You Said

We reply

Having members of staff from the Juniors going over to the Infants was helpful, having the opportunity to visit the Juniors on several occasions, using the facilities at the Juniors throughout their time at the Infants such as; the school field for sports day as well as using the grounds for den building when their visit was cancelled due to the weather.

Having a buddy in another year group was also helpful and the information evening in the Summer term. The red box in Reception to drop off important information is helpful. Mrs Sarah Burton!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She has the patience of a saint!!!

Our children are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy! They are so proud to be part of Arno Vale Junior School.

I feel I have no concerns with my child settling in, I feel teachers are approachable.

I have found that transitions have been well planned and my children have seemed well prepared for the new school year. When they have spent time with new class teachers they have come home full of enthusiasm and have seemed excited. I thought the information evenings were useful and informative.

The transition for both my children was very smooth. They were happy they'd visited the classrooms before and got to know who would be in their new classes. They felt they knew the teachers from general school activities and even so their teachers were welcoming and approachable, to help with any problems.

Parents evening was helpful and set at the right time, to let the children settle in a little and allow the teachers to therefore be able to make an assessment of where they are at, education wise, friendship groups, characters.

Think the school have things just right.

The introductory meeting for parents as was trialled this year is a good idea.

The children seemed happy with the amounts of visits they had with their new teachers/classrooms.

The visit to the new class teacher that they had was about right. When my child moved from infants to juniors the visits that they had were good.

My year two child benefits from going to breakfast club.

I liked the welcome to year 5 letters that went out earlier this year.

The transition visits to the new classrooms appear to work well

Thank you for all your lovely comments. We are pleased that the new additions to transition have gone down well.

Could we have information about where to stand and where to go on the first day? Particularly for Year 3 parents and children.

This information is on the letter given to the new Year 3 parents, and in the new parents evening in the summer.

Please see the later comment about a map!

We need to know which door children are supposed to enter school on their first day.

Could the infants look around all the classrooms before they start?

Could they stay for dinners one day before starting at juniors?

Please can we have more notice of dates for meetings.

This information is given to the children when they meet their new teachers. We will pass this information onto parents next time. Please see later comment about a map!

The children get a full tour of the school on their visit day, and also do now stay for a school dinnertime.

We try to provide as much notice possible.

Could the children have the option in the first few days to sit next to close friends?

Some teachers do this, but this doesn’t work for all children. We do discuss suitable seating plans with previous teachers.

Could the children have a little more time in Year 6 to discuss who they put down to be in class with?

We are little constrained by this, as it is something we do on behalf of the secondary schools and have very little control over when the requests come in! The children are asked to think about this nearer the end of year so they are ready when needed.

Could we informally meet the new teachers? Eg Woodthorpe Infants used to tie this in with a children's art exhibition just before the summer holiday

Could we have a map of the school sent out before the end of the previous year with class exits marked?

Could we have an equipment list before the children start in juniors?

Children don’t always remember to pass on information, so parents need the information directly.

Most staff members are present at the new parents evening in the summer.

We will look into creating a map for all year groups entry/exit points for next year.

Apart from a PE kit, no equipment is necessary – all is provided by the school.

Some information is passed on via the children, as part of being in the juniors is learning to take responsibility for passing on messages. However, important information is also provided on newsletters and/or on the website.

Is enough information passed on from old to new teacher?

Do the children need a full half term to settle in?

Could the welcome meeting be held in the evening?

The teachers spend a lot of time on transition. We have staff meetings and informal discussions throughout the transition period. We aim to be as thorough as possible but if mistakes are made – we do apologise, we are only human!

We do not have a formal settling in period. However, some children do need longer than others to settle in, this is judged by the class teachers.

We do hold many meetings in the evenings over the course of the year which some parents find difficult to attend, so occasionally we will have events straight after school. Also, the staff are not always available to attend evening meetings due to having family commitments of their own.

Could we have more information about the curriculum and plans for the year, assembly/whole school themes, and what sports/PE activities the children will be doing too?

Could we have anonymised good examples of homework?

Could we have a copy of the class timetable?

All this information is on the website.

This is quite difficult to do. The homework is not always the same from year to year, some children are set different homework tasks and our expectations vary from child to child. The class teachers are more than happy to provide feedback on homework.

We will look into sending out a skeleton timetable at the start of the year but it may not be much help, as it can (and does frequently) change from day to day or week to week.

Could information about kids - behaviour, abilities, learning style, etc be relayed from one teacher to the next?

This information is passed on, the staff do work very closely together, both in the summer term when classes are finalised and throughout the autumn term. However bear in mind the children can change quite significantly over the summer holidays. Also, a new class, a new teacher and new classmates all have an impact on how a child behaves and learns. All the information that is passed on may simply not be relevant anymore.

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!