to be angry at the fellow parents of Ds' School??

[fattiemumma]

because i am disgusted by them.

the school was recently put on "special measures" by offsted. its is failing badly, we scored unsatisfactory in pretty much every area.

tonight was the meeting in which we were able to discuss this with teh head and the goveners and indeed teh LEA.

the school has in excess of 400 pupils.
17 parents turned up.

i am stunned that so few people care about their childrens education.

thoguyh sadly i think it goes a long way to explain why the school is failing.

that is awful
FM, which school is it? (i think you live in same town as me)

That is appalling!

FGS

Was it short notice?

Is there a large contingent of single parents (so it's hard to get a babysitter at short notice/or with no money - not implying they are not interested because they are single parents!!)

Any other reason you know of??

Fecking appalling....

Assuming the meeting was held at a time when parents should be home from work & more able to attend (I can never go to meetings at my DC's school because they never start later than 5.30 & I'm still at work then) then YANBU. At all.

It's a real shame though. Especially for the 17 of you who did turn up.

the area certainly isn't the most afluent and yes im sure that childcare may have been an issue for some, but for only 17 parents to come???

its a disgrace. whats made me even more angry is that a parent who had her face plastered all over the local rag slagging teh school off couldn't even be bothered turning up either!

It was Bewbush TIY.

why is it failing so badly??
am reading ofsted now. it's such a shame

I feel sorry for you, FM.

The reason the school's failing is because it's populated by the children of parents who don't give a shite about education.

You, and the other sixteen parents, deserve to have something a whole lot better than you've currently got.

Just remember this, kid. The best education a child can ever get comes from their parents.

So start getting those books out, and enthuse them from home. I hope you get this sorry mess sorted out.

It's bloody awful.

from what i can make out its had appalling leadership and that has filtered down.
the standard of teaching has been poor and they have never bothered adequatly assessing teh children so they never knew just how bad it really was.

but for me i think the biggest problem for the school is the apathy of the parents.
for most the school is the local school. their children ahve to go to school and this is the closest to them. they just don't seem to value edcucation.

and tonights turn out proved that to me.

new head due in April though right? let's hope things change for the better.
I lived in Bewbush for a while, and get quite cross with people who judge the residents based on the area's reputation (ditto broadfield)
But I guess there are people there who really do make it live up to its reputation. It's so sad for the children though isn't it? why can't these people see that it matters??

but also, I feel that ofsted should inspect more frequently.
ds1 is starting school this september (hence my interest in case it was his school lol), and some of the ofsted reports for primaries near us were done YEARS ago and as such really had no relevance for me.

schools ought to be being examined more regularly to ensure that the children are being given a decent education. Imagine how many children the school has failed over the years. their last ofsted inspection was 2005

I know this doesn't help the school or the other kids - but does your ds have to stay there? It sounds very disappointing - but is he positive about it?

This isn't the school where the head put a letter on the website to invite parents to the meeting? If so it isn't surprising at all (if it isn't then just ignore me!).

no the letters were sent out adressed to the parents, one handed to the hildren and another through the post. it was also in the local paper yesterday which is delivered to every door in the community.

they really have little excuse.
the new head sounds fantastic and i have researched her Ofsted reports fro previous school, she has been marked as outstanding in all area's so i live in hope.

Thankfully Ds will (fingers crossed) be moving to a SN school soon enough but DD starts i September. lets just hope that the new head lives up to her reputation.

Admittedly some parents would not have been able to make it through work, childcare etc. but 17 out of 400?!! That's just ridiculous

There was a similar situation at a local school last year here. They ended up rearranging the meeting and having it in a PUB just to get more parents there....disgraceful!!!

I hope the new head manages to sort things out for your child's school. It's a shame some schools end up this way but a new head teacher can make all the difference

I think its a bit simplistic to just blame the parents. As an organisation, and school is answerable to to its key stakeholders, children, parents, LEA, staff. Often a failing school has alienated parents, children and staff, who feel demoralised and disempowered, and feel that there is no point engaging with management because they will be ignored.

And schools can be very cliquey. Very engaged parents can inadvertently make others feel inadequate by showing their contempt for parents who don't engage. It can become a vicious circle.

We have a group like that in our school that we call the Prefect Parents because they are so convinced they have all the answers and the rest of us are lazy sods who don't care about the children.

having said all that,there are of course always going to be a proportion of parents who dont engage. There is evidence to suggest that this can be a class, cultural issue, where some sectors of society have a different concept of what it is to be a consumer of education, as parent and child. Often they appear passive and disengaged becuase culturally they do not have to mindset to question authority, or belief they are allowed to. They have been conditioned to be passive recipients of education, not active partners.

This is exactly the same as the local primary from which I removed my two DS's. 18 months after I pulled them out, the school was in special measures.

We were two of the dozen parents who turned up at a similar meeting (in other words, approximately six families represented in a school of approx 420 children) - a previous inspection which placed the school in 'serious weaknesses'. Whilst we were waiting in line to be invited into the Hall for the meeting, a teacher passed, and said 'oh, you are the trouble-makers, are you?', to which my response was 'no, I think actually we are the interested minority!' Typically, all meetings of any type at that school attracted no more than 30ish parents, perhaps that teachers attitude was an indication of why, and part of the reason why the special measures was necessary?

I am a single parent and work full time with a long commute and if my child was at this school I would have made arrangements to attend. What can be more important than your dc's education?

Having said that my ds's old nursery had termly parent info evenings (where a curriculum subject was discussed and tips given for helping children etc) and out of 36 children only about 4 parents turned up. I ended up taking along my NCT friends to bolster numbers.

Ds's teacher said she struggled to get parents to attend parent/teacher evenings even though she would schedule them throughout the day to fit parents' schedules. That was in a very affluent area and I reckoned that the yummy mummies weren't interested in missing their gym sessions to find out about how their children were doing!