The home-school connection is essential in ensuring that students receive the best possible support. To build this connection, we encourage parent involvement in school programs, initiatives, and decision-making.
The partnership between home and school is important, and so communication channels have been established with parents and parent input and feedback is used for school improvement and programs.
I believe that having a strong school community and collective understanding is really important in creating stability for our children.
If we’re aligned in expectations between school and home, the transition’s more seamless.
The school has a school board with parent representatives. Parents can contribute to the strategic direction of the school through their parent reps or participate in a school board subcommittee, for example, the OSH subcommittee.
As a member of the Larrakeyah Primary School Board, I’ve been involved in helping to set the strategic direction of the school, in helping the school’s leaders to make strategic decisions, in connecting the school to our community, and also in advocating for the school with government from time to time.
We also have our formal school newsletter that is sent out to our whole school community. It begins with an update from the principal who acknowledges important milestones and achievements within our school community, as well as highlighting all key events. We showcase student learning and achievement and get to hear from our Defence Mentor.
On the weeks that we don’t have the newsletter, we have the Community Digest videos like the one you’re seeing now. It provides an opportunity for us to address matters of importance and inform the school community of all the programs, pedagogies and events we run throughout the year. We understand the importance of involving school community in this process, and we created the video digest after taking on parent feedback.
We seek feedback from parents through the Parent Opinion Survey and survey questions in the Community Digests each fortnight. This data helps us with school improvement.
We tap into the school community regularly throughout the year through asking for parent volunteers on excursions, reading with early childhood students outside the classroom, volunteering on camps to more specific parent involvement
through our QUEST, Aspire and ECA programs.
I find a lot of benefit and personal satisfaction in connecting with our school community. I really enjoy volunteering for school camps, for school excursions, and connecting with the broader school community through our community events, like the School Sports Day, the annual production, and our Halloween disco.
I also enjoy connecting with teachers through our Seesaw application.
As industry professionals and experts in the field, parents have provided support and input to these valuable programs.
Not only is this extremely engaging to hear from our school community when they help out with these programs, but it’s also a very special moment for their child who was usually extremely proud and beaming that their mum and dad or family member get to be the teacher for the session.
It also makes sharing the successes of our children all the more rewarding. It’s one thing to admire success from a distance, but it’s quite another to be involved in creating that success or to personally know the people who are, and to share that success alongside them.
Various forms of communication and parental involvement are important so that parents are informed of what’s happening at school.
I enjoy knowing the educators who are guiding my children, knowing my children’s friends and their families. I find that building relationships fosters the trust and collective understanding that’s the basis of community more broadly, but certainly also the basis of a vibrant school community.
