“It’s about intelligence isn’t it,” 

reflects Head Teacher Fiona Dunlop, 

“it’s about what you know about families. We’ve got quite a few staff that live in the area, but also long standing support staff that live locally, so there’s lots of intelligence that they can and do share.”

Fiona thinks that one consequence of pandemic lockdowns was to offer her staff the chance to make important connections with families: 

“Over the pandemic, the staff worked really hard in the community delivering things that families needed, making sure people had food and devices that their children could access home learning on, and checking in with pupils and their parents and carers. So they made a lot of connections with the local community and families at that point that we are trying to build on now.” 

How does Beith Primary School plan to sustain and boost these connections? 

“It’s about a culture, it’s about a way of working and showing mutual respect for one another and an understanding without judgement of where people are. And it’s not always easy because people come from different backgrounds and experiences.”

To deal with this, Fiona says that she:

“Works with staff on a very deep level one to one. We also do a lot of work on this in conversations and in collegiate times. I will give them scenarios, like ‘do you know what’s happened to that child before it’s come to school today?’  We make time to talk about how things like that may impact on how our learners and their ability to engage and we talk about the influences of society.”