Parent Engagement & Communications

The Ursuline High School is committed to ensuring parents are engaged in supporting their daughter’s academic progress and personal development, and to effectively communicating with our parents/carers about school life and news.

OVERVIEW

An overview is shared below, or can be viewed in our Parent Engagement & Communications Overview pdf.

ENGAGEMENT

We are committed to ensuring parents are engaged in supporting their daughter’s academic progress and personal development. Parents are given many opportunities over the year to meet with their daughters’ teachers and tutors to discuss their progress, and in addition receive regular progress reports.

We also provide opportunities for parents to learn more about the world their daughter’s live in, through resource sharing, information evenings, and specialist sessions on issues such as online safety and mental health.

COMMUNICATIONS

We are committed to effectively communicating with our parents/carers about school life and news and we use a range of mediums including email, website, parent meetings, our suite of newsletters and social media.

We communicate with all primary guardians. Primary Guardians have daily parental responsibilities for the child, they receive updates on the academic affairs of the child and communications from the school. There can be more than 1 primary guardian per student.

We communicate with the email addresses on record. Do let us know if you details do change.

We use several portals to support various elements of our students’ learning journeys, including Arbor, Evolve, ParentPay and SchoolCloud. More information about these can be found on our Parent Portal Page.

Please ensure you are reading all emails from the school to ensure you are not missing important communications relating to your daughter’s education and wellbeing. Where possible, we recommend notifications are enabled and that emails are read daily to ensure nothing important and urgent is missed. Please ensure you add Ursuline High School to your safe senders list, and that you regularly check your junk/spam folders.

Communications Mediums

See below a list of our most used communications mediums.

Email
All communication from the school whether school-wide, year group, form, class or 1:1 will be sent by email. Where possible, we recommend notifications are enabled and that emails are read daily to ensure nothing important and urgent is missed. Do ensure we are added to your safe senders list, but it is worth checking spam/junk folders for emails from the school.

Phone
Teachers and support staff will on occasion contact parents and carers directly via phone about student matters.

Information Meetings
Many in-person and online information meetings take place throughout the year. We ask all parents and carers to attend. Where parents are unable to, we ask that they watch the recording and/or read the slides. These are shared with parent directly and/or available on our website afterwards.

Academic Reviews
Parents and carers of students in years 7 to 10 are invited to attend several meetings during the academic year, to discuss academic progress and attainment. Two academic reviews (ARD) take place each year, in the Autumn term before October half term and then again in the Spring Term prior to the Easter Holiday. These reviews take place online with either the Form Tutor or Head of Year. In addition, parents are invited to attend an in-person meeting with their daughter’s subject teachers at one point in the academic year. Further details including dates will be shared in advance.

Year 11 and our 6th form follow a different schedule and parents/carers will be communicated about this separately.

Progress and Reporting
Students in years 7-10 are regularly assessed throughout the academic year, and attainment and targets for improvement are tracked for each subject (Results logs can be found in exercise books).

Three formal reports are produced across the academic year - Autumn Term A, Spring Term A and in the Summer Term after the end of year exams. Reports are uploaded to Arbor and parents/carers will be notified when these are available. At all times parents/carers can keep up to date with progress by reviewing their results logs.

Year 11 and 6th form follow a different schedule; parents/carers will be communicated about this separately.

Headteacher Roundup
A weekly snapshot of school news is shared each Friday by the Headteacher. Roundups can be viewed on our website.

Newsletters
We produce a suite of newsletters. Inform, our school wide newsletter and our Year Group newsletters are produced at the end of each half term whilst our Catholic Life and 6th form newsletters are shared termly. All newsletters are shared with parents directly, and are accessible via our website.

Prospectus and other school collateral
We produce a suite of collateral including our main school and 6th form Prospectus and Transitions Booklets. These are shared where relevant and are accessible on our website.

Social media
We have an active presence on Instagram (@Uhswimbledon / @uhssixthform) and Twitter (@UHSPeDept @sixthformuhswc) where we share lots of behind-the-scenes content. Please give us a follow to access our visual window into the enriching experiences, accomplishments, and opportunities that our students are embracing. If you are not a social media user, please don’t worry - important school/child information is always shared with parents and carers directly.

Website
Our website is our window to the Main School and 6th Form. Here you can read about the School, Admissions, Curriculum, School life, Safeguarding, Health & Wellbeing and so much more.

CONTACT US

All staff contact details can be found on the Ursuline directory on our website. 

Please use email to contact us.

Form Tutors – general enquires about the Ursuline, friendship issues, organisation, homework, clubs/enrichment, uniform, equipment, travelling to/from school, punctuality, trips/calendar events.

Head of Year, Assistant Head of Year or Pastoral Support Assistant – Mental health, bullying, safeguarding, online safety, absence request forms, request for your daughter to receive school counselling/educational well-being practitioner, financial support/free school meals.

Ms Young – Attendance and punctuality/lateness. All absences and lates must be reported via email or phone no later than 9.30am on the day in question. If students are late more than 5 times to school, you will be notified and they will receive a one-hour detention which is held on Friday afternoons after school.

Subject Teachers must be contacted for any subject specific enquiries.

Our IT Helpdesk is available to help with any parent portals, laptops, and other IT queries.