All teachers welcome the opportunity to discuss pupils with their parents/carers and will happily chat with them during drop-off and pick-up times or arrange meetings after school if required. If you have a query about your child’s academic progress or another concern then please speak first to the class teacher. If this issue needs to be explored further then the class teacher will arrange for a senior leader to provide additional support, or you can request to speak to the relevant senior leader yourself either directly with them during drop-off and pick-up times or via the office admin team (please see our Contact section for further information).

If a parent wishes to meet with the Headteacher for an urgent or confidential matter, then please contact the school office.

As well as this, our school has Parent/Carer Meetings every term. These meetings are very valuable, to both parents/carers and teachers and this is reflected in the meeting attendance rate which averages 96%. This is an opportunity to discuss the work your child has been doing in class, look at their books and have 1:1 time with their class teacher.

Parent/Carer to Teacher Email Protocol

We recognise that parents/carers have busy lives, juggling their involvement in their children’s education with work as well as other commitments and responsibilities.  In order to support parents/carers with day-to-day communication with teachers, we share teachers’ work email addresses with them.

We believe that this enables parents/carers to get in touch with teachers more easily when necessary and when a face-to-face conversation is not possible, but need to be very mindful of teachers’ workloads when taking this step. We also want to ensure we maintain the very positive and supportive home-school relationships in place, which bring benefits for all. We have therefore set out the following guidance for parents/carers & teachers when communicating via email.

1. The preferred means of daily communication between parents/carers and teachers remains face-to-face discussion at either the start or the end of the school day; email should be used by parents/carers where this is not possible or appropriate (e.g. if the parent/carer or teacher is unavailable at this time, or if the issue is too sensitive to discuss in an open forum).
2. Parents/carers should limit their use of teachers’ emails as much as possible, in order to support teachers in managing their workload.  Emails should only be sent on school days, and not at the weekend or during school holidays.
3. Emails to teachers should generally be used for the following two main types of communication, and should not stray into areas which could be perceived as being critical of the teacher or ‘telling them how to do their job’ (any concerns in this area should be dealt with by speaking to the teacher directly or to a member of the senior leadership team):
   1. Quick updates about issues faced at home by the child which it may be useful for the teacher to know (e.g. grandma is unwell and this is making them feel anxious).
   2. Request for more information about issues of concern at school which have happened during the day (e.g. the child has reported that they have fallen out with their friends and is alone every playtime).
4. If an issue requires urgent attention (e.g. a safeguarding issue), then this should be communicated either face-to-face or over the phone via the school office as teachers check their emails at varying times; although all teachers check their emails at least once per day, this may not happen until just before leaving to go home.
5. Absence reporting should be to the main school office as usual, not via the class teacher.
6. Parents/carers will need to have reasonable expectations in terms of when they expect to receive a reply to their email, and understand that some emails may not need a reply at all (e.g. if a parent/carer has contacted to pass on some information but no further action is required); teachers will use their own judgement on this.

We know that the school and parents/carers have fantastic relationships and trust that parents/carers will understand the need to ensure sensible and respectful use of teacher emails. Deviation from this guidance will be addressed directly with parents/carers by teachers and, if necessary, escalated to the senior leadership team; we reserve the right to block communication via email for anyone abusing this channel should this become absolutely necessary. Equally, where a parent/carer is dissatisfied with the effectiveness of communication via email with teachers, they should initially seek to address this with the teacher and then escalate to a member of the senior leadership team if this does not resolve the issue.

We look forward to continuing to improve our day-to-day communication via this channel, but before sending an email please always thinks: can I do this face-to-face instead?

Teacher emails are as follows: