Drayton Park Parents & Carers’ Survey – April 2014 Results May 2014

What do you like about Drayton Park School? 31 Parents (of 33 replies) made positive comments about Drayton Park School. Here is a selection of these: “The environment feels warm and secure and my son is, overall, very happy.” "It's friendly." “The best thing about Drayton Park for us are the teachers (and teaching assistants).” “My daughters are very happy here!” “The School is a very Good School. The head teacher is doing a lot for the School.” “I like the fact that Drayton Park is a multi-cultural school.” “The family atmosphere is brilliant.” “Good exchange between school and home.” “I feel included in how my son learns.” “I like the diversity of the school population and the arty and creative bent of the activities the children do.” “We like the diversity. There are some excellent teachers and TA's. “Excellent out of school care.” “Active PTA provides opportunities for social events.” “Staff are very welcoming.” “Some terrific teachers.” “My children love coming to school and are doing very well. They learn interesting things…” “I’m really pleased with [our] class teacher.” “An excellent PTA.”

Improvement Priorities Improving quality of teaching is the most important priority for parents, followed by improving results. These priorities are reflected in our School Development Plan. Lots of comments praised individual teachers. Comments reflected concerns about behaviour but noted improvements this year. Quite a lot of parents commented on Homework – we are in the process of rethinking homework and will seek your input after half term. Improving happiness and wellbeing was also seen as key.

Communication methods Many parents mentioned – both for receiving and sending information to school. There were some requests for phase group newsletters. Parents mentioned that consistency is important – e.g. newsletters every fortnight, texting used regularly. Senior staff on the gate. A suggestion box was suggested!

Drayton Park Vision It is a requirement of schools and their governing bodies that we have a school vision. It’s purpose is to set our sights on a common goal. It is aspirational. It is the mountaintop we are aiming for. Being able to see it and agree on it helps us move purposefully towards it. The process the Governing Body adopted for developing the vision started with Ofsted’s criteria for outstanding schools. The language in the vision reflects this. In the survey, most parents were supportive of the principles of the vision but want to see action not words. Our School Development Plan, outlining all we have done and are doing to improve the school, is available on our website. Some parents thought the Vision was ‘PR nonsense’ and ‘management speak’ Others thought they were ‘very fine sentiments’ but wanted to see HOW they would be achieved….e.g.: “I think that Drayton Park is a good school. If everyone works towards the 'Drayton Park Vision' the school could be outstanding.” “Overall, it's too long, pompous in parts and not terribly important, but I understand one is needed.”

Parent Meeting on 19 May Most parents were keen to attend if possible and many reported finding the last meeting helpful. Suggestions for future discussion included: School development plan and targets Discussion about vertical streaming Discussion about homework Discussion about 4B results Discussion about what has gone wrong since the last Ofsted report Communication Behaviour Governance The vision How to improve teaching The state of the playground

Response rate and future plans We need to know what parents think. We plan to run a parent survey once every year in the Spring term. We want more responses next time – we will give people more notice of the survey, allow longer for the survey, send home text reminders, have spare copies in the office and online, go into the playground and encourage people to fill in the forms and support ethnic groups with translation of future surveys. We will chart responses by ethnicity next time. We will use Ofsted Parent view questions as a basis for our regular surveys plus any other topics we want to find out parents views on. We will use an independent company to evaluate and report on results, as we did this time. 33 parents responded – more than 10% of parents in School Most of them were happy to give their names Many made helpful suggestions for improvement

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