Communication with Parents
We value highly regular contact with parents throughout a student’s years at the school. Each term parents receive a full or interim report, or are invited to attend a consultation evening with their children. Additional informal consultations are held every half-term, for which appointments are not needed.
An Induction Evening in Year 6, a Tutors Evening in Year 7, an Options Evening in Year 9, an Into the Sixth Form Evening in Year 11 and a Higher Education Evening in the Sixth Form, all help to plan for the future.
Parents are welcomed at the school for discussion at other times as well. Appointments are preferred but a meeting can be arranged at short notice when this seems desirable. Students’ planners provide a regular record of progress and achievements, and a daily means of communication. School newsletters are published every half-term.
Interim reports provide a summary of students’ progress early in the year and full school reports are issued for each student at least once a year. We take care to ensure that these are detailed and informative, and that they contain useful subject-by-subject guidance.
Keeping you informed
One of the findings of our Ofsted inspection was that we should make clearer to parents the channels for communication. We have introduced ParentMail to enable us to communicate information about school events and activities to all parents via email on a regular basis. We have redesigned our website (
http://www.guildfordcounty.co.uk ) so that it is more attractive, easier to use, and more informative. We have established a parents’ consultation group which meets each term to discuss areas of interest and propose improvements to our provision.
We now plan to extend electronic communication to enable parents to email all staff directly, for example with questions about procedures, concerns about progress, or simply thanks for help given to a student. Staff will make every effort to send a response within 48 hours. All staff email addresses will have the same format, initial plus surname @ guildfordcounty.surrey.sch.uk, for example
If you telephone the school to speak to a member of staff, you may receive an email as the initial response. If we don’t already have your email address, we will ask you for it when you telephone. Staff will still be very happy to speak to you directly by telephone or meet for a discussion when appropriate, but we believe that many smaller matters can be resolved quickly and easily by email.
We are also keen to communicate with parents via email, especially to inform you if your son or daughter is behind with work or underachieving. We can then provide further details of the kind of work, for example a GCSE coursework assignment. You can monitor progress at home, and we can keep you informed if the work is not handed in. For this communication, we need your email address, which is why we encourage you to sign up to ParentMail. To do so, please refer to our website (www.guildfordcounty.co.uk) or contact the school.
We are in addition planning to ensure in the near future that all students can email work to and from home, and that they know how to do so. Many students complete assignments partly in school and partly at home, and it is often useful to be able to combine the different elements into one piece.
We hope these new developments will help you to be more informed about school activities, more up-to-date on your son’s or daughter’s progress, and better able to resolve any concerns you may have.
