News

G&T Conference Video

LCS is pleased to announce the availability of a recently recorded video from the GT Conference!

Please click here to view the video >

Cognita Parental Survey 2009

I would like to express my gratitude to all those parents who took the time to complete our recent online survey. It has proved to be an extremely worthwhile undertaking providing us with much valuable information to help us better plan the future development of the school. It has confirmed our belief that Long Close School meets, and often exceeds, your expectations in many areas.

I have summarised the main findings of the survey - see below.  I hope you find that they reflect your experiences of the school.

As we had hoped, the survey has also identified areas of school life which concern some parents or which could be further improved. We will look at these carefully in detail and, where possible, improvements will be implemented as soon as possible. I will keep you informed regularly about progress.

Once again, many thanks to all of you who participated in this research. It is an invaluable tool towards achieving our ambition that Long Close School should be recognised as the premier school in the locality.

Finally can I please alert Parents of pupils in Years 3-5 of the Future Schooling Evening on Wednesday 25^th March at 6.00pm which will take place in the main School Hall. This is an information evening for your benefit and will help you start to think through the educational issues (11+, etc) for your child’s future learning journey.

With all best wishes.

Yours sincerely

David Brazier, Head Teacher

THE RESEARCH

During the Autumn of 2009 Long Close School and Cognita commissioned MTM Consulting to undertake research into the attitudes and opinions of parents. The views of parents are considered vital to inform planning and future decision making.

Details of the online questionnaire were sent to all parents, and in total 48 responses were received.

Survey Findings:

1.   Parents believed the school performs well against all of the measures you identified as important. Its great strengths appeared to be the leadership of the Head Teacher, the atmosphere and ethos of the school and the quality of teaching and learning.  For many respondents these were the main reasons for choosing the school

2.   Parents rated all areas of the admissions process as either good or very good

3.   Respondents mainly described the school in positive terms, the most used adjectives being “friendly”, “academic” and “caring”. Virtually no negative adjectives were used to describe the school

4.   Communication at the school is generally regarded as good, especially the staff availability and accessibility which was considered to be very good. However the school website and email communication are clearly in need of some improvement. Parent communication was also highlighted as an important area for improvement within the school, reflecting the importance parents place on this aspect of school life

5.   Whilst most parents regarded many aspects of pastoral care at the school as good, an aspect which was rated less favourably was the advice offered on next placement school

6.   I am pleased to say that the standard of teaching was generally regarded as good in all subject areas. Some subjects were rated higher than others and as our goal is to deliver excellent teaching in all areas, we shall look closely at what needs to be done in order to achieve this. Whilst the majority of respondents considered that pupils received the right amount of homework, a significant minority felt that more should be set.  Parents agreed that generally marking and feedback were very good

7.   Extra curricular activities were thought to be reasonably good by most parents

8.   Most aspects of the school’s premises and facilities were thought to be either good or satisfactory

9.   Management and leadership of the school were thought to be good by the majority of parents

10. The IT development most parents wanted to see was to be able to access school timetables and email accounts from home

11. 93% of parents would or do recommend the school, value for money was considered to be reasonable and parents were generally satisfied with the school overall

Our priorities for attention, as a result of this survey, include:

1.   Improvement in some areas of communication – for example we hope to have Parentmail in place for the next academic year – more details to follow… and, since the Survey was issued we have launched the new Long Close School website

2.   Improvements to catering arrangements with greater choice for the Senior Pupils

3.   A qualitative improvements of school facilities – happily I can report that the tennis courts are being up-graded over Easter and other improvements are being made!