender specific titles and the need for antiquated modes of addressing female members of staff according to their marital status.

When Mrs Wood was appointed as Headteacher she discussed a first names policy with the governors, staff and some children. These conversations were so successful that she is planning to adopt the policy fully next year. In the meantime, and wishing to provide my support for this idea, we will be starting the policy now to give everyone time to get used to it. We have discussed this with the children in the assembly today.

For now, we have given staff the choice over how they wish to be addressed at school. This demonstrates our commitment to being an inclusive and respectful workplace. Some staff have asked to wait to see how relationships are affected. We expect they will soon see many positive results where relationships have not been harmed, but enhanced.

Here’s the list of our staff and how they would like to be addressed by everyone:

Headteacher: Paul Mason
Deputy Headteacher: Caroline Wood
SENDCo: Dawn Trimmer
Office: Mrs Howe and Mrs Sharpe

Reception:
Mrs Puddick
Mrs Kench

Year 1:
Emma Curtis
Emily England
Emily Jones

Year 2:
Andrea Warner-Lee
Mrs Clark
Mrs Harris

Year 3:
Bethan Hutton
Mrs Walkinshaw

Year 4:
Tom Prior
Sue Aitken
Mrs Murray

Year 5:
Mrs Butler
Mrs Hill
Mrs Wallis
Kelly Harris

Year 6:
Hayley Savage
Dan Bell

Lunch team:
Hayley Hackett
Linda Huckin
Gill Richardson
Hannah Hills
Marie Wilson-Browne

We know that for many of the children (and for many of you) it will be different and unfamiliar to call school staff by their first names. It will certainly take a bit of getting used to and we expect that many of us might get it wrong every now and again – but that’s ok.

Southill Primary has a reputation for being a kind, inclusive family school and this step feels right for us at this time. We hope that you will be just as excited as we are about this new chapter. If you have any questions at all please contact us.

Kind regards
Paul and Caroline