It is very important that communication between home and school is effective, efficient and clear.  During the school year we need to contact parents for a wide range of reasons such as:

• Illness or injury of your child
• Unexpected closure of the School
• Changes to scheduled events
• Routine curriculum information
• Routine weekly newsletters
• Information regarding PTA events
• Information regarding school trips etc.

Abor Parent Portal
Arbor is used by the school to manage the children’s information, including attendance, medical information, demographics, assessment, consents & permissions, and safeguarding. Information is reported from here to the Department of Education as required (see Privacy Notice for further detail) and is used in the day-to-day management of the pupils by the school.

As part of Arbor, there is a Parent Portal which parents use to ensure we have the correct information about their child(ren) and correct details for parents and emergency contacts. You can also see your child’s attendance percentages, and their end of year reports.

In addition to this, we use Arbor to communicate with our families.

We use text messaging to contact groups of parents (whole school/year group/class) on a range of issues such as emergency school closures, reminders of events etc.

We use In-App Messaging to contact parents with links to our weekly newsletters, reminders of events and other short messages – to receive these parents need to download the Arbor Parent Portal App. These have the advantage of remaining in the app, which means that you don’t need to trawl through your emails or log into the desktop version of the Parent Portal for important information on events and notices from school.

We use email to send our regular weekly newsletters and other letters to the whole school or large groups of parents. This is environmentally friendly and cost effective for the school.

We also use the payment system within Arbor for online payments by PayPal/credit/debit card, for example to make donations or pay for school trips. The school office does, of course, still accept cash. The school itself does not have access to parents’ bank account records, this is held securely by Arbor. This system cannot be used to purchase uniform.

When children start with us, parents are sent login details so they can access all their child's information. We recommend downloading the free app for the Arbor Parent Portal on Android or iOS for easy access to:

• Updating your child’s record (including medical and contact information)
• Live attendance information about your child
• In-App Messages with notifications
• Payment module for paying for trips and other items
• Providing consent for giving medication, communicating with parents and online safety (these are requested on Arbor once your child is on roll)
• Guardian Consultations module to sign up for parent/teacher meetings

We strongly recommend that at least one parent downloads the Parent Portal App to their mobile device, and keep notifications turned on, to ensure that you don’t miss important In-App messages

London Borough of Barnet

General information about the School can also be accessed via our website or the London Borough of Barnet website which is especially useful during periods of heavy snow.

Emergency contact details

It is very important that we have accurate contact information relating to your child.  Please ensure that you keep all contact details up to date on Arbor.  A regular pick up form is sent out annually to let us know who are authorised to collect your child from school

Newsletters

We send out weekly newsletters to all parents with up to date information on what has been happening that week, forthcoming events and other important information. Please read as this is a very useful way of keeping in touch!!

You should also receive half termly curriculum newsletters for Year 1 and Year 2 which sets out the topic and focussed learning activities for the next half term.  These will both normally be sent by email and In-App message through Arbor

Parent /teacher meetings

Of course you will want to be kept informed of how your child is doing at school so we schedule two parent meetings each year – one in November and one in February/March.  We are also very happy to arrange to meet with you at other times, should this be necessary. Please talk to your child’s teacher if you would like to arrange a meeting outside of these times.

You will receive a report in July of each year summarising your child’s progress and attainment over the year.