This year, one of my key priorities has been to engage positively and meaningfully with the parents and families of my schools. 

There have been several initiatives launched which have had a massive impact on building a partnership. I have led on these but have discussed at length with our staff and how they can contribute to these.  

Curriculum information 

All our families now receive a detailed summary of the learning that their children are taught in each subject. A minor adjustment has already been made to this as Key Vocabulary has now been included. These have been warmly welcomed and in our last Parents Survey over 90% of all who completed this stated that they knew what their children were learning. 

As well as this, we have a fortnightly schedule of newsletters and Facebook posts. The newsletters provide key dates and information from each class teacher about aspects of the learning in their classrooms. Staff are also provided with a different focus for each Facebook post we have. We understand the role that social media plays in the world now and we are keen to embrace this by having a different curriculum focus or learning driver focus each fortnight.  

Parental Engagement sessions  

Each half term as part of the Foundation Assessment procedures we hold a parental engagement session for a different curriculum area. They each follow the same structure: 

• Class teachers share the learning that the pupils have completed, pupils are encouraged to participate in this as well.  

• Pupils then share their work with their families and complete an activity linked to their learning. 

Open Day  

Following a Parental Survey where the results stated that just over 75% of parents believed that pupils behaved well in school, I decided to open the school for a day for parents to visit and witness for themselves how well our classes work and behave. Again, several parents visited, and we received positive feedback about this, which was then shared with all staff members.  

Discover More and Learn More  

One of the major factors in engaging parents is our ‘Discover more with Mr Lea’ sessions. In the Autumn term there were sessions focused on our School Culture, our Curriculum, Safeguarding and Assessments. These were well-attended, and the powerpoints added to our websites for those parents who were unable to be there.  

Following a request from some of the parents the structure has now changed. There are now ‘Learn more with Mr Lea’ sessions. These are longer than the other sessions and have now targeted key learning concepts in Reading, Writing and Maths. Parents go away with each session with resources or ‘workbooks’ which they have been making notes in. These will continue next academic year where other subject leaders across my schools will lead sessions to parents. 

Written by: Simon Lead, Academy Head