Here in Ballymahon Vocational School we are proud to be a DEIS school. DEIS outlines Delivering Equality in Schools and highlights the key supports and efforts made by staff and students to make Ballymahon Vocational School an inclusive school, which really showcases our motto, “Where the Individual Matters”.
DEIS covers eight themes and allows for students to receive the best support in areas of numeracy, literacy, attainment, attendance, and retention as well as encouraging our students and staff to foster positive relationships with parents and community. Transition from primary school to secondary school is a very important area of focus as well as helping facilitate our students through their time in BVS. Great work was done this year to assess our current first years to see how successfully students found transitioning from primary to post primary school. Students were surveyed on their overall experience of the transition from primary and the results were overwhelmingly positive, surpassing our target by 6%.
This year we have also implemented our new wellbeing policy as well as including wellbeing as part of our SSE/DEIS plan. Students, staff and parents were surveyed to gather feedback which will help inform and develop our strategies to encourage positive wellbeing here in Ballymahon Vocational School. Some key whole school initiatives were launched this year alongside continuing some of the strategies begun last year. These have included:
One of the new initiatives we launched this year was ‘the importance of numeracy in everyday life’. Large clocks with circular clockfaces in both English and Irish were displayed around the school to help students become more numerate, relate numerical concepts such as lines and angles, as well as assisting with Irish vocabulary. Large number lines are now displayed in the assembly hall and around the school to further embed numerical concepts in everyday life.
Similar to last year, students have been encouraged to ’drop everything and read’ to improve areas of both literacy and wellbeing.
We continue to communicate effectively and timely through our very active social media accounts and presence. In this way we share what we do in school, the work our students do with the community, as well as deepening our partnerships with both parents and community.
The students and their education are central to everything we do here in Ballymahon Vocational School and DEIS helps us as staff and students to work effectively and positively in all aspects of what we do.