Over the last year parents and carers have been invited to provide feedback to help us improve. Your feedback has been gathered in a variety of ways including Survey Monkey questionnaires, Grange Gabbers and Nursery Natters, as well as evaluations on parents’ evenings and curriculum evenings. It is always so important to us to hear from you about what we are doing well and ways in which we can continue to improve. I would like to let you know some of the ways your feedback has influenced decisions made this year and our plans for improvement.

Reporting

Feedback: I worked closely with the Parent Council and groups at Grange Gabbers to explore how we can better support parents to understand their children’s progress in learning. Parents said they wanted more regular progress updates and a clear indication of whether progress was as expected. At Grange Gabbers we developed a Progress Update template and we trailled it back in September. The feedback was extremely positive with almost all parents telling us they found it helpful. Some further suggestions for improvement were to include children’s learning goals and a brief written comment from the teacher.

Outcome: We will send home Progress Reports 3 times this coming year and they will include children’s learning goals and teacher comments. We will also continue with our November Learner Led Conferences and an end of year meeting with the class teacher as a result of the overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Curriculum

Feedback: I held a Curriculum Evening in November as a result of feedback from the Parent Council questionnaire. On the evening I shared the story of our curriculum at Grange and I asked for feedback from parents to find out what they valued most as we started to review our curriculum plan for the next 3 years. Parents said they wanted their children to have a passion for learning that makes excited to come to school, real life learning experiences which develop creativity and for children to feel self assured and self aware. This feedback was really helpful when we came to review our curriculum plan.

Outcome: Our new 3 year curriculum plan has a strong emphasis on providing real-life experiences for children linked to the world of work. This coming year look out for  whole school contexts including ‘Gaming’ which links with the current V&A exhibition, ‘Creating’ which will involve ‘upcycling’ and business enterprise and ‘Travelling’ which will link with the Olympics and of course Sports Day! We will also introduce ‘Bounce Back’ which is a whole school programme for developing children’s resilience and self awareness.

Parent Council

Feedback: Our Parent Council is committed to supporting the work of our school and they are always looking for ways to improve. Parents said they would like meetings to be on days and times that suit everyone. They also said they would like to know what is discussed at the meetings and to find out more about ways they can be involved. It was noted that while the school blog contains a wealth of useful information, not all parents were aware of it or confident with accessing it.

Outcome: Meetings are now scheduled Monday- Thursday on a rolling basis and the venue also varies. Some meetings are held in school at a slightly earlier time so that children can come along in case childcare is an issue. The minutes are emailed out to all parents and they are also posted on the blog. A calendar of meetings is issued for the year so that parents can plan accordingly. The calendar includes Grange Gabbers and Nursery Natters meetings which are informal meetings held during the school days for those who cannot make evenings. The Parent Council also actively seek volunteers for planned events and this is proving to be an effective way of getting more parents involved in different ways. The calendar of events has been planned in line with the responses from the Parent Council survey. Mrs Landsburgh emailed all parents a useful guide for accessing the school blog with instructions on how to add to your bookmarks.

Learning

Feedback: Our survey results were very positive indeed and the one area that was highlighted by a few parents was the school providing enough challenge for children in their learning. At our curriculum evening I asked parents about the areas of health and well-being that they would like support with and the feedback showed that most were interested in resilience and anxiety. The feedback from our Progress Update meetings told us that when children are not yet making expected progress in learning, parents would like more information about how to help at home.

Outcome: A focus area of improvement for us all this year will be increasing the level of challenge for all children. We will work together to make sure we have a shared understanding of what this means and we will build everyone’s resilience to help them cope with challenge. We have planned family learning events related to digital parenting, resilience, anxiety and attachment theory to help parents with supporting children. We will also try out some new numeracy resources that can be used at home to support children’s progress.

Communication

Feedback: Our parent survey showed that parents are no longer keen to receive school newsletters but prefer the use of Class Dojo and the blog.

Outcome: I will post a brief blog each month to give you an update on school improvements and achievements. We will also continue to use Class Dojo at class and school levels and we look forward to introducing our STARS Awards to help us celebrate children’s learning out with school.

Please look out for the Parents iCal which is coming you way very soon. It contains all of the important dates for the year including all meetings and please keep giving us your feedback because as you can see it really does ‘Make A Difference‘!