Annual survey: you said, we’ll do

Monday 09 September 2019

Thank you to those parents who completed the annual parent/carer survey. Your comments give us the opportunity to not only celebrate those things you think are great about our school but also to consider ways to improve. Mr Roundtree has already presented an overview; I’ve identified three areas which we’ll work on in school. Whilst it is impossible to attempt to respond to all comments, we do read every one. 

This year, a few people raised behaviour incidents that appeared to go unnoticed or children being told to ‘ignore’ incidents. Ignoring minor problems can be a way to ‘rise above’ something and help to build up resilience. However, we absolutely agree that this is often not the best way to respond. We’ll work with all adults in school to explore other ways to manage behaviour problems and to make sure we respond effectively to the child who’s upset. For example, we’ll aim to make sure that an upset child has ways to solve a minor problem independently – empowering the child in this way is likely to be more effective over time.

Linked to behaviour, a small number raised concerns about some individual children’s behaviour. Pupils’ behaviour at Moortown is really, really good: the vast majority of children follow our rules and behave appropriately in different situations. Sometimes, some individual children may need a different approach to help them support their behaviour choices. Their behaviour is not being ignored but is being addressed in a different way. Please be assured that behaviour is not ignored – it’s just that sometimes (quite rarely!) it needs addressing in different ways.

Homework was another thing raised in the survey. The right amount of homework is always difficult to achieve: some parents want school to provide more learning opportunities at home and others want none at all. We think reading and times table practice is essential. Some comments mentioned that the creative homework was difficult for children to achieve without parents supporting them to do research. As a result of this, we will add to our homework policy that creative homework should only come at the end of new learning – when the children have all the information they need. This means your child won’t need much help at all – they’re demonstrating what they’ve learnt in school.

There were several comments raised about the space at the back of school. We are as frustrated as you regarding the time it is taking to develop the area of land at the back of school. It may seem that we’re not doing anything but because of logistics (planning permission, tree felling, landscaping and cost), it’s taking a long time to show any changes. We know that you would like more outdoor space for your children to enhance their learning – we do too. The space will be developed into a useable area as soon and as safely as possible. We know you’re frustrated – we’ll update you with as much as we can each half term in our newsletters.