At St Martins we are committed to continual feedback and dialogue between home and school. You should expect that if we have any concerns or questions that we will get in touch quickly so these are resolved and if necessary actions are put in place. We also strive to get in touch to share good news and praise students for their hard work and dedication. Similarly, it is important that if at any point you have queries or concerns please get in touch with the school (see emails of staff below) please do not wait until the formal meeting for your child/ward’s year group, we also want to hear from you.

Each half term year 10 & 11 parents are invited to an online forum where key information is shared and there is an opportunity to ask questions you may have, if you are able to attend these they are recorded and the link is shared on the website.

Forums also take place for the other year groups ahead of important events in their school year e.g. year 9 options. A timetable of the forums is found below.

All years have a yearly formal learning review meeting where there is an opportunity to meet with the class teacher(s) to discuss your child/ward’s progress and ask questions you have.

Below is a guide you may wish to use to plan your meetings to get the most out of it. We would recommend having something to make notes as sometimes the meetings can contain a lot of information.

Your child’s teachers will discuss the following areas during the parents evening, which we believe are the five key areas of their learning and progress at our school:

• Progress – how your child is currently meeting their potential in each subject area.
• Attitude to learning – how they are currently behaving and trying in each lesson.
• Classwork and homework – what their day-to-day classwork is like; effort and progress made in homework tasks.
• Overall presentation and literacy – how well they are presenting their work, to the best of their abilities, and how well they are demonstrating the basic literacy skills of correct spellings, capitals, punctuation marks and grammar.
• Next steps – target to improve progress within each subject area.

Levels and grades are not discussed as we want to ensure that we truly focus on pupil progress (success and next steps), rather than simply their attainment. We will discuss levels at KS4, as pupils build towards their GCSE exams.

Learning Review meetings are a two way process and we encourage questions from parents. You may wish to consider noting a couple of questions and/or observations on key subjects in advance so you’re your appointments are focused and make the most of the limited time.

Some useful questions might be:

• Is my child’s progress in line with the teacher’s expectations?
• Has he or she done anything particularly well, or badly?
• What can he or she do to improve?
• How can I help as a parent?
• How much time should my child’s homework for this subject take?
• What do his or her grades tell us about possible performance in important future exams?
• Does he or she contribute in lessons?

St Martins School uses an online booking system via Arbor.

This allows parents to book the appointments they chose within the times that best suit them. The system allows for short gaps in between appointments to ensure they all run on time. The system has an inbuilt booking mode which finds the most efficient booking schedule for the parent to see the teachers they chose in the shortest amount of time possible.

On line appointments can be accessed on any device with a microphone and speaker/headphones e.g. smartphone, iPad, tablet, laptop and PC.

ACTIVATE AND ADVANCE  - 20th September/18th October Meet and Greet  - learning review meetings on 30 and 31 January 2024

YEAR 11 - 9 November 2023 Review day - parent meetings 1 February 2024

YEAR 10 - 14 March 2024

YEAR 9 - 30 November 2023 - OPTIONS 29 February 2024 ONLINE

YEAR 8 - 9 MAY 2024

YEAR 7 - Review days - 17/18 October 2023 and learning review meetings on 13 June2024