Who are St Augustine’s C of E Primary School?
St Augustine’s C of E Primary School is a small, rural setting in Sussex, close to ancient woodlands and open countryside and just a 20-minute drive from the Tapestry office!
With just under 100 pupils split across four classes, the school has a strong focus on rich learning experiences and community. We talked with Headteacher Mr Ben Cornford and Early Years Teacher Mrs Sam Morton about their move from paper-based observations to digital learning journeys following the introduction of Tapestry around two years ago.
How did St Augustine’s move from paper observations to digital learning journeys?
In an effort to reduce workload-intensive paperwork and capture learning records more effectively, the staff at St Augustine’s started out by introducing the Observations feature on Tapestry in their Reception class.
Previously we did all of our observations in the early years on pieces of paper, and so we had to write them out for each child, cut them, sort them, stick them in, and then share them with the parents when they came in each term or half term - so we looked at other ways to start recording those.
It didn’t take them [staff in the Early Years] very long to realise that it saved them time, saved them effort, it ticked a lot of boxes very quickly. What that meant is we really quickly had some staff champions who were sharing the benefits across the school.
Tapestry in the classroom
Early Years Teacher Sam reflects on the move from paper to Tapestry and how it has transformed the way they record, organise and evidence learning. Sam also shares how Tapestry supports them in planning meaningful experiences and building stronger connections with families.
How does Tapestry help connect families with learning?
What it’s [Tapestry] really helped to do is really help to share some of those memorable learning experiences, that are happening within school, with the families at home….This gives you something concrete to talk about, they go ‘oh, I saw your teacher posted the science learning you were doing today and that looked really fun; tell me about X, Y or Z’, and so it naturally opens up those conversations.
Families can also contribute their own experiences by creating and sharing Observations, uploading photos and videos, and commenting on posts from the school through their own Tapestry accounts. This gives educators valuable insight into a child’s home life while helping families and schools celebrate their experiences, learning and development both at home and at school.
How does St. Augustine's monitor learning across the whole school?
Headteacher Ben talked to us about introducing Tapestry across the whole school and how it is used across different year groups and areas of school life. He also shared how they make the most of Tapestry to support staff and bring the whole school community together.
The Flags feature on Tapestry has also helped staff at St Augustine’s to categorise and organise their Observations – you can think of Flags like labels in a filing cabinet! This means that teachers can easily filter and find Observations at any time, providing easy access to evidence across different subjects and supporting planning.
For things like school trips, we take photographs and we can tag them to different areas of learning. [For forest school activities]…I tag or flag it to an area of learning such as DT, science, PSE, so that later on, if a subject leader wants to go back and look at evidence of science, not just in the science lesson, for example, it’s really easy for them to access what they want.
The team also create their own Flag sets using the Bespoke Flags feature on Tapestry. This means that Observations can be categorised and filtered to link to bespoke content, such as a child’s IEP, school trips or the school’s newsletter.
We use the flag feature a lot, so we tag things whether it’s a curriculum subject or whether it might be for our SCD children. It might be something that’s on their IEP, so we’ve created our own set of Flags. Whether it’s our office team looking at it for the newsletter or whether it’s for our subject leaders across the school very quickly filtering all of the music or all of the PE posts that have come up, it saves a huge amount of time and it has that body of evidence.
What advice does St Augustine's have for other schools?
For St Augustine’s, what started as a way to move away from paper observations has grown into something that supports learning and communication across the whole school. Ben Cornford’s (Headteacher) advice to other schools considering Tapestry is to look beyond its most obvious uses and think about what it could offer across their setting.
When you’re using Tapestry, think about all of the possibilities it has. Think about how you’re going to use it across the school, but also use it to the full extent. I think a lot of people look at Tapestry as specifically for the Early Years, but the potential that we’ve seen across our whole school has been huge. It’s an all-in-one portfolio.
