Report on my attachment to Highbury Primary School, Portsmouth : 4 – 15 November 1996

Abstract

My visit to Highbury Portsmouth was part of a within the Diploma Course in Primary School, Cosham, school attachment exercise Education - Administration and Management. course students. I was one of a group of seven evening We were all posted to different schools - some in primary, some in secondary and some in colleges. The schools were all in Portsmouth which is part of the county of Hampshire. The aim of the visit was to observe and reflect on the administrative practice in schools. We were given general guidelines about what to look for during our stay. Planning, distribution of responsibilities, teacher roles and school activities were among the suggestions high on the agenda. We were instructed to involve ourselves as much as possible in the school life by attending meetings, visiting classrooms and discussing with the staff. Our task was to write a report on the visit which contains our observations and reflections, possibly applying the experience to the Maltese context. We arrived in Portsmouth on Friday 1 November. Like our colleagues who visited Portsmouth earlier the same year, we lodged at Victoria Guesthouse. Our host Mr David Johnson gave us a warm welcome. He was very helpful by giving us valuable information about Portsmouth in general and the individual school to which we were attached. We spent those two days exploring Portsmouth and preparing ourselves for our first encounter with the schools. The bus ride to school took about 30 minutes. When I arrived at Highbury Primary I was welcomed by Mrs Deborah Yates. In fact, she was the new Headteacher since Mr E. Petterson had resigned from his post. As we had been told to expect by our visit co-ordinator Mr Joseph Muscat, I soon noticed that the Head was 'a very busy' person. Notwithstanding this she found time for a meeting with me. Debbie, as she likes to be addressed by the staff, briefed me about the organisation of the school and gave me leeway to visit any classroom at any time. Then she took me for a quick tour of the school building at the same time introducing me to the teachers. There was no fixed programme pre-arranged for me. As I discovered later the Deputy Head was also a very busy person overloaded with work. However, the head was always available. I was shown the school files and how to use the school photocopying machine by inputting the Head's own password number. In the afternoon I started attending meetings and visiting classrooms. During my stay I had the opportunity to visit two other schools. One was Crookhorn Community School to which one of our colleagues was attached. The other was a special school in Portsmouth called Rachel Maddocks School. I will give a short report on these visits later on in this report.