You said

What we currently do

Changes we will make

13% of parents do not feel involved in school life.

We have an open door policy where teachers and leaders are regularly available at the school gate.

We invite parents to end of term church services

We have 4 learning fairs a year when you are able to come and see what your children have been learning.

We hold regular ‘stay and play’ session in pippin class.

We encourage parent helpers in school.

We encourage applications to the governing body – we currently have vacancies and would welcome a discussion with any parent who many be interested in taking on this role.

16% of parents do not feel that they know how to support their children at home

There is information on the school website about the curriculum children are covering.

We provide access to online learning platforms Mathletics and Reading Eggs.

We provide reading books, timetables and spelling for home learning.

In previous years we have had parent information events but these were always poorly attended.

We offer CGP revision guides to year 6 children.

Miss Featherstone and Mr Ousby are creating Maths and English guides to show how you can help at home, and where you can get more information on helping at home. These will be sent out after Easter.

13% of parents disagree that the school has good discipline.

We have been reviewing our behaviour policy this year. Over the last few years, research around behaviour management has changed very significantly. Systems such as traffic lights, which we had at Laddingford, are based on a behaviourist model which is now widely considered to be ineffective, both in terms of engaging positively with children and affecting long term behaviour change. We have been developing a more restorative approach to behaviour management, we have had some great training from restorative justice for schools and I am in the process of rewriting our behaviour policy. This is going to be discussed by the governing body in May and once approved, will be sent out to parents.

Inline with the SEN code of practice, all behaviour policies must make reasonable adjustments for children with special educational needs. I understand that at times this could look like an inconsistent approach but please be assured that our aim is always to ensure the safety and happiness of all pupils and to create an environment conducive to learning, whilst also trying to take into account the needs of individual children. This approach is often more complex than ‘zero tolerance’ but I hope you can understand we are being flexible based on very specific and sometimes complex needs, as opposed to inconsistent.

16% of parents feel the school is not good at praising their children’s achievements.

Over the past 3 years we have trialled different reward systems, house points, raffle tickets etc. This year we made the decision to remove all reward systems from the school. This may sound radical but it is backed up by high quality current research (Jarlath O’Brien, 2018) which tells us that offering rewards can often convey the message that learning and behaving for their own sake are not worth the effort. All reward systems are flawed, children who are high attaining often feel that other children get rewarded for things they do every day, conversely, children who may struggle academically or behaviourally often feel that their efforts are not rewarded because they are not attaining highly. I know in my time here I have had conversations with upset parents on both ends of this spectrum. From my observations of teaching and learning and from talking to the children this year I would say they are more motivated than they have ever been and better still this motivation is intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is characterised by: a thirst for knowledge, a sense of accomplishment and activities that are satisfying in and of themselves. We still celebrate children’s achievements through teacher and peer feedback, but it is my strong belief that we don’t need rewards to support this, and in fact, we are better without them.

You said

What we currently do

Changes we will make

More PE, Children need to move more.

All children have 2 hours of PE each week

Children have 30 minutes of child initiated learning each morning during which they can choose from 2 different physical activities.

Children have a 15 minute break outdoors in the morning.

KS1 children walk a mile in the afternoon.

KS2 children have a 15 minute break outdoors in the afternoon.

Build another fitness based activity into child initiated play sessions in the morning that encourage children to be fit for life e.g. school HIIT work outs from ‘The Body Coach’.

Take this into consideration when planning our sports premium spending for the next financial year.

Information about events is given out at short notice

In September a calendar for the whole year was sent out to all parents. The majority of these dates have not changed, if they ever are, a revised list is sent out.

Newsletters are sent out monthly and a list of upcoming diary dates is sent out on each newsletter.

The school website calendar is kept up to date and you can link the calendar on your phone to the website calendar.

Mrs Moat aims to send out last minute reminders for key events – these are sent out at the last minute as the above notifications are provided well in advance.

I am aware that our Facebook reminders have not been quite so efficient this year; I will endeavour to ensure that these are scheduled well in advance as another way of reminding you about events.

Children should do more art.

Children have very regular art lessons through their ‘Discovery’ work. We are very proud of the standard of art achieved by children across the school, this was commented on by OFSTED at our last inspection and recently a visit from KCC highlighted considerable strengths in our wider curriculum provision.

Unfortunately there is not time in the curriculum to increase the amount of hours dedicated to art teaching, however, we are in the process of further developing our art curriculum by teaching children to use sketchbooks to record their process as well as final pieces of work.

Children enjoyed Tiger Troop is this coming back again?

We have enjoyed working with Tiger Troop for the last 3 years. As all upper KS2 children had the opportunity to partake in it this year, we are going to give it a break for 2019/20. We are investigating alternatives to replace it, including something like forest school; the intention is to bring Tiger Troop back the following year.

My child would like to do more music.

All children have a music lesson each week. Children in years 4-6 have a weekly recorder lesson from Mrs Swaite, in which they play, read and write music. Mr Ousby is currently teaching children about the wonder of ‘The Beatles’.

Each year KS2 children have the opportunity to take part in Young Voices at the o2.

We have a singing worship, led by Mr Ousby each week.

Rock Steady provide peripatetic music tuition to those children who wish to take it up. This is additional to our national curriculum offer and it paid for by parents, however a very limited number of bursary places are available so if your child would like to join Rocksteady but you are unable to afford the fees please come and speak to me in confidence.

Looking ahead to 2019/20, improving the quality of our Acts of Worship will be a school priority – increased singing and musical participation will be included in this.

As with art, there is not time in the curriculum for more music as such, but we are always trying to improve the quality of the curriculum we offer; for example introducing recorder lessons.