Give parents more information about what their children are learning in school

Background and context

Grange Primary School wanted parents to have regular information of what their children were learning and how to support and for parents to be aware of changes they had made to the curriculum to make it more inclusive and diverse.

What did they do

They decided best way to achieve this was to send out a weekly curriculum overview. This was trialled by the FSPA lead in Year 4 to create a template and ensure that it would not create additional workload for teaching staff.

Parents are now provided with a weekly curriculum overview from each year group that clearly states what the children will be learning that week in Maths, English and Science. The overview is e-mailed to all parents on Friday for the following week. It includes maths methods, helpful resources and useful video links and highlights any inclusion/equality areas in the curriculum.

Teachers use simple language so that it is accessible for all parents. It also includes key information for the upcoming week, for that year group.

What was the impact? What changed?

In their end of year survey 97% of parents surveyed found the Weekly Overview useful. They are using it to talk to their child about their upcoming learning, as a tool to discuss what they have done in school that day or week and some are using it to plan activities that would be complementary to the learning of the week (i.e. visit to a particular museum, finding a book that relates to the theme or watching a video/ movie that helps understand the topic, expand on it or make connections to other subject areas). 96.6% of parents surveyed would like to continue to receive Weekly Overviews.

Staff are happy to continue to send out the Weekly Overviews and the school have identified some key success criteria: Keep it simple; Make sure it does not add to staff’s workload; Have a standardised format and clear guidelines for all staff, so that there is consistency within the school and all staff know what to include; send them all out at the same time.

The percentage of parents who said they were given information each week on what their child will learn increased from 85% to 98%.