PARENT SURVEY
At the end of the Summer Term we surveyed the parents of pupils in Reception, Years 2, 4 and 6. Thank you to the many parents who responded – 68 families returned our forms.
The surveys were encouragingly positive in their comments on our school and its practices. 99% said their children liked coming to school; 98% said the school is led and managed well; 96%-97% believe that teaching is good; that children are expected to work hard and do their best and that arrangements for settling into the school when pupils are new are good. 94%-95% feel that our pupils behave well and that staff are encouraging them to become independent and mature; and treat them fairly.
16% felt that we should focus on improving our: communications with parents about their child’s work, especially about their current topic. In order to improve in this area we will introduce a termly letter to parents about what the topics of learning will be for that term. This information will then not be repeated in their annual school report.
14% stated they did not feel comfortable approaching the school with questions or problems and we were rather puzzled by this as we endeavour to have an ‘open door’ policy and welcome parents to book appointments, email or write to us about their concerns. We will seek some professional development in the way of training in this area, but if anyone wishes to speak to me with comments on how we could improve, I am open to your suggestions!
One question asked whether your child had been bullied or harassed and 16% felt that they had at sometime. It was rather a poorly worded question as we have never claimed that there is no harassment or bullying in the school, a better question would have been ‘Are you happy with the way school deals with harassment and bullying?’ This is the question we will use next time.
Bullying is an action repeatedly taken by one or more children with the deliberate intention of hurting another child, either physically or emotionally.
We have an Anti-Bullying policy and enforce it robustly whenever such behaviour comes to our attention, however, some children and parents mistake an isolated incident of mean or bad behaviour as bullying. These incidents will happen, sadly, but children have been well trained in how to respond and with our help they learn to cope with these upsets and even learn to manage their relationships almost independently by the time they are ready for Secondary school. As usual we will focus on this issue during Anti-Bullying week in each class.
The survey has been extremely useful and I appreciate the time and effort you have spent in filling the forms in. It is very useful to know how we can take the school forward.
