Parent/carer updates

Survey outcomes

We were delighted to receive 288 responses from parents/carers who completed our recent survey. These were supplemented by an equally pleasing response from students and colleagues to their respective surveys. More detail will follow once we’ve had a chance to work through all your feedback. For now, here are some quick headlines:

Parents/carers are overwhelmingly appreciative of the everything school does, from pastoral support, to quality teaching, our focus on standards and commitment to communication. 85% of parents/ carers agreed that their child receives a good quality of education and the same percentage reported that their child is kept safe. Over 80% of parents/carers said they would recommend Highfields to others.

All surveys provide us with a range of pointers for improvement, which we will consider carefully. Leaders and governors are very mindful of the potential impact of staff absence, and this is an area flagged by several parents/carers. Many schools have reported this to be a significant issue this term. We continue to work hard to mitigate the effects of absence, for example by leaders making frequent visits to any lessons being delivered by people other than the usual class teacher.

Thank you again for your responses – they all help us to get a view of how we are doing and to be the best we can.

INSET day – Friday 3 December

We would like to remind parents/carers that Friday 3 December is an INSET day and no students are in school.

Buy discounted books and raise money for the school library

Scholastic Book Club is an excellent opportunity to purchase some very popular children’s and young adults’ books at sometimes very heavily discounted prices, all in time for Christmas. In recent years your purchases have raised over £1,000 to be spent on new books for the school library!

We are running our latest Scholastic promotion at the moment and there are great deals on some very popular books which would make fantastic Christmas presents.

Please visit http://schools.scholastic.co.uk/highfields-de4/digital-book-club to browse the latest books available and order online. For every £1 you spend, our school will earn 20p in Scholastic rewards which will be spent on new books for the school library.

All orders will be delivered to school and books will be sent home with your child, so there is no postage to pay. Alternatively you can arrange to collect them yourself from school. If you would like to purchase any books, please place your order online by Tuesday 7 December 2021.

Reminder: School snow/emergency closures - school strategy and risk assessment notice

Now the weather is changing we wanted to remind parents/carers regarding the steps we take if we are forced to close the school in an emergency, ie due to extreme weather conditions or equipment failures associated with the change in the weather. We should stress at the outset that this is something we only do with great reluctance, but our overriding concern is the health and safety of our students and sometimes such action is unavoidable.

We aim to communicate clearly with parents/carers as soon as possible via Weduc, our website and through local radio stations should school need to close in an emergency.

Full details of our emergency closure procedure was emailed to parents/carers on 5 November outlining our strategy, risk assessment and approach in advance of any emergency closure – please take a few minutes to read this and discuss with your child.