Peterhouse School Awarded top accolade for parent partnership

Peterhouse School is proud to have achieved the Leading Parent Partnership Award

This award acknowledges the school’s outstanding work in partnership with all parents and carers.

It has been proven that increasing parental participation in school life leads to improved pupil progress, punctuality, attendance and behaviour. The Leading Parent Partnership Award (LPPA) framework encourages parents to be involved in their children’s learning leading to improved outcomes in all aspects of school life.

Peterhouse School’s LPPA co-ordinator, Claire Lack, provided comprehensive evidence in the online portfolio to show how the school have celebrated and developed their work with parents during the course of the award. Areas such as transition, communication, participation, guidance, induction and home-school links were all assessed.

The assessors report identified a number of strengths and commented to say:

“There is strong leadership for parent partnership from the Headteacher, SLT governors and the Family Support Team
School staff fully understand the importance of parent partnership and adapt their approach to meet the needs of each family and work with them to strive for the best outcome for their child.”

The report also commented on the school’s thorough and individualised induction process as well as its effective communication methods with parents. The assessor also commended the fact that parent feedback is gathered on all aspects of school life and acted upon by the school.

“The school really listens to parents. They have a range of mechanisms to identify and respond to parents’ needs such as the Quality of Life initiative, which involves helping parents to recognise and address issues which will make their family life better.”

It was found that even during lockdown and Covid-19 restrictions, the school supported families consistently. A survey after the first lockdown enabled the school to review home learning processes. This meant that the school was then able to support families with any concerns that they raised, for example by providing laptops to any pupils who required them.

As many families were struggling with issues relating to the child’s autism at home, telephone counselling was made available for parents during lockdown, allowing them to build effective relationships with the school.

LPPA spoke to a number of parents and concluded that: “Parents are positive about the school and appreciate the support they receive. They feel that staff are approachable and feel included in their child’s education. The also appreciate the opportunity to get to know other parents share experience and fell that the school provide the support that the family needs which makes a positive impact on family life.”

Head Teacher, Janet Allan, was delighted with the with the award outcome, and commented that:

It is fabulous to be able to highlight and share our good practice with others and to demonstrate to the whole staff team that the work they do every day really is making a difference to the young people and families we support!”

The school now has plans to develop ongoing support for parents individually, collectively and in groups via parent voice, training courses, Quality of Life and to explore new areas by establishing Friends of Peterhouse and Parent Ambassadors.

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