Listening and Learning

“Listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom in the future.”

– Proverbs 19:20

I appreciate feedback. It goes with the job. It is one of the reasons we survey parents, staff and students regularly. If you are anything like me, your response to feedback might be to agree with the positive and seek to explain away the negative feedback. I have been working on this reflex for many years in the hope of being able to hear and reflect on all feedback offered, positive and negative.

Together, we are wiser than we are apart, and together, our insights usually prove to be more valuable than the thoughts of one of us.

As part of our continual improvement process, parents, staff and students are given the opportunity to provide feedback about the School at the end of the year. The research is conducted by MMG Education, a specialist education consultancy that works with schools – in strategy and stakeholder satisfaction. Let me share with you some of the feedback that we received, for good and for improvement. I am grateful for both types of feedback. There are times, though, when feedback disagrees – where some are saying do more of X, and others, do less of X. At these times, we need to make a judgement for ourselves. We therefore look for patterns or consistent themes in the feedback, on what is working well or what needs improving. It helps us to avoid being beholden to the few and instead to hear the views of many.

I appreciate the range of feedback that we have received. For me, the strongest opportunities for us to make change are in the following areas.

• Academic and Communication about Academic Progress
• Technology
• Wellbeing
• Management and Leadership/Other

We will never get everything right, and neither will we be able to please everyone, but I am confident that we will continue to remain committed to providing the best educational offering we can, one that is being refined and improved, and one that demonstrates our desire to bring out the best in each and every student. We thank our parent community for participating and providing their feedback.

Tim Watson
Principal