Communication

BEDFORD SCHOOL

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 strong relationships with your son’s Housemaster, Tutor and teaching staff, and to get in touch with any concerns, queries and, importantly, successes, both in and out of school.

Your key contacts

Your Son’s Tutor Yours son’s Tutor is your first point of contact at the school. Your son’s Tutor 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 is happy to discuss any queries or concerns you may have.

Your Son’s Housemaster Your son’s Housemaster is also a key contact within the school and is, likewise, happy to discuss your son’s progress and help with any queries or concerns you may have.

NB: Please make a note of their email addresses in the Housemaster letters that will follow.

Academic Year Heads Your son’s Tutor and Housemaster are the first port of call, and they will be keeping a close eye on your son’s wellbeing through regular Tutorials and House Meetings. In addition, our Academic Year Heads provide an additional support for boys. These members of staff have particular responsibility for monitoring the academic progress of boys in each year group. They work closely with Tutors to offer interventions to enhance academic performance, to help address academic concerns if they arise, and to encourage and congratulate boys whose academic performance is worthy of particular recognition. They also lead year-group specific academic assemblies, revision workshops and supervised preps and work groups. There are Academic Year Heads for the Fourth Form, Remove Form and Fifth Form. In the Sixth Form, the Academic Year Head has particular responsibility for the A-Level boys, with the Director of IB undertaking this responsibility for those boys studying IB.

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, timetables, activities, exam results and detentions. We will write to you shortly before the start of term with details of 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.

There is also information about the UCAS university application process, public and internal exam procedures, learning support opportunities and extracurricular details, amongst other areas of school life.

Boys’ prep is also set via Firefly, and parents can keep an eye on the work their son is being set. Parents

BEDFORD SCHOOL

need to log into Firefly using their son’s username and password.

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.bedfordschoolsport.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 Upper Bulletin, which contains all the key information for the week ahead.

Social Media Regular news stories and updates are posted on the school’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages, as well as the school website.

Classlist Towards the end of the summer you will be invited by the Parents’ Guild to join Classlist, which is a private social networking site specifically for parents and guardians of Bedford School to keep in touch with each other.

Once you have received the invitation from school, all you have to do is download the Classlist app on your phone or visit the website www.classlist.com and search for Bedford School. Then it is just a case of following the very straightforward joining instructions. Once you have signed up, you can use Classlist to talk to other parents, find out about the Parents’ Guild and the activities they’ve got planned, join (or even set up) special interest groups, discuss arrangements for parties and lift-shares, and even find a home for an old bicycle. It’s simple to use and we hope will help to introduce you to even more of our fantastic parent community.

If you do have any queries about Classlist, please contact the Parents Guild at parentsguild@ bedfordschool.org.uk.

Key Academic Dates

Each year we publish a schedule for parents which highlights the key academic events and dates throughout the year, such as parents’ evenings, academic information evenings and exam periods. This also contains a link to the annual reporting cycle. We hope that this helps you to track your son’s progress throughout each academic year and assists you in guiding your son through key academic decisions.

The key academic dates listing can be found in the parents’ section of the school website.

Parents’ Evenings

Parents’ evenings are held once a year for each year group, and provide parents with an opportunity to discuss their son’s progress with his various subject teachers. In addition, subject option evenings are held, as appropriate, for specific year groups. The dates of all parents’ evenings, as well as subject option evenings, can be found in the parents’ section of the school website under key academic dates.

Leave of Absence and Early Departures

We ask boys to advise us of any leave of absence or early departures by completing the forms listed overleaf, all of which can be found in the forms section on the Parent portal.

BEDFORD SCHOOL

All forms should be submitted at least three days before the date of the appointment.

Leave of Absence Requests for leave of absence, including early departures for Exeats, half terms and school holidays should be made using the ‘Application for Leave of Absence’ form. This form is received by your son’s Tutor and Housemaster. If return to school is delayed for any reason, boarders should immediately telephone their Housemaster.

We strongly advise that parents do not arrange flights before the end of the school day since significant amounts of valuable lesson time can be lost to a boy’s education as a result of early departures.

Medical Leave of Absence Any requests for leave of absence for doctor, dentist, hospital appointments, etc., should be made using the ‘Medical Leave of Absence’ form. This form will automatically inform the Bell Room (Upper School Reception) and your son’s Tutor of the appointment. Again, if return to school is delayed for any reason, boarders should immediately telephone their Housemaster.

University Open Days / Interviews Parents should complete a ‘Request for Leave of Absence for University Open Days/ Interviews’ form.

Reporting Illness

If your son is unable to attend school due to illness or injury, we ask that you email bellroomabsences@ bedfordschool.org.uk or call the Bell Room. It is very helpful if you can let us know before 08:45 so that we can notify all necessary staff of your son’s absence.