Message from the Principal
‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’
Last week we held a successful ROAR 3 meeting at our school. The purpose of the meeting was twofold:
1. To update parents on our progress in responding to suggestions raised at our ROAR 1 and ROAR 2 events, and
2. To analyse and discuss the parent feedback from the recent stakeholder survey.
The parent feedback from the survey was, overall, very positive and indicated strong confidence in our school. Some highlights from the parent survey were:
• 75% of the parent survey questions improved from the 2016 survey
• 91% of parents ‘understand the school’s stated philosophy’
• Over 90% of parents believe the school is preparing their child for the future
• 90% of parents believe ‘their child enjoys school’
• Over 70% of parents believe ‘that the school takes their opinions seriously’
• Over 82% think we ‘provide adequate opportunities to meet with teachers’ (a significant increase from previous survey)
• Only 3% of parents would ‘not recommend the school to others’ and do not think it is ‘a good school’
At the ROAR 3 session, we selected a few questions that had slightly higher dissatisfaction rates. We were especially interested in two of the questions related to student progress:
• I am informed about my child’s progress, including areas that my child can improve
• I know what my child is learning at this school
In response to these questions, we were able to share some of the significant improvements that we have made to our ‘Lionel’ learning management system and how we have created a parent ‘landing page’ to simplify access to the most relevant information about learning progress. We also shared the 2018-19 academic year calendar to highlight how we have scheduled the parent and teacher conference events across the year. The parents talked about the importance of simplicity when communicating and presenting information on student progress. This reminded me of the famous quote often attributed to Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci: ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’.
Using the sentiments of this quote, our overarching principles when providing feedback to parents on student progress will be:
• What has my son/daughter been learning (essential content and skills of the unit of work)?
• What have they achieved and how have they progressed (grade achieved as well as improvement)?
• What do we need to do next to improve and how can I help as a parent?
These simple ideas resonated strongly at our ROAR 3 meeting as we continue to drive improvements to our Lionel system and parent and teacher conferences. Our goal is to provide timely, concise, constructive and actionable feedback to students and parents. Ultimately, it is about maximising learning. This type of feedback is the most powerful in taking achievement and progress to the next level for our ‘remarkable’ students.
Kind regards
Mark Blackshaw
Principal
King George V
