school won't talk to me

[Kim34]

my daughters latest progress report from school she is now in year 9 showed that at the end of the last school year July 2015 she was a 6b in english her latest progress report showed she had dropped to a 5c and thats in six weeks.Have tried to speak to the school so I can understand whats happening ,however I have been unable to get to speak to anyone including the head teacher despite leaving numerous messages ,no one will talk to me .....anyone else had this problem with a school

[nicp123]

Levels are changed this year. Double check if the school is still using the old system and don't panic yet. Good luck.

[Kim34]

thanks for that but surely the school should have communicated this to parents .....my biggest concern is that know what at the school will speak to me or return a phone call

[Scarydinosaurs]

Can you email the English teacher directly? Send your dd in with a letter asking the English teacher to contact you?

[Kim34]

have left 4 messages since last tuesday on her answer machine and spoke to the school reception to give a message

[PantryofWhoGivesAFuck]

New teacher/ different assessment criteria / levels have changed etc.

Find out what her end of year level KS3 target is.

[Stillunexpected]

You need to calm down. Four messages since Tuesday is excessive, and phoning different people all the time won't help. The English teacher may have been ill or on a residential trip since Wednesday. All you achieve by phoning the HT before even giving the English teacher a fair chance to reply is to delay the process even further. HT will want to find out from the teacher what is going on and won't be impressed when the teacher identifies you as the person leaving more than a message a day about a single level on one report.

[littledrummergirl]

What does your Dd say? How is she planning to fix it? What has the teacher said to her?
She is yr9, old enough to be responsible for her education, she needs to have a structured conversation with her teacher.

[AChickenCalledKorma]

What does the school say about how to contact them with any issues? Are you meant to phone/email/write a letter/make an appointment? Do they want you to contact her form tutor as first point of contact?

At DD's school I would email her english teacher directly in this situation - all the staff's email addresses are on the school's website. (And generally speaking I'd get a response within 24 hours, but I think they are particularly good at communicating and wouldn't necessarily expect such a quick response from every school.)

There must be some system for raising queries and not getting any kind of response to a question like this does seem poor. As others have mentioned, assessment systems have changed this year and there may be nothing to be concerned about. But it's totally reasonable to want some kind of explanation if that's the case.