Working with families
We know that the move from primary to secondary school often marks a significant shift in how a family interacts with their child’s school. Families rightly want to afford their children greater independence as they get older. However, the change from a “class teacher” in Year 6 to a dozen or more different, specialist subject teachers in Year 7 can sometimes make communication more challenging. At Wilsthorpe, we seek to work in partnership with families and remove barriers to effective communication, even as student gain greater independence, through the following:
- We continue to ensure that every student has a form tutor, who they often identify as their “trusted adult” and someone who checks in with them every day. The form tutor is the first point of contact for families and we share their contact details at the start of each academic year, to remove barriers to communication.
- We know that families sometimes need to speak with another member of staff, besides their child’s form tutor. To help direct enquiries, we have developed this home-school communication chart.
- Every family receives a written report at least once a year– a tracker – detailing their child’s attendance, behaviour, attitude to learning, reading age, and academic achievement.
- This tracker is always followed up the following week with a face-to-face parents’ evening, to talk through any aspects of the report that are unclear or a cause for particular celebration or concern.
- A family handbook is published annually, to share the key information about the curriculum and systems in place at our school.
- We always seek to resolve concerns at the earliest possible opportunity but, should any family feel the need to submit a complaint, the policy can be found on our policies and documents webpage. Equally, we always appreciate positive feedback and will share it with relevant staff as appropriate.
- Our Local Governance Committee (LGC) is a group of committed volunteers, who both support and challenge the school to fulfil its vision as successfully as possible. This group includes staff, parents, members of the local community and professionals who work both inside and outside education. They play a key role in ensuring that the school listens to the views of families and other key stakeholders.
- We run 3 family surveys each year through a platform called ‘Welbee’. These explore families’ view of safeguarding, behaviour, teaching, personal development and many other aspects of school life. Some of the surveys enable free text response, while others are set up to facilitate multiple-choice responses only. Alongside the answer provided, the surveys provide information about the child’s year group, gender, and so on, but the child’s name is not shared with the school. As such, the surveys are anonymous and any specific concerns that require a response should be taken up directly with the school.