First of all… Thanks for your donations for last week’s Comic Relief. We raised £132,40.

This week’s message centres around working with us in a constructive way. It’s prompted by a recent guide from Parentkind and a recent blog from Ofsted, both of which we talk about here.

We want St James’ CE Primary to be a happy and healthy place for all. Your views are important – they can help us to get better and better. Our Questions, Comments and Concerns page sets out how you can help with this.

Parentkind

Parentkind can support your child’s learning and wellbeing. They offer parents free webinars, practical toolkits, and a Be School Ready guide to support new starters, alongside a wide range of expert resources and practical guidance.

Working alongside the Department for Education and Ofsted, they’ve recently produced a guide to school complaints – it’s more of a step-by-step support to help you resolve any concerns quickly, easily and positively.

You’ll notice the first piece of advice is What kind of issue is it? They highlight feedback, concerns and complaints. This matches our Comments, Concerns and Complaints Policy which follows best practice guidance for schools from the Department for Education.

Ofsted

Ofsted has recently published a blog called How we consider complaints about schools – it’s an interesting read.

In the blog, they make it clear that it’s important parents follow a school’s complaints policy:

Before contacting us, a parent should:

• contact the school informally – for example, by talking to a teacher about the problem
• if things cannot be resolved this way, consider making a formal complaint to the school
• if they’re still dissatisfied, follow the next steps in the school’s complaint procedure – for example, making a complaint to the governing body or another organisation

When a parent comes to us directly, we encourage them to approach the school first. We will continue to stress to parents that we can’t resolve differences between them and a school or affect the results of a school’s complaints process.

This matches the advice in Parentkind’s guide to school complaints.

Ofsted receives hundreds of complaints each year, but very few of these are investigated because they don’t meet the criteria for Ofsted to investigate (in the last year, only about 1 in 10 were investigated).

School

Here are a few ways you can express your views here at St James’ CE Primary…

• After various school events, such as our recent Topic Review session, we like to gather your views on how the session went with a short online survey.
• Towards the end of the school year, we invite you to take part in a longer survey, too – there’s typically a final question or two which are more open-ended so you can comment on anything you like.
• Don’t wait until these surveys, though! We’d like to hear from you. You could send us an email (stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org) or simply have a chat with your child’s class teacher or one of us at the start or end of the day at the school gate.

Thank you for supporting the positive relationships between home and here at St James’ CE Primary.

Easter

Finally this week, with Easter on the way, please see this list of free and low-cost things to do over the Easter school holidays in Leeds, including Story Explorers at the Central Library; a hat exhibition at Temple Newsam House; a Roman-themed Rabbits Trail at City Museum; newborn animals at Temple Newsam Home Farm; a dragon egg quest at Lotherton; and various activities (alongside the usual delicious food stalls) at Kirkgate Market.

Enjoy a happy and healthy weekend.