Your Views

How you can express your views

Your views are important to us: we’re always keen to hear your questions, comments and concerns.

Speak with the class teacher

Parents’ evenings are held twice a year – once in the autumn term and another in the spring. However, informal meetings can be more effective.  We encourage parents of all our pupils to keep in close contact with the school – it’s nearly always possible to speak with the class teacher for a moment or two before or after school, and a longer discussion can be arranged within a day or two. These meetings can be arranged if you have specific concerns or would like to know more about how to support your child. For example, following the Annual Report, which is sent home a few weeks before the summer holiday, you might like to arrange a meeting with your child’s class teacher to discuss some of the content of the report and how you can help your child over the long summer break.

Speak to the headteacher

As well as speaking to the class teacher, Mr Matthews can provide you with an overview of your child’s learning (he is responsible for tracking the attainment and progress of all children in school) as well as talk about ways to support you and your child. He treats all feedback sensitively and appropriately – your feedback is one of the ways we can keep getting better and better.

Put your views in writing

Every year in the Summer Term, we send out a short survey for parents / carers. The survey is usually in two sections. The first section asks you to agree / disagree to a few statements – these relate to Ofsted inspection criteria and will be about teaching, learning, behaviour and safety, and leadership. There’s always space for you to express your views, too. The second section is more open-ended and is usually linked to our school development plan – we might ask for your thoughts on an issue so we know whether or not we should work on improving it (school dinners, for example). The surveys can be returned to us unnamed, if you’d prefer.

Don’t wait until the annual survey, though! If you’ve got some feedback for us, we’d like to hear from you. You could send us an email, a short note or use the form at the bottom of this page.

Look out for our communications

Your questions, comments or concerns are often answered in our newsletters (every other week) and letters home.

We are happy to send home paper copies of essential communications. However, we increasingly use other ways to communicate. There are various ways for you to receive our newsletters and updates electronically. Although you can receive the newsletter by email, we still send paper copies out to parents who prefer it.

If you use Twitter, you can follow us.

We are now on Facebook! We cannot get involved in conversations via FB, but are trying to use it as often as possible to share all the good things which happen during the school day.

We also use ParentPay to send emails and to text small groups or individual parents.

The school app (search for Primarysite, and then choose Ashleigh) reflects the content of the website, but you can also choose to receive messages about a whole variety of things. This will become the main way we send messages in the future.

Please contact the school office if you have any problems with any of the above lines of communication.

Make a complaint

Complaints are rare at Ashleigh. We have an open culture. Staff are nearly always available – it’s easy to have a quick chat with teachers or the headteacher so most concerns or complaints are dealt with quickly. However, if parents feel that they need to make a formal complaint, it should be made in writing to the Headteacher, who will investigate and give a response within ten days. If parents remain dissatisfied, they can appeal to the Chair of Governors. The case will then be reviewed by a Governors’ Panel and a final response given within twenty days. A copy of the school's Complaints Procedure and any other documentation to which parents may require access is available from the school office.

Parental and Well Being Questionnaires

Our Parental and Well Being Questionnaires have now closed for the time being. Thank you if you were able to complete them, your ideas and views are really useful. We had 38 responses this time. The answers are currently being analysed and we will share with you the findings in the next couple of weeks.

The next set of questionnaires will go live in the Autumn term.

Tell us what you think

Please use this form to tell us what we're doing well or what could be even better. During term time, we will respond to messages within 48 hours. If you have an urgent query, please do not hesitate to ring school on 01254 703171.