Parent questionnaire feedback

At the annual AG&T parents' evening in October, questionnaires were completed and some of the same questions kept coming up, so I thought I'd do a sort of FAQ to allow me to respond to some of these. Unfortunately I can't answer all of the questions satisfactorily, but results have been published to all staff so that they are aware of your comments.



Can all subjects provide extension work for pupils who complete their work?

Extension strategies are a big focus for the AG&T department this year and there has been a lot of discussion about them in the Teaching and Learning group.

A meaningful extension task is included every week in the staff bulletin: this is almost always something generic that can be given to pupils without any preparation on the part of the teacher, to make it really easy to incorporate. Hopefully you have seen some of these on the blog, as I always try to include them here so I don't repeat them!

In addition to this, I am developing an extension activity selector tool for use within the classroom; staff will be able to customise these and pupils should then be able to come out and choose their own extension activity, even if the teacher is busy helping someone else.

If your child is consistently running out of work in the same subject and not being given additional tasks, please feel free to contact me or the class teacher.


Many children would like to take part in AG&T but aren’t identified; can you do anything about this?

Students are identified for the school AG&T list in two ways: either through CAT scores or teacher recommendations. National guidelines state that AG&T should represent the top 10% of the school population, so unfortunately there has to be a cut off point somewhere, and as many of the activities I run are cross-curricular they need to be offered to the core group first.

However, all departments keep their own list of pupils who are gifted in their subject, which means that sometimes subject-specific activities are offered to a wider cohort. As a very rough guide, if a pupil is predicted a high level 6 or above at the end of KS3, or an A or A* at GCSE, they have a high chance of being recommended in that subject. This is not a hard and fast rule, however, and it varies from department to department.


My child does much better in subjects that are setted. Why don't all subjects stream?

This may be due to the subject ethos, or timetabling problems. Some departments don't believe that streaming benefits the majority of pupils and prefer to keep sets mixed ability. And, due to increasing pressures on the timetable, often now classes in the same subject are not timetabled against each other, so the flexibility for setting is not there - particularly at key stage four.


The level of challenge needs to be higher, particularly in homework.

With the introduction of PLTS, appropriate challenge and independent learning are high on the agenda in all schools at the moment, and there is some indication that this has already had an impact on our planning.

For example, in History, we are currently developing an extended project homework for all our units at key stage 3, to encourage pupils to study topics independently and improve their research skills. We hope that this will provide extra challenge where it is needed. Meanwhile, Science provide differentiated homeworks and often set research projects for high ability sets.

All AG&T pupils are given a questionnaire once during the year about their lessons, which includes a question about what an appropriately challenging lesson involves. Detailed answers to this help us to build a picture of what our brightest students are looking for.


My child enjoys extra-curricular activities after school, but sometimes they clash/aren't available to the right year group. Can the timetabling of these be looked at?

The program of after school activities is put together by Meryl Hardiman as part of the extended schools initiative. I have passed on these comments to her. However, a lot of teaching staff are limited as to which day they can offer activities due to period 6 A-level lessons, which makes it difficult to spread the clubs out.

GCSE Geology will continue to be offered after school to pupils in year 9, and they will be able to apply for a place at the end of year 8. There is a possibility that more after school GCSEs will be available in the future, to a range of year groups and possibly parents too.


Sometimes communication is poor, and my child has missed out on events. How can this be improved?

All students on the AG&T register are sent letters when a cross-curricular event is available for them; but I do realise that letters sometimes get lost in the post. There is a new school system for solving this problem, whereby electronic copies of letters are placed on the school website for you to download. I will make it clear on here when letters have been sent out, so that if they don't arrive within a few days you can download a copy from the website, or ring or email me to ask for one.


Can we provide lockers?

Unfortunately it's not within my remit to lobby for things like this - all I can do is pass comments on; however, if it is an issue that your child feels strongly about they should try to raise it through school council.

Event: Murder Mystery weekend, March

Letters have gone out this week for the annual Key Stage Three Murder Mystery weekend at Braeside, which will be taking place this year from Friday 12th March to Sunday 14th March.

Duing the weekend, students will need to use a variety of skills to solve a dastardley murder, including code breaking, orienteering, forensic science and translation. The weekend is always hugely enjoyed by both students and staff alike and the feedback is overhwelmingly positive.


If you haven't had a letter but would like one, please email me at agt@matravers.wilts.sch.uk


Here's a group picture of last year's Detectives, giving a big YAARRRR (our theme was pirates):

We will be revealing the theme for the weekend (and possibly giving some clues) exclusively here the week before the event, so stay tuned!

Event: Malaysia Conference meeting

There will be a meeting for year 11 students and their parents at Clarendon on February 8th, at 7pm, to launch the 2010 International Leadership Conference to Malaysia, which is due to occur in November.

This conference has proved enormously successful since its inception five years ago, and places are always oversubscribed. However, we are pleased to report that Matravers has always been represented and we're hopeful that this will be the case for 2010 also. The conference takes place at a private sixth form college about 70km north of Kuala Lumpur and involves researching and making presentations on world issues, as well as day trips to allow pupils to experience the rich culture and surroundings in Malaysia.

I will be passing letters out to eligible pupils in year 11 this week; however, if you would like more information please contact me - agt@matravers.wilts.sch.uk

If you would like to read about what we got up to in Malaysia in 2009, we kept a blog during the trip which can be accessed here - http://westwiltsagt.blogspot.com

Extension Activity of the Week: 17

This week: Twitter (again)

In September I suggested an activity in which pupils condense the lesson information into 140 characters or less, to encourage them to think about the key points of the lesson and reflect on what they have learned.

I have now set up a Matravers Twitter account so that there is a place that these can be shared. This will improve communication with parents, who can subscribe to our updates.

The account can be accessed at http://twitter.com (you will need to use the unfiltered internet for this). The username is MatraversSchool (all one word). See me for the password.

I look forward to reading your class tweets!

Extension Activity of the Week: 16

This week: Podcasts

This is something that can feed directly into the content you put on the school website, if you wish. Ask pupils to write a short speech, which they can then record as a podcast. The speech could be a summary of the lesson content; an explanation of how the lesson fits in with what they have already learned; a list of things they would like to learn as a result of the lesson; or anything you can think of that would help them to consolidate their learning.

The easiest way to record these podcasts is onto a mobile phone, many of which have voice recorders, or an ipod. Since using mobile phones as a teaching and learning tool is largely uncharted territory here, however, you might consider requesting voice recording equipment from reprographics, or a video camera, and collecting the podcasts that way.