Supporting Parents Through ‘Life After Levels’

Word got to Parent Hub HQ that Southwark Primary School in Nottingham have been doing some great work with their parent community, so we caught up with Damon Fox, School Governor and Regional Manager at Evolve, to find out more about their innovative approach to supporting parents through ‘life after levels’.

Damon, what is special about Southwark Primary’s approach to life after levels?

Shifting from levels to a new system was always going to present a big change to the way that children at the school were assessed and therefore the way that we communicated their progress to parents. We decided that we needed to come up with a transparent way of sharing progress with parents and that the best way to do that was to hear what they thought.

When we designed our new system we wanted effective learning behaviours to be at the heart of everything. We invited the parents in and, in partnership, designed a set of Behaviour for Learning characteristics: Focussed, Curious, Determined, Reflective and Creative.

Everyday, parents receive updates from class teachers about how their child is doing using the same agreed language. The behaviour for learning characteristics are displayed around classrooms and are used consistently across the whole school, setting constantly high expectations of our learners.

How has this approach been received?

Feedback from teachers and parents alike has been really positive. Parents get updates more regularly from school without the confusion of levels – our communication with parents is so much more transparent now. I think that one of the most powerful things to come from our overhaul of the behaviour system and progress monitoring is that the parents have have got ownership over it too. Teachers have taken to the new system whole-heartedly, and we’ve seen it embedded really quickly across the whole school.

The aim is for the new system to transform conversations at home. The language that has been picked by the parents means that it is easier for them to understand how their child is doing, and therefore enables more discussion to happen at home about learning and learning behaviours. It also means that both home and school now have a common language – no more confusion over levels and jargon! Under the old system, it was often much harder for parents to relate to their child’s progress – what does a level 4 in maths actually mean? We want parents to be able to talk to their child about being ‘curious’ and ‘determined’. These are the traits that are going to help them succeed in school and beyond! We believe that our new approach empowers parents to nurture these valuable characteristics from an early age, which will ultimately improve their children’s outcomes.

It’s been really flattering to hear thoughts from other local schools and we’ve had quite a few colleagues from the area come in a see what we’re doing at Southwark. What we’re doing works for us, and our community, and we’re all ready proud of the work that is going on at the school.

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To find out more about how Parent Hub can help you improve student outcomes through parental engagement, get in touch on hello@parenthub.pleasecheck.me or check out some of our other interviews and articles.