Introduction:
Effective communication between parents and schools is integral to a student’s academic progress and overall well-being. The following outlines the recommended methods for contacting schools in Amersham, with the objective of helping parents foster positive relationships with the schools their children attend.
Different schools will ask different things from parents in their approaches to communication. Smaller primary schools, where parents and carers often drop off and collect children in person are likely to have different communication protocols to large secondary schools where the number of students is much greater. Overall, though, the same principles will hold good.
Routine information: all schools have mechanisms for sharing routine information with parents. This is most commonly a weekly email. We know that people’s inboxes get very full. However, we would all be grateful if parents and carers would get into the habit of looking out for, and reading, the information schools send out. Other platforms, such as school websites, contain lots of information to help you, so it is worth familiarising yourself with them. This means you stay informed, and your child does not miss out!
Information sharing: all schools want to support your child, and sometimes this means you may need to share sensitive information with the school. Schools will always keep things appropriately confidential but will better support your child with a full understanding of their current circumstance.
Concerns and worries: If you are worried about something to do with your child’s education please do contact your school directly about it. We will always want to talk things through with you to make sure that we are working together in your child’s best interests.
How to get the most out of your communication with school:
Like all organisations, schools are very busy, and staff have multiple responsibilities. We always want to help you, but would ask that you recognise that it’s unlikely to be possible to do so immediately, unless it is critically urgent. The following tips will help us help you.
- Please be respectful and courteous to all the staff at your school. Their work is focussed on educating and supporting your child, and they deserve to be treated accordingly.
- Please be patient. We will always do our best to respond promptly, but this cannot be guaranteed. Most schools have a published communication policy which will give you a guide to how quickly you might reasonably expect a response. Of course teachers spend most of their working day in a classroom rather than at a computer, so they may not see an email until several hours after you have sent it. It is also important to support your school’s efforts to help staff have a positive work-life balance since that is key to your child getting the best teaching in the classroom.
- Please recognise that we may not be able to solve an issue simply. For schools to run effectively we have to have systems and structures that work to the advantage of the whole community, and there might not be the capacity of flexibility to accommodate requests. We will always be happy to explain why something is as it is, though.
- Do not assume the worst! It is sometimes easy to jump to conclusions, only to find that the whole story may be different to the picture your child has painted.
- Avoid getting school information from parent WhatsApp groups, if in doubt about a school matter, contact the school directly.
