18 Sep You Said, We’re Doing
Thank you once again to everyone who took the time to complete our recent Parent Survey. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us and helps us to continually review what we do and how we can improve the experience of both our children and our wider parent community.
While there were many positive messages within the survey, there were also areas where parents told us they would like us to do more. Two themes in particular came through strongly: school dinners and communication about your child’s learning. We wanted to update you on some of the work already taking place in response.
School Dinners
Over the past year, we have changed our school meal provider and have been working closely with them to make sure that children have access to the widest possible variety of healthy and appealing meals.
Each day, children can choose from three main course options, alongside a choice of vegetables and dessert. We are also working with our catering team to make meals more interesting and appealing, balancing familiar favourites with opportunities for children to discover different flavours and dishes they may not have tried before.
A new menu board is now displayed in the servery so that children can see the week’s choices in advance and feel more confident when deciding what they would like to eat. (See image.)
We are also talking much more with the children themselves about school meals. Through assemblies, we are promoting the range of healthy choices available, encouraging children to think about balanced meals and, importantly, giving them the confidence to try something new from time to time.
We know that making a choice in a busy dining hall can sometimes be difficult for younger or less confident children. To help with this, we are introducing simple sentence prompts in the dining hall, such as “Please can I have…?”, “I’d like to try…” and “Could I have some more, please?”. Alongside supporting good manners and oracy, we hope these prompts will help children feel increasingly confident about expressing their choices.
We are also planning to invite a group of parents into school to sample our school lunches for themselves. Keep an eye out for their feedback in a future newsletter!
As an Allergy-Aware School, safety remains at the heart of our approach. Our catering team is fully aware of the range of allergies and dietary requirements within our school community, and we take strong and robust measures to minimise risks and ensure that children with allergies can enjoy their meals safely and inclusively.
Keeping you informed about your child’s learning
Another area parents have asked us to focus on is providing more regular information about what their children are learning throughout the year.
Previously, our year group teams held an online meeting with parents at the beginning of the academic year. These meetings provided an opportunity to meet your child’s new teacher and hear about some of the curriculum content planned for the year.
From this year, we are extending these online meetings to once every term. This means that rather than receiving curriculum information only at the beginning of the year, parents will receive regular updates as their child moves through the curriculum.
More detailed information will also be available on each year group page through a termly curriculum newsletter, giving families an accessible overview of the learning taking place.
We also want to give you more opportunities to see that learning for yourselves.
Once each term, parents will be invited into school for an Open Book Celebration, where you will have the opportunity to sit with your child, look through their books and celebrate the learning and progress they have made during the term.
These opportunities are, of course, in addition to our Autumn and Spring Parent Consultation Meetings and your child’s class assembly. There will also continue to be more targeted opportunities throughout the year, including phonics and early reading sessions for relevant year groups and our Year 6 SATs information meetings for Year 6 parents.