Successful Learning: How can data help?

06 March 2020

Successful Learning: How can data help?

I was very encouraged to see so many parents at our recent annual parent engagement evenings. Our focus area for 2020 is 'successful learning: how can data help?' I trust that the plenary sessions helped parents to appreciate that our teachers take information about our students seriously and invest time making adjustments to their teaching practice to cater to student need. Where the data reveals a possible weakness, we are keen to acknowledge this weakness and take specific steps to address it.

For example, at the plenary sessions we shared the example of recent Year 3 NAPLAN Maths results, which indicated that our students were substantially above the state average. However, we also noticed that there were a few specific questions where our students performed below the state average. The teachers then worked on more effective ways of teaching this particular topic.

I trust that the year group sessions were encouraging and informative. I managed to drop in on several of them and it seemed that parents were connecting warmly with the teachers and each other. These positive relationships are very important in the life of a Christian school.

Towards the end of Term 1 each year I have developed a practice of sending parents a relatively brief survey. Some of the questions relate to our chosen theme for the year and others seek your thoughts on other topics. Rather than sending parents an exhaustive, time-consuming survey to complete each year I would prefer to use a simpler survey as just one of the ways that our teachers can work in a partnership with our parents to provide our students with a great Christian education. I am keen to encourage a culture where parents feel comfortable sharing their thoughts throughout the year and not feel that they are limited to an annual survey. I will arrange to send the survey to you in a few weeks.



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