Oldmachar Academy
Survey of Parental Perceptions
e-Magazine
Contents Context...
3
Core Parental Priorities
4—5
Homework & Challenge
6—7
Expectations / Recommendations
8—9
Perceptions of Our Systems
10—11
Other Priorities
12—13
Health and Wellbeing
14—15
Special Features Read about:
How parents rate our school’s delivery of education What we are going to do to take on board the perceptions of parents
This e-magazine collates a range of articles which have featured in recent school newsletters. They have all featured aspects of the recent parental survey of perceptions, which was conducted in October 2013. This survey can be compared to a previous survey which was concluded in 2011. 344 parents took the trouble to complete the survey, giving us a strong evidence base for our future planning. We thank everyone for the effort they took. In response, the articles shown here give a detailed analysis of perceptions of parents across a range of issues. We will use this information to get everyone thinking about what we need to do now to improve our school further.
3
Core Priorities
Analysis We tested the attitude of parents to the new school blazer for S4—S6 and its potential to improve ethos in S1— S3. The tables below show the strong endorsement for the implementation of the blazers. In summary, parents can be said to have expressed the following views: S4—S6 Blazer Approve: Disapprove: Don’t Know / Care: S1—S3 Blazer Approve: Disapprove: Don’t Know / Care:
70% 7% 22%
64% 24% 12%
We will now reflect on how we can take forward the implementation of an S1—S3 blazer for next session. Pupils will be consulted about this development over the next few weeks.
4
In 2011 we undertook a major survey of stakeholder attitudes to our school. We did this to get a sense of what our parents felt our planning priorities should be. Two years on, we have updated the survey. Thank you to all of the parents who responded. 344 completed questionnaires were returned representing over 40% of the parent body. A number of statements were tested, to show parents attitudes. We are very pleased to report that over 25% of parents said that the school had improved in the past year. This is a strong endorsement of our improvement planning. Our parents also supplied a written comments which we will be reading and responding to in due course.
Weighted
Previous
%
Score %
Survey
Change
Control of bullying
69.8
64.8
+5.0
School discipline
69.6
67.1
+2.5
School security
69.2
67.4
+1.8
Developing moral values
68.3
67.6
+0.7
Exam results
67.9
68.3
-0.4
Levels of homework
67.0
67.7
-0.6
School communication
66.9
65.3
+1.6
Social health education
66.8
67.4
-0.6
Caring teachers
66.3
63.9
+2.5
Happiness of child
65.8
65.6
+0.2
Choice of subjects
65.4
66.4
-1.0
Developing confidence
65.3
63.0
+2.3
Teaching quality
64.8
65.2
-0.4
Availability of resources
64.5
62.5
+2.0
Developing potential
64.5
64.4
+0.1
Truancy control
64.3
64.4
-0.1
Community spirit
64.3
67.3
-3.0
Computer access
62.6
63.3
-0.7
Careers advice
61.6
66.3
-4.7
School facilities
56.9
56.8
+0.1
"Overall" Rating
72.9
72.1
+0.8
Criteria
Analysis Our parents have told us that they believe the school has improved over the past year. 1/4 of parents surveyed confirmed that this was their view, with only very few saying that they felt the school’s performance had got worse. Parents have rated the school overall higher compared to the survey two years ago. The three factors that parents felt the school was best at are: Control of Bullying School Discipline School Security
The three things that parent rate lowest are: School facilities Careers Advice Computer Access
5
Analysis of Homework
Amount of Homework
Our parents report that students in Oldmachar Academy are doing more homework than they were two years ago. This is true in all year groups, with the exception of S4, in which year the figure has fallen slightly. It is important that our students receive meaningful homework, which is one way in which we provide an additional challenge for young people. Levels of homework have improved markedly in S1—S2. We continue to be concerned at the gap between the levels of homework being done by girls compared to boys. The lesson from this is that perhaps boys need to spend a bit more time doing homework tasks.
Information about Homework The tables above show the number of hours that parents report young people are doing on a weekly basis. The top table shows the figures overall. The middle table shows the figures for boys. The bottom table shows figures for girls. One thing that concerns us is that it looks as though parents feel S4 students could be doing more homework—we will be addressing this.
6
Level of Challenge Pushed too hard?
Reflection on Challenge One of the things that teachers are reflecting on is the extent to which our courses and programmes are challenging to the young people. Overall, 11% of parents believe that their children are being pushed too hard in at least one thing. While, 30% of parents believe that their children are not being pushed hard enough in anything. This session we have new curricular programmes in operation for students in S3 and S4 and this has changed significantly the experience of learning for young people in thee two years.
Not pushed hard enough?
Here the views of parents of S3 and S4 students from 2011 are compared to the same year group for 2013. Fewer S3 parents think their children are being pushed hard enough in anything—but many more S4 parents think their young people are being challenged.
In particular we will be considering parental feedback on these two year groups, especially as half of our S3 parents have told us that their children are not being pushed hard enough in any one thing. Since our S3 curriculum is designed to promote breadth, this is perhaps not surprising. Indeed, almost 30% of parents thought their S3 child was being pushed too hard overall. Teachers will want students to feel challenged and will reflect on how to take forward the S3 curriculum. On the contrary, S4 seems to present a much more significant challenge that it did two years ago. Significantly, fewer parents think that their children are not being pushed hard in anything.
7
Expectations It is important to us that parents of students coming to the school feel that it meets their expectations. We want people to have high expectations of our school and we work really hard to meet these high expectations. 72% of parents new to the school told us that it was as expected, or better. This is a good endorsement of our work. Only 4% of parents thought that the school was worse than expected. A quarter of parents expressed no opinion. This may be partly explained by the fact that the survey was done after ten weeks of the session being completed. The graph below shows this broken down by primary school. This information may ne of use to our primary colleagues and can be useful in planning future transition processes.
8
Expectations & Recommendations
Parental Recommendations In this section we look at the overall level of parental recommendation of Oldmachar Academy. We can report that 90% of parents would recommend this school to another parent. This is very pleasing information for us to have. However, staff of the school will consider how we might address the fact that a number of parents would not recommend the school. The tables below show the way in which parents’ recommendations change depending on the gender of their child, with boys’ parents rating us higher. In addition, the lowest recommendation level we received was from S4 parents (78%). While this is still very good, nonetheless, we would like to explore this with parents in cure course.
Analysis of Recommendations It is important that the school has the confidence of its parental body and that it builds trust with them over time. A number of factors can interfere with the level of confidence that a group of parents can have. We will be exploring the factors that may have led girls’ parents to rate us lower than boys parents. We will also be exploring the factors that have led our S4 parents to rate our work less highly that the parents of other year groups. Some factors might be related to the fact that this year we are implementing new national courses for young people in S4. This has been a challenging development and it may have affected the confidence of parents in our work. We will review this with teachers in the coming months.
9
School Discipline
Perceptions of Our Systems
Two of the most improved areas of school performance over the past few years is that of School Discipline and Control of Bullying. Parents report that these areas are better than when we last surveyed their perceptions. This information correlates with feedback from students themselves, who have also reported that these things are better than in the past. We have worked hard to improve this area in the last two years. We have a clear set of procedures for responding to incidences of pupil behaviour which disrupts learning. We are also implementing Restorative Practice, as part of our Respect Campaign. We will be introducing these ideas to parents in workshops as this session progresses—this should help parents to feel even more positive about our work.
Caring Teachers and Pupil Confidence Two of the most important parental priorities are that we are caring as teachers about young people and that we develop their confidence and potential. Most parents think that we are good at this but there are a number of parents think that we are neither good nor poor at this. Over the next few months we will reflect on how we can improve these perceptions. This will feature in our discussions with parents and students. We hope that everyone will support our work in developing this area.
10
Analysis We are pleased that almost half of parents think that the school website is an effective source of information. We also take some confidence from the fact that very few people thought that it was not an effective source of information. However, we will consider ways to make the website a more useful environment for all parents.
Our school website
We plan to consider ways of laying out information so that it is more accessible and easy to explore.
Systems for Communicating
The most important aspects of our website are that it allows to share information about:
In the last eighteen months we have had approximately 90,000 hits on our school website. It is a rich source of information and has over two hundred pages of content. When it was developed, we consulted with students and parents about what to include.
Curriculum for Excellence Our students’ achievements News of recent and forthcoming
events In this session, we plan to review the material that is presented on the website and would welcome the input of any parent who felt that they could make a contribution to this process.
Policy and procedure
We also ask that if any parent has an idea about something they would like to see included on the website, but which is not there at present, we would be pleased to hear about it.
11
Promoting Citizenship
Other Parental Priorities
We are reassured to find that parents’ perceptions of the other key priorities we sought their views about have been so positive. The strong endorsement of certain issues related to the promotion of citizenship is a sign that we are working effectively with parents to achieve our objective of ensuring that all of our young people are Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Effective Contributors and Responsible Citizens. One of the key Experiences and Outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence says that young people should be able to do the following: “I recognise that each individual has a unique blend of abilities and needs. I contribute to making my school community one which values individuals equally and is welcoming for all.� We cannot achieve this important objective without parental support.
Issue
Weighted Score %
Promoting racial harmony
71.1
Treating all pupils fairly and equally
70.9
Attitude of non-teaching support staff
69.1
Encouraging local community activity
68.6
School uniform
67.1
Explaining to parents how to help their child
66.7
Encouraging and listening to parent views
66.6
Encouraging and listening to pupil views
66.2
Teaching for special needs
66.0
Quality of school management
65.5
Handling complaints
65.3
Tailoring workload to child's needs and ability
65.0
Ensuring pupils do best and make good progress
64.7
Celebrating and rewarding achievement
64.0
Extra curricular activities
51.3
Please note that survey results of 65% approval or over reflect a successful element.
12
Analysis It is a good thing that our teachers are generally in tune with our parents and have a number of shared ideas about what is important about the school and how it meets the needs of young people. But there were one or two difference of perception that we need to reflect on. These are listed below: Developing Confidence is a much
greater priority for our parents than was appreciated by our teaching staff. This is something we can work on addressing Caring Teachers is also a greater
priority for parents than the staff of the school had considered it to be. We will explore this discrepancy in due course Developing potential is in the top
three of parents priorities. Teachers will reflect on this.
Parents’ priorities and teachers’ perception of them.
These three issues will feature in our future planning as a teaching staff and we will publish plans to address
13
Survey of Parental Perceptions Promoting Health and Wellbeing In Curriculum for Excellence, all young people are entitled to “develop skills for learning, life and work, with a continuous focus on… health and wellbeing.” All teachers have a shared responsibility for this and the school’s curriculum map ensures that health promotion is effectively planned for and delivered. In the recent survey we undertook of parental perceptions, we gained important feedback on how our parents perceived this delivery. Several aspects were tested, including our programmes for social education, as well as how we promote healthy lifestyles in our young people. The feedback from parents suggests that we could do better in encouraging a healthy lifestyle through diet. There is much less approval for this than for the comparative indicator for how we promote health through exercise. We will explore this aspect as a priority in the next few months and use this information to inform the updated school improvement plan.
14
Social Education and Happiness We have thought deeply as a staff about what kinds of attitudes we want to encourage our young people to have and how these attitudes might help them be happier in school. At the heart of health and well being is the sense of person has of their own self worth and how able they feel they are to improve their own circumstances. A sense of achieving things in school helps a young person to feel motivated and positive about themselves. Teachers understand the importance of setting relevant and challenging work for young people. Constructive feedback on work can play a big part in developing the skills and confidence of young people. We are always happy to hear from parents if they have questions about such things. If parents have any doubts about their children’s learning, it is better to raise there concerns at an early stage. We hope that as our systems for profiling learning bed in this session and next, and parents have better information about their children’s progress in learning, we can improve the perceptions of parents about the wellbeing of their children in school.
15
Planned Areas for Improvement Out of Hours Learning
Children’s University
One of the weakest aspects of the recent survey of parental perceptions was the range of extra-curricular options that are available to young people in Oldmachar Academy. We are working to share information about such opportunities so that parents are more aware of what we do. We also have specific plans being developed for next session which are really exciting
This session we are developing plans on behalf of Aberdeen City Council to establish a Children’s University centre in Aberdeen. In this scheme, we work with a range of partners to create different Out of School Hours Learning opportunities for young people. More information about this will be provided in due course once our plans have evolved.
School Facilities
Upgrades to the Campus
Our school facilities rated low again in the parental survey. Some of the things that affect perceptions of our facilities are beyond the school’s control. We have financial restrictions which affect the extent to which we can deliver some of the improvements parents might like to see. However, we will explore options again with our Parent Council. If any parent has an idea about how we improve a particular aspect of the school, please let us know.
We currently have plans in place to do the following upgrades to facilities:
Programmes of Work Related Learning
Business Mentors
The recent survey identified Careers’ Advice as an aspect that parents would like to see improved. Since funding to Skills Development Scotland has restricted the service they provide to us, we are being driven to find other solutions. Partly, this will require students to do more independent research about potential careers. We will also be seeking new ways to engage with partners, including parents.
One thing we expanding is our use of Business Mentors. We have been part of a pilot scheme this year involving Career Academies, which has seen a number of S5/S6 students benefit from weekly contact with a mentor. This scheme really helps students to focus on priorities. We hope to expand this programme for next session. If any parent thinks they could contribute to this scheme, please get in touch.
Feedback to Learners
e-Portfolios
We have been building new systems to improve feedback to young people in school. This involves a more rigorous and structured use of Pupil Planners and use of Tutor Time to allow young people to reflect on their learning across the curriculum. This has had particular benefits in engaging young people and giving them more control over their progress in learning. We will be building on this in future.
We have been building systems to communicate with parents in different ways this session. These eportfolios are accessed through Glow (the Scottish Schools Digital Network). We will be running workshops in due course to introduce parents to these tools. We hope to improve these systems in future and build on them.
Toilet facilities in two areas will be improved An upgraded ICT / Research Centre in D Block Upgraded ICT servers to provide secure access for mobile technologies in school Continuous refresh and renovation of decoration of corridors and classrooms Nurture Space