Parental Partnership
Parental Partnership
At Lord Lawson of Beamish Academy, we are committed to establishing and maintaining an effective and purposeful relationship between home and school. A positive partnership can lead to improved student achievement, attendance, and positive attitudes towards learning.
We are committed to working to building lasting partnerships with our parents and carers, and to evidence this partnership we are currently working towards the Leading Parent Partnership Award. The Award, which we hope to achieve in early 2025, has allowed us to see ways in which we can work more collaboratively within our school community.
Over the academic year 2023-2024 and at the commencement of this current year, we have reflected on the needs of the home/school partnership and set clear priorities of development for each year. Below is an overview of the priorities and a description of outcomes.
Academic Year 2023-2024 | |
Increase parental and student engagement with Class Charts, to allow us to build a more effective partnership where all have access to rewards and sanctions data, homework, and announcements.
|
In September 2023 76% of students and 56% of parents were accessing Class Charts. By the end of July 2024, numbers had increased to 86% of students and 65% of parents accessing Class Charts.
As of 5 December 2024, we have 94% of students and 80% of parents accessing the platform. |
Consolidate communication to Class Charts to promote engagement in its use and to have a single point of sharing announcements.
|
All announcements are sent via Class Charts. This has allowed us to know who has received and accessed communications.
Through parental surveys, parents told us that they see Class Charts as the primary communication method. |
Review effectiveness of online parents’ evenings to improve the quality of the appointments, and to increase parental participation.
|
Previously, we did not collect any feedback following online parents’ evenings in regard to their effectiveness. For the 2023-24 academic year we sent a feedback survey to parents and carers via Class Charts after each online parent evening. Using the feedback received from these surveys, we now have a better understanding of the views of parents on the quality of academic feedback, the length of the appointment, and preference as to how the evening is delivered i.e. virtually or in person.
As a result of the feedback, we modified our parents’ evening schedule for 2024-25 to include more in-person evenings, and to provide more opportunities for parents and carers to come into the academy. Analysis of the parents’ evening feedback was shared with parents and carers in June 2024. From the parental partnership working party, we also identified the most important aspects of a successful virtual parents’ evening appointment and shared this with teaching staff. This has allowed us to improve the quality of our online parents’ evenings. |
Academic Year 2024-2025 | |
Involve parents and carers to create a vision on how we want our school to be shaped over the next six years – Vision 2023
|
Meetings were held in October and November (in person and online) where parents came together to work in groups and share ideas and views on what Vision 2030 could look like. |
Work with parents to develop a character education programme
|
In discussions, parents were able to assist us in identifying what personal characteristics are of most importance in a child, and how we can help to develop these through character education.
The parental partnership working party will be used to further explore character education, to identify ways in which parents can help the teaching of set characteristics. Meetings commenced in December 2024 |
If you would like to find out more information about our home and school partnership, or if you have any suggestions on how we can improve further, please contact us. If you would like to be involved in our parental partnership working group, please contact Mr Cave, Assistant Principal, via [email protected].