Parent and Carer Questionnaire Summary Spring 2021

What have you been particularly pleased with?

• Excellent learning environment, very supportive teachers!
• The communication from school is excellent, staff are warm and welcoming and my child feels happy at school. We appreciate everything you’re doing.
• Quality of staff and teaching. Resources during the last home schooling period were excellent.
• I have been recommended by my friend. There’s a huge gap between the school my son was attending last year. He’s learning so many different things which is good I am very pleased about this. another good thing is his behaviours are going well to his parents and the community. Thank you so much.
• Notes in learning journey and reading log
• The staff are all so friendly. My son has really struggled with going into school this term and one of the lovely TAs is always there to meet him and bring him in with a smile and a cuddle
• It’s a fantastic school.
• How well xxxx has settled back in which I’m sure is because of the constant contact and support from his teachers over homeschooling and on his return.
• Any concerns I’ve had have been taken seriously and acted upon. I feel listened to, and that my child’s feelings and emotions are just as important as her academic performance.
• The compassion from staff and the sense of community. My youngest daughter is joining in September and during pick ups she is welcomed from club. This is lovely to observe.
• The school, the grounds and the staff are all fantastic.
• The support from the teachers and development of xxxx . He's had no problems settling back in after lockdown which is a real credit to the school and teachers in his class
• Teaching, and the other children - my kids seem happy going into school
• The way the lockdown scenarios have been managed and communicated has been excellent
• Our kid seems particularly pleased with the teachers and their friendly behaviour. He seems to learn quickly with the teachers rather than us. Big thumbs up for all the teachers involved
• The continued support of all the staff at Marine park for my child during this period of uncertainty. The quick intervention that has been offered to xxxx both this year and last for her spelling and self esteem. The positive , frequent communication through NTLP from her year 2 and year 3 teachers. The happy staff that always greet xxxx whether remotely or in person in what I'm will have been a challenge for them both personally and professionally. We couldn't ask for a better school for both xxxx and xxxx .
• The second lockdown home schooling engagement was very good for the pupils work meetings And a set daily plan it was a huge improvement from the first lockdown which was very disappointing but expected give the unprecedented nature of the circumstances.
• All the hard work you put in over lockdown
• Covid response this last year
• Communication during covid
• i am pleased how my daughter is learning and also the teachers are very nice and supportive
• The staff have always gone out of their way to be supportive and helpful. Both my children have thrived at Marine Park.
• Staff
• The care that the nursery staff have for the children.
• It’s a fantastic school
• The way the school managed home schooling during the second lockdown.
• Online lessons and activities kept the kids engaged when they could not attend school. Good feedback from teachers on the homework.
• Support for my son following a speech and language referral.
• xxxx (teacher) has been incredible over the lockdown in terms of the support he has given for both home schooling and during key worker school sessions. Giving regular feedback on the work during that time really motivated my child to complete the work in a timely manner and to a high standard.
• We appreciated the support and communication the children received during lockdown. Sean absolutely loved the gymnastics coach coming in!
• Creative learning opportunities and progress my child has made. Warm and professional staff.
• Quality of OoSC.
• The general happiness of my child, the feedback from teachers

What have you been particularly pleased with?

• Good timely communications
• I have been impressed by all of the teaching staff other than those in Year 1 at the time. Other than this particular school year I feel the teachers have been very efficient and caring ensuring the best for my child.
• Marine Park has encouraged my child to grow as a person as well as academically and he thrives here.
• The variety of activities and good relationships
• Additional support provided for xxxx returning to school has been excellent, thank you.
• All the staff that work at Marine Park are so supportive and I feel that xxxx has always been very happy to go to school! If there has been any issues along the way, they have been dealt with straight away and xxxx has learnt so much and progressed so much throughout her years at Marine Park. A big thank you to all the staff at Marine Park for making xxxx start in her learning journey so wonderful and happy!
• Communication, organised, friendly, welcoming, supported. Feel my child is safe and well looked after.
• All the staff, including support staff. They are very welcoming and make it easy to talk to them about any issues.
• Versatile school, wide variety of subjects especially languages in comparison with our previous experience in the UK
• xxxx (office staff) welcome, xxxx saying goodbye to kids at the school gates is lovely, newsletter communications are good, communication during lockdown was good.
• Loved Dr Bike
• Love walk to school initiative
• Would like to see more whole school activities when restrictions allow (I have no idea whether the school does this)
• Child resettling back into school after a very disruptive year
• My child education, amazing way teachers teach them
• xxxx loves to learn and this has been encouraged
• The contact the teacher's made with xxxx when she was feeling sad about lockdown really helped and was a lovely thing to do.
• Positivity of staff
• The focus on the outdoor activities and encouraging wellbeing - our little one struggled with his concentration going back so I’m pleased it wasn’t intense learning.
• Class teachers have always been brilliant
• How the staff reacted through the pandemic and made xxxx’s return to school as seamless as possible
• Warm, family feel. The teachers are lovely and my children are happy at school. A lot of emphasis on health and well being.
• Warm, friendly and encouraging approach to learning and fantastically well handled lockdown. We were very impressed! The use of the outdoor space in the year 1 area was great! xxxx also loved the gymnastic sessions this year with the apparatus.
• Emails from teachers with any questions, in particular xxxx (teacher) who has responded quickly and informative answers to my queries.
• The sense of community
• Ethos/support to children during a difficult year. Kindness of staff. Extra activities (daughter currently loving Wednesday gymnastics). Range of activities within the classroom e.g. listening to/taking about music. Regular updates/newsletters also great.
• Caring teachers
• How xxxx has settled in and how much she loves coming to nursery. communication through emails and remote learning, contact through Learning Journey.
• How you’ve supported xxxx in settling in (she joined in Y1) and the support with learning and regular contact (online meets) during lockdown.
• Support and communication in regards to my children’s difficulties/development

What could we do better?

• No suggestions currently.
• The school is wonderful in everything it does.
• I am pleased overall with everything.
• NA
• Nothing at the moment
• Nothing comes to my mind.
• This is a difficult question to answer fairly this year.
• Email parent Comms as well as text. Concise comms
• Use email for correspondence
• More opportunities for feedback
• It would have been nice to have had the opportunity to meet Mr Easton as new parents at the school to find out more about the school and it’s ethos.
• Improve communication where parents have separated, for example sending items such as reports in child’s school bag means that not all parents may see it.
• More of a relationship between teachers and parents, it currently doesn’t exist. I need more feedback, far more regularly than once each year into what’s happening, what are my kids strengths? and what do we need to work on at home?
• More frequent reports to see where parents can support kids weaker areas more at home
• Maybe some more frequent updates on how they are getting on. A more regular email or something would be good on top of parents evening. Appreciate time is limited though.
• More detailed information about each day & anything they've noticed about my child
• Proving parents, week plan
• Parents evening
• A little more time around the Parent evenings session
• I would like to know how my child is doing more often then just parents evenings. Especially after raising concerns it would be nice to have more feedback on how they’re getting on work wise
• I have no idea what my kids are learning at school (they forget by the time they come home). At our old school teachers used to write in the kids’ reading books to report back. I don’t have any Comms from the teachers here to gauge how well the kids are doing.
• Home-school dialogue in h/w book or reading log. Just a short message e.g. something XXXX’s done well in/shown interest in/ needs to focus on.

Response: We note the comments about communication. It has been a very untypical year; COVID (social distancing) restrictions have sought to minimise daily face-to-face interactions which are normally so valuable to parents/carers and staff. We have tried to overcome these with, for example, admission/transition information and videos, autumn written report for each child, online parents’ meeting in spring, questionnaires/surveys and frequent communication in the form of letters/texts. We recognise that all of this still falls short of the normal arrangements which we hope will return in the future.

• The reading books sent home are great, and I can see the value in repeating a book for a couple of days when they are just starting out with decoding, but when they are just reading single words it's very hard to keep the momentum going for a whole week on a single book. I think it would be more profitable to change them more regularly. Plus having the books for so long means the book is several steps behind the sounds XXXX tells me he is learning in school - we haven't even got to ch yet in his reading book, which he learnt in January. So the books are not fully reinforcing the learning in school as far as I can see. I wouldn't be able to tell an inspector that I am totally confident the books are well matched to my son's phonetic ability.
• The reading book could provide more info than just the title of the book and I do think in year 2 the teacher should hear them read individually at least once per month in order to assess their progression. I am not aware of any reading having been done with the teacher this year, only the TA and this has only been twice.
• I can’t really comment as we only started in March but I am still struggling to understand the approach to teaching them reading and the general performance assessment. I rely on the teachers though and do trust them.

Response: We welcome feedback about reading provision in school.  Teachers use a range of tools to assess children's reading in school.  There are daily reading sessions where the skills of fluency, comprehension and inference are discretely taught and assessed.  We use a range of texts in school for these whole class and small group reading sessions, rather than the home reading book. Due to COVID this year we have not had the opportunity to facilitate parent information reading meetings as we have done in the past for reception and year 1. The curriculum section of our website provides information about RWI as our approach to teaching the decoding aspect of reading.  

We are currently reviewing the number of books the children in reception bring home each week and feedback on this issue has been taken into consideration. 

• Perhaps this comes later in the curriculum but more focus on non Christian festivals eg Eid/Divali etc. The school is less diverse in terms of ethnicity than many others so I think needs to go the extra mile to ensure children learn about wider range of customs and cultures.

Response: We follow the Local Agreed Syllabus– you can view this in the curriculum section of the website. We have not been able to hold as many assemblies as normal due to COVID restrictions which has lessened regular opportunities for collective worship which often covers learning about other culture on an ongoing basis (often when the festival's take place). As soon as the guidelines change, we hope to resume daily assemblies.

• After school activities - no idea whether it’s Covid related or not but I’d hope to see far more activities available. XXXX is doing dance but only for a term. I’m wondering why they can’t sign up all year? XXXX hasn’t had the opportunity to do anything yet which is disappointing.
• Increase slots or manage allocation for activities better so every kid gets a chance as many a times we have applied for clubs but hardly managed to get a place in one (like the foot ball, art club etc )
• It would be great to see more days like the football coaching sessions being ran during the school year, XXXX loved XXXX (coach) coming in to do the sessions earlier in the year.
• More after school sports and activity clubs! The kids love them.
• I hope the virus limitations will soon pass so after school clubs can be reinstated ... Football please!!
• We love the school. Maybe more outdoor learning and music opportunities but that’s just being really picky.
• As a very large school I feel additional enrichment activities are spread too thinly. Forget homework other than reading they are too young.

Response: Peri music lessons have continued throughout the year. However, opportunities for after school clubs have been significantly reduced due to COVID. We have not mixed class bubbles as we feel that this could result in wider transmission of a positive case. We also fee that it could become very difficult to track and trace cases if we mix class bubbles also resulting in the confusing position where some children have to self isolate in a class due to attendance at an after school club. We did introduce after school clubs (sport and art) in half term 2 and again in half term 5 but have continued to limited these to class bubbles and only offered them where there is sufficient interest to make them viable to a class bubble.  Allocation is carefully tracked to maximise participation but if there is insufficient demand in a class bubble then, unfortunately, not all children that want to attend an after school club are able to participate under the current class bubble arrangements. We have maintained free lunchtime sports activities throughout the school year across the entire staggered lunchtime period (2 hours per day). We hope to resume year group bubbles (including after school clubs) soon.

• The lunches could be healthier. The meals often don't seem very balanced and can be carb-heavy (eg, pizza and pasta or chips, with no vegetables).
• School lunches are really poor here compared with what we’re used to at our old school. I was shocked to hear it’s pizza and chips and the like. We had much healthier meals at our old school with a salad bar that the kids had to choose something from (I know this is a council issue rather than a marine park issue).
• Increase the lunch choices back to include the salad bar and jacket potatoes as an option.
• It could be covid related, but this term the school Meals seem to have been more repetitive and perhaps not as healthy

Response: The school meal service has been very different this year due to COVID. Children have been served at tables to reduce mixing and options have been limited to facilitate the different system. Salads have been served on the side rather than at the salad bar. We are working closely with Catering Services to review the menus and gradually introduce more typical and improved meal choices. Catering services have introduced a new menu for the last half term of 2020-21. Full resumption of the full pre– order system relies on service at the dinner hatch. We are committed to doing this as soon as possible but, because systems are established and guidelines have not changed as yet, September is the earliest we would be able to resume the school meal system that was in place pre-COVID.

• I would love to see bike storage at club as on club days I am taking the bike home for XXXX. XXX is not quite able to push the bike around for the pick up at 5pm.
• Payment system for club is complicated
• It feels like there are a lot of incidents at break time that staff don’t witness sadly.
• Dealing with persistent Bully’s/problems

Response: Please always speak to a member of staff at the time if you are concerned.

• My main concern has always been the Xmas productions they have too many children, too many parents, are too long in length and are performed too many times. I feel both the children and parents would benefit much more seeing a 15-20 min show containing a couple of songs and a few lines each. Performed once.

Response: We did an online Christmas performance in 2020-21. We will continue to experiment with different formats in the future.

Is there anything else you want to tell us?

• Just thank you for keeping everything so normal during a very unusual time.
• Really happy with the school.
• XXXX just loves the nursery and we would highly recommend it to anyone.
• Best teachers
• Thank you for all you do and how much extra work the staff must have had to do during lockdown. We really appreciate it. You are all super heroes!
• Both of my children are very happy and progressing well, just one or two tweaks in particularly regarding communication would improve things further.
• Thanks for all your hard work.
• That all the hard work and professionalism of all members of MPFS is greatly appreciated
• Overall both of my children have enjoyed very positive experiences at Marine Park.
• I know XXXX will miss Marine Park a lot but feels really happy to have had 5 fabulous years there.
• I would like to reiterate my thanks to the school for everything they have done to help xxxx in Reception, including during the lockdown. I think the school did a really good job of managing such a difficult situation during the lockdown.
• Just a massive thank you to all of the staff
• Both my children love marine park and all the teachers. I always say how fantastic the school is....but the only negative has been the constant issues with the same child/children which has gone on for a long time and constantly causes upset
• With the age that they're at its tough to keep an eye on what they're doing constantly and they're still learning what's acceptable behaviour however XXX has had a wooden brick thrown off his head causing bruising around his eye and been stabbed with a pair of scissors in his class this year, the teachers dealt with both issues professionally and had great communication with us for both incidents and hopefully as the class gets older and learns nothing like this will happen again, I wouldn't class it as bullying as both look to be isolated incidents however it was concerning that both happened
• More opportunities for public speaking especially for kids who are hesitant to speak up.
• I would just like to reiterate that I am appalled by the food! It's very frustrating to hear about the childhood obesity crisis in the north east of England. When the Local Authority decided to feed the children chips every single day followed by a giant slab of sponge cake and custard, what exactly were they expecting the outcome to be? 'Healthy schools' seems to be a bit of a joke in the context of the school menu.
• I would like to receive some information about how the Year 1 provision will be adapted next year in the light of missed learning resulting from the lockdown if possible.
• Happy in general thank you very much. I hope my limited quantitative responses won’t impact the survey results
• Would like to know more about what the school does in the local area - school trips/visits/working with old people’s homes or local conservation areas/tidying the beach. Does this sort of stuff go on here? It would have been nice to be told about this at a welcome meeting as new parents but we were left entirely to our own devices when we first joined.
• Return of after school activities given children are all mixing at activities out of school including at the park.