Parents in Partnership Programme (PiPPS)

At Mount Pleasant we value our links with our families. We understand that the more we can engage parents in their child's learning, the greater the outcome for the individual child.

The Parent In Partnership Programme (PiPPS) continues to develop responding all the time to the needs of our parents.

Coffee Club

The first meeting of the Coffee Club was in October 2006. Our aims were to support parents whose children had been identified as having some form of Individual Educational Plan and therefore required specific support. We wanted to help parents to have a greater awareness of how we address their children's needs and therefore how parents can also help.

The meetings have proved to be extremely valuable and have helped not only the parents but also us as a school develop our support programme further.

The programme for the meetings has always responded to the needs of the group and have included sessions with our counsellor and Learning Support Advisor as well as meetings with the support staff and sharing of ideas and resources.

The Coffee Club meet on a Wednesday morning once per month. If you would like to come along then please join us - you would be more than welcome. The dates for the meetings can be found on the dates for diary section and on the Heads’ newsletter, or are available from the school office.

Maths Workshops

These workshops take place once per year.

Parents are invited to their child's classroom to find out how calculations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are taught and recorded. Teachers demonstrate how each calculation is written and discussed with parents and how parents can support their child.

Reading Workshops

These workshops have been run again during the Spring Term. Each teacher prepared a workshop to share how we teach reading to the children in each year group. Each workshop highlighted ways parents could help their child in this key area as well demonstrating recent changes and developments in the teaching of reading.

Parents found the workshops to be very useful and requests were made for more support to help children with writing at home. Parents of early years children also asked if they could have more support with phonics. We are currently working on a way to support parents in this.

E-Safety Workshop

This workshop runs once per year. It aims to highlight the dangers that could be faced when young children are using the Internet, working unsupervised and in particular chat rooms.

The parents who attended the first workshop felt that the experience had been extremely valuable, going so far as to suggest that the workshop should be 'compulsory for all parents to attend'.

Parents in Partnership - Foundation Stage

Once per term we invite all parents to join us for one session to work alongside their child. Together, they take part in a variety of activities both indoors and outdoors. The sessions are very enjoyable and allow time for staff and parents to share observations and understanding about individual children's development.

Parents always respond very positively to the sessions and always request more shared visits.