Published on: 13 June 2019

  • Term 2 Parent Forum

The weather has been wild and windy this week and I wasn’t sure how many parents would brave the elements to attend our first Parent Forum for the year. The importance of strong school-parent partnerships cannot be underestimated and I was so pleased to see many familiar faces in the room. I send a heartfelt thank you to those who attended, posed questions and provided feedback.

The objective of the Parent Forum is to create an opportunity for open dialogue on all aspects of the Preparatory School journey. The session commenced with an overview of the new building, the boys’ absolute joy in the Innovation Space, the Houses, before moving into conversations about aspects of education that are really important to all of us including emotional and social learning, reporting, assessments, motivation – and we also discussed whether the diary in its current format is effective. Some of the questions from the floor focused on communication – importantly can the School provide a view of each term to parents that includes a matrix of subjects, content to be learned during the term per subject, additional resources and the timing of assessments. Towards the end of the session I asked the audience for their opinion on a couple of other matters such as timing of Chapel and assemblies.

Having had six months in the role now and time to reflect on things that we should maintain and new things that would be valuable introductions, over the next three months the Prep School leadership team will be working on a plan to refresh the timetable with the ultimate goal of maximising learning time for the benefit of the boys. Please know that as we do this, we will not lose sight of the nurturing, caring and open learning culture that makes Christ Church the wonderful and successful school that it is. I will be sharing our plans and seeking your input along the way, and for those who didn’t make the Parent Forum – you can see the slides here. As always, please make contact with me or Jay Pyefinch if you have any questions.

Dr Steven Males
Head of Preparatory School