15 Y5-Y6 Joining Booklet BEDFORD PREP SCHOOL
Communication Communication between parents, boys and staff, both formally and informally, is valued and is seen as integral to each boy’s success at the school. We encourage you to develop a strong relationship with your son’s Tutor, and to get in touch with any concerns, queries and, importantly, successes both in and out of school. Your son’s Head of Year will also be available as the next point of contact.
Your Son’s Tutor Your son’s Tutor is your first point of contact at the school. They will be in contact with you by phone or email at least once each half term to update you on your son’s progress, and are happy to discuss any queries or concerns you may have.
How we stay in touch School Website The parents’ pages of the school website host a wealth of useful information including notices, school policies, term dates, the school calendar, staff lists, parent letters, news and events, as well as links to our dedicated sports website, the secure parents’ portal and Firefly (e-learning site). The pupils’ pages of the school website include a similar selection of information tailored to their needs. Secure Parent and Pupil Portals We offer parents and boys online access to a variety of information via our parent and pupil portals. These portals are real time and cover such areas as reports, rewards and conduct, timetable, activities, exam results and detentions. We will write to you shortly before the start of term with details on how to selfregister for the parent portal. Boys are automatically granted access to the pupil portal through their school network account.
Firefly (school e-learning site) The school has an online teaching and learning resource called Firefly, which can be accessed via the parents’ section on the website. Boys and parents will find details of each subject and year group’s schemes of work and other topic resources, as well as revision material. Details of extra-curricular activities can also be found on Firefly. Boys’ homework is also set via Firefly. If you ask your son to login to Firefly using his username and password, you can take a look at the work he is being set. The Firefly app can also be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play. Sports Website Our dedicated sports website holds details of all our fixtures and results as well as team sheets and useful directions for away fixtures: www.bedfordprepsport.org.uk To access the team sheets, please use the password: deparysav A web app is also available for the sports website. Instructions on how to add the web app to a mobile phone can be found here. Bulletins and Emails We send parents regular emails and newsletters, to ensure that you have all the information that you need for your son as well as news about the wider school community. Each week during term time we send a newsletter called The Week, which provides a round-up of the week’s top stories and the Prep Bulletin, which contains all the key information for the week ahead.
