Message From The Head - Regarding Communication Between School and Parents

Dear Parents,

As I am sure you will be aware, we have recently changed the format of Rough Notes, with the aim of producing a more polished, more entertaining magazine which gathers together matters of interest every four or five weeks. The new publication is an excellent product and it is clearly going to be successful. We have received many favourable comments from parents.

What we didn’t anticipate, however, was just how popular it would prove to be and that has created a slight problem. Over the past few years we have been steadily moving away from letters and leaflets to electronic communication and the number of parents signed up to ParentMail has risen to over 700. With the new Rough Notes, however, some parents have quite rightly been disappointed not to receive it as a hard copy and have only been sent the electronic version.

If we send hard copies of the new Rough Notes to every parent, the cost becomes prohibitive; if we restrict it to download only it loses its visual and tactile appeal. Consequently, we have had to come up with a solution to ensure that parents can have access to a hard copy if they would like one while at the same time allowing us to reduce drastically the amount of paper we send home.

We are also conscious that the move to electronic communication needs to be accelerated: email is a much more efficient way for the school to contact parents. The more emails we send, the less paper we use, the less litter we create, and the more certain we are that information gets home. We therefore plan to move quickly towards an email only system of communication, with no use of letters at all, except for personal correspondence.

At the same time, we would like to offer parents the chance to subscribe to the new version of Rough Notes at a small fee to allow us to cover the cost of its production. You are now able to subscribe via WisePay (look for the Donations tab) and for a charge of £5 a term or £15 a year you will receive a copy of Rough Notes as it is produced and have it sent home. Any profit we make will contribute to school funds and thus benefit pupils generally.

We now plan to move almost entirely to a system whereby we send letters out only by ParentMail. In order to make this work, we need to make sure our database of email addresses is up to date and I would therefore ask you to complete the attached slip and return it to school or sign up to ParentMail via our website.

If you do not have an email address, you can ask for your mail to be sent to your son’s or daughter’s email address (every student has one at school which can be accessed from home) or you can come in to Reception to request hard copies of any letters that have been sent out. We will make sure students are informed when letters are sent.

Of course, this system relies on parental cooperation and I hope I can count on your support. The new system will be quicker, more direct, more reliable and much cheaper. It will be in keeping with our status as an Eco-School and it will encourage us as a school to communicate more speedily and more regularly with parents.

With the new Rough Notes and a more faster, more reliable email system, there is huge scope for improving communication between school and parents, and this is something that can only be to the benefit of all concerned.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Steward
Headteacher

Rough Notes can be viewed and downloaded HERE

Download a copy of this letter HERE (PDF)

Download an electronic Parentmail registration form to be completed and emailed HERE (Word Document)

Download a printable Parentmail registration form to be completed and handed in to school HERE (PDF)