Parent Information
At St. Joseph's Catholic we use Arbor as our secure platform for managing school information and communication with parents. It plays a key role in helping us keep you informed, engaged, and up to date with your child's school life.
It is used to safely store your contact details, ensuring we can reach you quickly and securely when needed. Keeping your information accurate and up to date helps us maintain effective communication and respond swiftly in any situation. All key school communications – including letters, reminders, announcements, and urgent updates – are sent through Arbor. You will also receive your child's academic reports through the platform, so you can easily stay informed about their progress throughout the year.
Arbor provides real-time attendance and behavior tracking, allowing you to see both credits and debits as they are recorded. This gives you a clear and timely view of your child's behavior and helps to strengthen the home-school partnership.
To ensure you don't miss any important communications or updates, we strongly encourage all parents and carers to download the Arbor app. The app offers quick access to all messages, updates, reports, and booking tools – all in one place, from your phone or tablet.
Parental Expectations
We believe a collaborative partnership between home and school is key to the success of your child's education. Working together we are more likely to be able to support your child to let their light shine.
Our Home School Agreement outlines what you can expect from us, what we expect from our pupils.
There are many ways in which you can support with this:
- Avoid taking holidays in school time. (Holidays taken in term time will be deemed as unauthorized absence and may incur a fine).
- Ensure good attendance, punctuality and correct uniform is worn at all times.
- Inform the school on every day of absence.
- Ensure the correct equipment and kit is brought to school each day including a bag.
- Encourage the completion of homework and provide other opportunities for learning at home.
- Keep the school informed about any problems which might affect learning.
- Attend parent's meetings.
- Support the school's rewards and behavior policy.
- Accept responsibility for the behavior of my child including traveling to and from school.
- Encourage a positive attitude towards school.
Parents' Evening Bookings via the Arbor App
Our parents' evening bookings will now be made through the Arbor app, giving you the flexibility to choose your preferred times quickly and easily without the need for paper forms or back-and-forth emails.
In the week leading up to each parents' evening, we will send out a letter with further details about how to book your appointment via Arbor. This will include step-by-step instructions to ensure that the process is simple and straightforward for everyone.
Each year group will have one in-person parent' evening across the academic year to praise the three academic reports. These take place in our refectory area with parents arriving through the student entrance.
Parents evenings provide a valuable opportunity to meet with teachers and discuss your child's academic progress, behavior, and overall development. These meetings are a crucial part of building strong partnerships between home and school, ensuring that every student receives the support they need to make progress and reach their full potential. By working together, parents, guardians, and teachers can share insights, set goals, and create strategies to support the student's academic and personal development.
Students are also welcome to attend with their parents or guardians, allowing them to be part of the discussion and take ownership of their learning.
Safeguarding
To keep children safe and provide appropriate care for them, the school requires parents to provide accurate and up to date information regarding:
- Full names and contact details of all adults with whom the child normally lives.
- Full names and contact details of all persons with parental responsibility (if different from above).
- Emergency contact details (if different from above); wherever possible the school will hold more than one emergency contact for each child.
- Full details of any other adult authorized by the parent to collect the child from school (if different from the above).
For further Safeguarding information, visit our Safeguarding Page.