“We put a video on Twitter to tell our families that we were having a drop-in session. We thought the video was good so parents and carers could see that we the pupils made it and try and encourage them to come along. We then had a session with the parents where we shared a presentation that we made about the cost of the school day. We asked the opinions of parents and carers and got their ideas about what we could do to reduce the cost of the school day."
"Then we did an online survey to get the opinions of parents that weren’t able to make the drop-in session. This asked them about what they felt was included in the cost of the school day and what we could spend our participatory budget on to reduce the cost. We did the survey during Parents’ Night and we asked parents to complete it as they were coming in to school or leaving. Then we had another focus group session with staff from our community wing, volunteers from the Church and parents from the nursery.”
“We managed to get opinions from quite a lot of families. It showed us some things that they found expensive like school photographs and milk money. We think it might be a good idea to take school photographs and put them on Seesaw or print them in school so that it is cheaper for families. Parents/carers told us that our uniform pop-up shop was working well so we did a Halloween pop-up shop and plan to do a Christmas jumpers/winter jackets/boots pop-up shop too. We also found out that trips can be expensive so we are going to try and get a free trip for every class this school year.”
“It is a good idea to have more than one option to get views from the school community. We had a drop-in session and then an online survey so that parents/carers who were working could still have their opinions heard. We also asked our own classes their opinions and recorded this in our class floor books so that all pupils were asked. It is a good idea for the pupils to try and get parents to do the survey as we think it is harder for them to say no to pupils!”
“It let us have our right to our opinion and made sure that pupil voice was heard. It means that children’s views were also respected. We could spread the word about the work we are doing with our families at home and in our class too so that all of the community would know. It is important because it means we can help lead changes in our school.”
