You Said, We Did
Most of our parents responded to our request to complete our annual questionnaire. We were delighted by your responses. Some of you also gave us some really helpful suggestions to make our school even better. Here is what you said and what we did about it.
Thank you.
You said:
“I would really like Olive School to take reception children on more outings.”
What we did:
We agreed with you so we have put a full programme of off-site activities for the reception pupils throughout the year. Already this year the children have visited the park, have had a wonderfully informative morning at a large supermarket and will be spending a full day at the farm in the summer term.
We have made a commitment that our reception classes will have at least one off site ‘visit’ per term.
You said:
“We would like the school to give us plenty of notice about events so that we can organise time from work.”
What we did:
We absolutely understand how difficult it is for working parents to play a full an active part in the life of the school and we will do our utmost to support you.
Primary schools are often spontaneous and sometimes it is hard to give parents plenty of notice, especially when we have a last minute visit from a special guest. We always try to involve parents in these events because we know you love to be involved.
However, we agree that we need to improve the notice time we give you for planned activities in school. Thus, we promise that we will give you at least 2 weeks’ notice for any of our planned events in school. We will also make sure that these events are listed on our school website.
You said:
“We really struggle with homework as English is not our spoken language”
What we did:
We can appreciate how frustrating this must be, therefore we will have dedicated bilingual staff available to translate or explain homework. Parents requiring this support should contact the office to arrange this.”
You said:
“We would like a dedicated corner of the website for parents where there is information about key dates and events.”
What we did:
We have asked our website provider to create an interactive ‘calendar’ so that we are able to put all our events in one place. We will inform parents when this is up and running.
You said:
“We would like more variety for the children for their school lunches.”
What we did:
We absolutely agreed with you on this so we immediately arranged a meeting with our caterers. They agreed to create a more interesting and varied menu. They also agreed to review the menu each term.
You said:
“I would like more regular updates about how my child is doing in class”
What we did:
We really appreciate the support we get from you as parents regarding the progress of your children. We are more than happy to give you information about how your child is doing in class. In addition to the two parent/teacher consultations each year and the end of year report, we will be giving you termly progress updates. We will also give you the opportunity to arrange a meeting with your child’s class teacher if you have any concerns when you receive this information.
You said:
“We would like a more varied programme of enrichments activities.”
What we did:
We are delighted that you support us in our extensive provision for out of school ours learning. Our enrichment sessions are many and we try to offer a wide range of activities to interest all our children. However, we can always improve on this. We are at this moment securing a number of eternal providers who will add expertise to our sports programme and we are using the many talents of our committed staff to provide a wide variety of additional arts activities for next year. If any parents have any suggestions for the type of activities we may offer, please do not hesitate to contact us.