View from the classroom
View from the classroom
In our regular View from the classroom feature this month, Andy Howe, deputy head at Windmill Primary School, Oxford, reviews the challenges of school/home communications and explains how his school has used technology to improve parental engagement.
Tell us about your school
Windmill Primary School in Headington, Oxford, is a larger-than-average-sized primary school with a pupil roll of 570 in a very mixed catchment area. Just over half of all pupils come from a white British background, which is less than the national average. The rest of the pupils come from a wide range of other ethnic heritages.
The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is just above the national average, the proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is below the national average and the proportion of pupils supported by the pupil premium is below the national average.
You received an “Outstanding” judgment from Ofsted – tell us about that In June 2015 the school was judged Outstanding by Ofsted and described as being highly effective in delivering outcomes that provide exceptionally well for all its pupils’ needs, and in ensuring that children are very well equipped for the next stage of their education, training or employment. We were judged outstanding in leadership and management, behaviour and safety of pupils, quality of teaching, achievement of pupils and early years’ provision – a significant turnaround for a school judged ‘inadequate’ in 2007.
Ofsted said: • The entire school community shares the passion and vision of the headteacher to ensure that pupils can achieve the very best they can and that teaching is of the highest standard.
• Parents are overwhelmingly very positive about the school. They feel their children are happy and safe, and making good progress. Leaders are developing more effective systems to communicate with parents, especially about how teachers are checking how well their children are making progress in the new National Curriculum.
• All groups of pupils, including those from the range of ethnic heritages and those who speak English as an additional language, make exceptional progress across the school. They learn very well at all key stages and, as a result, achieve high standards.
We were delighted!
What challenges did you face? Parental engagement has a large and positive impact on children’s learning according to the DfE's “Review of best practice in parental engagement: Practitioners summary” published in September 2011.
When I joined the school in September 2010 one of my key objectives was to review the challenges of school/home communication and improve parental engagement, communicate well with them, encourage them to enter into the spirit and life of the school and to attend events such as school plays and carol concerts. We used to send out weekly newsletters, but
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because parents would often forget dates and times before the event we started to send reminders on social media and to interact via Facebook and Twitter.
This worked well but we felt it was not a good real-time solution for communicating with parents. Teachers could never be sure that parents would log into Facebook at the right time, which could result in them missing important updates, for example about a school trip.
Texting was never a realistic option. It is inefficient and cumbersome. The cost of sending messages to mobile phones can be very expensive. Some companies charge 6p a message, so we were not willing to go down that route.
Andy Howe
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