Ofstead Report HSG

I have just read the Ofstead report for Hornsey School for Girls and feel very frustrated and wondering if there are  any members with children at the school who have views on this?

I am unhappy by the lack of parent involvement within the school. The parent/child questionairre was only replied to by 20% of the school population, 280 returned questionairres against 1,361 pupils.

The school has termly meetings in which to engage parents in the running of the curriculum and the last one I attended was run on a World Cafe style approach in which the questions were prepared before hand by the school. Parents were given the option to join one table. The questions themselves divided parents into cliques depending on their needs and interests which created clear class and cultural differences on tables. There was no option to move to other tables during the time and mix the groups to get a good selection of views and parents engaging with each other. And clearly no time to engage in discussing personal issues that were relevent to parents nor time made available to further discuss points of value within the whole group. The one positive was the invitation for parents to attend the first part of the staff/govenors information and training day, although it would have been a plus to encourage those parents interested to attend the whole event.

There isn't a parents association or group available for airing views, sharing information and fundraising. To my knowledge there was  a group for families of children with learning difficulties but clearly involving a small group of parents and I am not sure if this is still active.

I would very much like to connect with other parents and discuss these issues further.