You Said

We reply

Love the idea of a parent forum

Find the website easy to navigate

Liked the Dukes Barn and 3C chicken blog

Love to look at all the photos

Good range of information

Easy to access

Useful to have dates, policies, calendar and letters on website

Really useful website

Maths booklets are useful

Nice login screen

Handy to be able print off booking forms

Year section is useful

Good to find out what the children have been up to.

Thank you very much for all the positive comments, both about the parent forum and our website.  We try very hard to use the website and update it so thank you for acknowledging our efforts! 

We will send out the next parent forum topic very soon.

Difficult to find what you want

The majority of replies found the website easy to navigate, but we are looking at archiving older material and updating the site more regularly.

Photos take a long time to download

We will speak to the company that run the website and ask them to look into this.

The website is not up-to-date and there is inconsistency. 

We try very hard to keep the website up to date.  We are trialling a system of each year group updating their section at least once a fortnight.  Other areas of the website will be archived and checked for current information.  We are also looking into creating a school twitter account.

Hard to find the calendar and news, could key dates be more prominent?

We have sent this out on parentpay and looking to create a direct link to the calendar

Parentmail (now parentpay) should go on the website.  Not all letters are on the website.

Most letters will be uploaded to the website, but short reminders will continue to be sent via parentpay.  We are looking into setting up texts alerts again.  Please bear with us while we work hard to get used to the new system and get up to date!

Need a link to each year group curriculum

This is on the website already.

Trips and theme days date should be on the website.

The new year group meetings that have taken place informed parents about upcoming events, which was followed up with a paper copy of what was discussed.

Dates for parent events need to be further in advance.

We appreciate that many parents find it hard to get time off to attend events if there is not much notice.  We try hard to give notice but there are times when things are arranged very quickly or have to be changed at short notice and we try our best to get the information out as soon as we can.  We have noted one or two times when we have not been as quick off the mark as we could, and aim to improve that this year!

Could the PTA have a top level tab?

Our website tabs are consistent with other schools.  The PTA do have section in the community section.

Could we have a link to teacher’s emails?

All staff can be contacted through the office, who are happy to forward emails.  However, we are looking to link individual teacher’s email addresses to their photos on the website.

Some of the fonts/typefaces are not particularly readable.

We will ensure all items uploaded are of a readable quality.

Not always aware photos have been uploaded.  Could this be publicised?

We will tell the children when photos have been uploaded and put reminders in the newsletter to check the relevant sections on the website. 

Could weekly homework tasks be on the website?

Where possible, we will upload copies of the homework onto the website but this is not always possible due to a variety of reasons such as copyright issues, nature of the task, or time pressures.  Please be assured that copies of homework are always available and there are no penalties in any class for homework being late.

Could the children program a section?

A lovely idea, but unfortunately not possible.

Could we have weekly round-up of assembly topics?

Special assemblies are mentioned in the newsletters.  Information about our assemblies are contained within school policies.

Could the children add content/have a class blog? 

This is not possible, but we are investigating setting up a blog and possibly a news section for each year group.

Could each year group have a forum?

The parent forum is still a very new idea but if it continues to be a success we will look at a variety of ways to develop it.

It was tricky to find the Dukes Barn blog

We will look into this and next year will ensure parents know how to find it.

Could we have more SPaG tools to help with homework?

Individual class teachers will be able to point you in the direction of useful websites.

Could we have a private login for parents to see absence records, attainment record and disciplinary records?

We know that many secondary schools have this facility, and while we understand how useful parents would find this, it is just not possible in a junior school due to technological, time and budget restraints.  All this information is provided to parents either in the end of year report, or during parents evenings.

(thank you for acknowledging this is a big ask)

Could the teachers photos be a bit bigger?

This was met with laughter from the staff and a resounding no!  We’re a shy lot!