Parent Comments

Parent and SLT Question and Answer session Jan 2016

Uniform

Parents opened by mentioning the positive changes they have seen in the school. One change they highlighted was the change to uniform for year 6. They commented on the improvement in behaviour and maturity that the change seems to have made and the children seemed more ready for the next step in their school life; secondary.

Homework

There were a lot of questions about the new homework system

From our point of view we felt that the homework system we had of sending home a piece of Maths and Literacy every week was quite dated and was lacking in enjoyment and creativity. Research says children across the country are not engaging with the old style homework and it is just a paper exercise with no meaning. Year 4 trailed a project to inspire engagement. It worked. We have spread it across the school. There will be a few teething problems and the more feedback we get, the more able we will be to get it right.

Comments–

About Abacus Maths:

1. What about parents without internet access?
2. Internet access is available during the day at school. Children are able to use the ICT suite at lunchtime to do homework

*Not all parents are able to log on to Abacus or if they have then homework has not been set. This will be followed up by our ICT and Maths leads.

About the Homework Grids

1. Some children may not focus enough, and be lazy with the homework
2. The teachers/ TAs and parents will need to monitor the productivity and not accept mediocracy.
3. How will we know what they are doing in school?
4. It’s all linked to what’s going on weekly
5. Who will mark new homework?
6. Teacher & TA
7. Will there be added feedback?
8. Feedback will be given to the children in different ways. Homework will always be acknowledged

and marked off, by an adult at school.

1. What websites are we using? We need to have the logins
2. Purple Mash/Abacus. Mr Fernandez will do a parent workshop, so parents are trained to login

etc. New website will be set up to support reading.

1. Children don’t know their timetables
2. Incentives have worked in the past (camera/Calculators) and we will continue to develop this

Communication:

1. Reminders by text are often too late, earlier please?
2. By Easter we will have an email system as well. The website is kept up to date regularly now. Also there will

be a new system to pay dinner monies by cashless methods either on- line or by card.

This was our first Question and Answer session, we hope to get more parents involved next time.