Partnership with Parents
The involvement of parents in the school is high. We believe that the relationship between home and school is of vital importance in the education of children.
Parents are welcome to see the class teachers regarding their child’s progress at any time (by appointment) or at our termly parents’ evenings.
Parents are actively welcomed to help in school and we are delighted that so many assist with activities in the classroom and with school trips and visits. If you can spare time to help in the school, you would be most welcome. If you would like to help, please contact your child’s teacher or the school office. We really appreciate voluntary assistance.
Every effort is made to communicate details of the day-to-day running of the school by means of a weekly newsletter and information on this blog. The school regularly organises workshops for parents on aspects of the curriculum and assessment.
All parents and carers are actively encouraged to take part in all PTA meetings and fundraising activities.
How lovely to see efforts being made by the new school leader to develop strong parent-school relationships at last. This is very helpful to working parents. I would hope that the allocated times for the curriculum and information sessions will meet the needs of working parents by not just taking place during school times. Thank you!
I do understand the difficulty faced by working parents; so we will try to offer parent meetings during the evening as well as during the day. It can be difficult to find a good time for everyone, as some parents prefer to come to meetings during the day as they have childcare issues in the evenings. Hopefully, by offering different options we will meet most parent’s needs!
As a Parent and a technophobe/luddite/anachronistic how does one get hold of all this information if you are reluctant to use a computer after being on one all day or have restricted access?
Even more for those that do not have ready access???
Previously the text messages were good as they were always followed up in the Weekly NewsLetter unless it pertained to an immediate notification/amendment.
Is there any resource to bring back the NewsLetter with a caveat to returning it to the School Office/designated place for recycling???
Hello,
I am glad that you are not too much of a luddite or technophobe to leave me a comment here! I am sorry, but we do not have the time or resources to be writing, copying and sending out a newsletter every week. My time in school is precious, and most of it taken up with the important job of improving teaching and accelerating pupil progress.
Given the numerous complaints I have heard from parents saying that there was too little dialogue with the previous Headteacher, I am trying to address this by opening up communication via the blog and other social media. I understand that some people have limited access to computers so we have computers available freely available for use here at school. In addition the overwhelming majority of parents (and children!) own a smartphone which can be used to access information from either our school blog and/or Facebook page and/or Twitter account and/or text service.
Whilst I understand your viewpoint, I think that by offering a range of ways for parents to not only receive information but to comment and engage in conversation about important matters at school, that technology and social media win every time.
Best wishes
Susan
Susan,
Will you therefore be monitoring to ascertain what percentage of parents are utilising the blog? If not is there a danger of a significant percentage of parents not accessing important information or not engaging in the dialogue about important matters.
Hi Susan,
Would it be possible to print off a paper copy of the blog and leave it in the reception area as the old newsletter was if this helps with the issue mentioned above?
Hello again Adrian,
I monitor the use of the blog regularly. We have a large number of hits each day and the number of users rises every day. We are promoting the use of the blog amongst parents by regular texts. Almost every parent I have spoken to has mentioned the blog and everyone seems very positive about it.
It would be helpful if parents could all pass the word amongst each other to make sure that everyone is subscribed.
Best wishes
Susan
Hello Emma,
I am not sure how useful this would be as the blog is in a different format to the newsletter. I do not see a problem with parents asking the office to print off particular posts or pages if they would like a hard copy for their information. Hope this helps!
Best wishes
Susan
Moan at parents who are waiting for a bus towards New Addington, it would be so much easier if parents could wait for the bus by the wall and not take up the entire pavement so others can’t get passed, my main worry is little children getting caught up in the crowed when a bus stops, it’s getting a joke so please think of others and wait by the wall.
Thank you moan over
its the parents hanging around right outside the gates and near the crossing chatting that are the ones needing to be moved on, it’s not a very big path and makes it hard getting in and out of the school and very dangerous so close to a crossing.
I left a polite blog about the issue of smoking and grouping by the school gates under the feedback section and Susan’s response is that she will address the issue. So I suggest that the matter is left with her to deal with in a professional manner, may be brought up in a meeting or a leaftlet or may be an sms.
I also think that it is important that parents are able to air their concerns on this blog, but should do so politely and tactfully as we have to remember that before the school, we as parents are the role models to our kids.
Thank you
Hi,
The smoking issue is a little tricky. What I will do is text parents with a polite suggestion not to smoke near the school entrances. However, I do not really have any say over what people do on the street. I shall try and appeal to people’s better nature!
Best wishes
Susan
My niggle for on here is homework.
My daughter got hers Friday last week and it had to be in on Tuesday. She is away every weekend. Therefor she had to do it on Monday night (which was fine as was wey too easy for her). But as she gets back to her normal homework at her level… How do I get her to learn spellings on a Monday night? I did speak to the teacher and she said that she thought the homework would come out on Wednesday in future… Well it still hasn’t arrived.
Would Monday to Friday not be more acceptable?
I really don’t agree with doing homework over weekends or holidays anyway… What are other parents thoughts on this.
Please do not reply with send homework with her, it wouldn’t get done and I doubt book would even come back.
Hi Susan
I can understand your position, as they are not exactly doing it within school premises..so as you said, let’s hope that they can understand that we are only requesting that they do it away from the school gates for the best interest of all the kids!
Fingers crossed 🙂
Hi can u please ensure both gates are open before and after school as the big one was not open tonight, I had to go into the office to ask for it to be opened as it was chaos. Luckily mrs realis came out and opened it which cleared some of the congestion. Many thanks
Hello Sarah – that doesn’t sound ideal!
I will speak to the teachers as I would prefer that children are given their homework on a Friday and is handed back in the following Thursday. This would then keep all options open. Some parents prefer to help their children with their homework at the weekend when they are not working, other prefer to support homework during the week.
I will go through this with the teachers tomorrow during our staff meeting.
Best wishes
Susan
Is it just jeans day tomorrow or full mufti day as the text said jeans/mufti please help so my girls are dressed correctly.
Thank you
Hi can you explain what you mean by both gates please. Are you talking about normal gates.
Hello Sue,
I meant both of the gates that lead onto the road. One to the left of the school, the other to the right.
Best wishes
Susan
Hi, is there a problem with the ‘school meals menu’ on the website? I haven’t been able to access it for a week or so, and last week the advertised week 2 menu was not followed, according to my child. The result was that she ate very little of the lunches last week, and I am paying for them!
Hello Sarah,
I checked, and there doesn’t seem to be a problem. According to the list, I think that it was the week 1 menu was last week. I have added the dates in for each week to save any further confusion.
Best wishes
Susan
Thank you, but am I doing something wrong? I still can’t access the menu on the website!
Hi Sarah,
Are you using a phone or a computer? I can’t access the menu page on my smartphone but i can on my pc.
Emma
Please can you confirm whether the children in year 6 will be awarded red ties this week as done in previous years (half termly). As you had mentioned previously you were going to honour them still. Look forward to your response.
Hello Elaine,
I will make sure that this is organised for Friday.
Best wishes
Susan
Thanks for your quick response I know that children in year 6 are really looking forward to this
Dear Ms Papas
I just wanted to say how well you came across in the news yesterday and today on “This Morning”. You spoke eloquently and was very professional in the interviews. My son is in year 6 and am relieved that you are taking positive steps. I do think that it’s going to take more than 2 terms to turn the school around and therefore your contract should be extended to fulfill the task of getting the school back on track.
Really appreciate your efforts and look forward to meeting you in person.
I have recently noticed that none of the children from reception to year 1 have had any fun/ dressing up days. Following thw themed of the world cup wouldn’t it be fun for each class representing countries to dress up as a theme from whichever country the class is learning about.
Kind regards.
Hello Lea,
I am sorry about this, I didn’t realise that Year 1 and Reception hadn’t joined in. I will pass on your comment to the Head of School, Jo Read, and ask her to follow this up for you.
Best wishes
Susan
Hi, I Have never written on a blog before but thought I’d post my view on the chance for the children who achieved 96% attendance or more to win a bike.
My child along with I’m sure, a few other children, managed 100% attendance with no lateness. Surely being an end of year award, this prize should be picked between these children or else what other motivation would there be to achieve that result?
Just curious!
Hello Chris,
Welcome! Thank you for your comment. We have considered doing this, however, there are some children who miss some school through no fault of their own. For instance if they have a sickness bug, or catch Chicken Pox for example. By restricting the winners to those with 100% for the year, means that if a child has to miss some time, for these reasons,earlier in the year then they lose the incentive to keep their attendance as high as possible. We settled on 96% and over as this is the level that is considered good attendance by Ofsted.
We will give further thought to those who achieve 100% and no lates, as you are right, this should warrant special attention.
Best wishes
Susan
Hello Chris,
I am so sorry for the delay in responding to your comment.
We made the decision to reward children with 96% and over as sometimes a child may miss a little school,through no fault of their own – for instance because of vomiting, chicken pox, diarrhoea and so on. We felt that not only would this act as a disincentive as the children would no longer try to improve their attendance as they would be out of the running, but also to make it fair.
We do celebrate those children who have achieved 100% attendance over the year. They all received a badge and were called out and applauded in our end of year assembly.
Sorry again for the delayed response.
Best wishes
Susan
Hello,
The drop fine menu under this section seems not to be working. It opens but all the options are in faded grey and you cannot click on specific listings. Is it an error or has nothing been added yet. For example school admissions for nursery or the diary dates?
Hello there Fay,
I’ve just had a look and it all appears to be working at my end. I will ask one of our staff to have a look at it again tomorrow on another machine and see if we can see what the problem is.
Hopefully we can get this sorted quickly.
All the best.
Susan
Hello just tried all drop down menus again and you cannot click on any of the options. They are all still light grey. I am on an iPad so I’ll try a computer. Maybe it’s an issue with iPads?
Oh, OK Kay. Sorry about that. I will speak to one of my colleagues and see what we can do.
Thank you for your patience.
Susan
I’m experiencing the same problem using my iPad.
Hi my son is in year one and just moved into squirrels id like to know when their blog will be set up at the moment I’m still getting hedgehogs blog but not sure if all classes do the same thing?