Parents and Carers
Creating a successful school is about a three-way partnership between students, teachers and parents.
We are a new Academy, a growing Academy, and it is our intention to ensure that parents are involved in the journey we are undertaking to make the best school possible. Below you can find out information on how you can be involved in this partnership, our commitments to you and the ways we ask you to support us in educating your child. There then follows a section on practical details in engaging with the Academy.
Our Commitment To You
It is our commitment to:
- Communicate with you regularly about your child’s progress.
- Create opportunities for you to give feedback to the Academy and report back what we are doing based on this feedback.
- Create opportunities for you to come and see work that students have created.
- Do all we can to ensure your child is safe, happy and successful during their time at West Bromwich Collegiate Academy.
Supporting Your Child
We ask for the following support from you:
- Attendance at Parents’ Evenings to talk with teachers about your child’s progress.
- Support with ensuring homework is completed.
- Ensuring your child is equipped properly and in appropriate Academy uniform.
- Make sure that your child attends every day on time or let us know if they are absent as soon as possible.
- To keep contact and medical information up to date.
- To tell us when something is wrong and give us the opportunity to work together to solve any problems.
Getting Involved
There are other ways you can be involved in Academy life. These include:
- Becoming one of the parental representatives on the Standards and Performance Committee (Governors).
- Joining us at one of the termly Family Forums to provide feedback and help shape the direction of the school.
- Joining the PTFA to support the Academy with events in the future.
Frequently Asked Questions
One of the great advantages of the system we run at WBCA is that in Year 7, your child has a main teacher for 17 hours of their week. This means there is someone focussing on their welfare and making sure that they are progressing well.
In the first couple of weeks we will have a settling in evening. This will give you the opportunity to sit and talk with the teacher on how your child has found the start of term, give you an opportunity to share any concerns and get hold of detailed information.
You can also always make a request to speak to the teacher via main reception, please give us a call to arrange this. Students will have a planner which is a communication device between the teacher and parents for little notes back and forth.
There are various areas where we will ask permission from you. These include but are not limited to:
- Permission for biometric information (fingerprint for our cashless lunch system).
- Permission to use photographs internally and on social media.
- Permission for offsite trips.
- Permission for basic first aid and to administer any medication you provide.
These will come to you as individual forms.
If parents wish to exercise rights around RSE, please read our policies and ask to discuss this with the Principal.
Payments are made through the ParentPay portal. The Academy aims to be as cashless as possible and students will use a finger print system to purchase from the canteen. ParentPay allows you to pay for trips, meals and any other additional costs online in advance safely, easily and securely. If there are any issues with using the system, please come in and discuss this with one of our staff.
The Academy has a clear policy that mobile phones are not allowed to be visible on site and if they are, they will be confiscated with parents asked to come and collect them.
Mobile phones can provide unfiltered internet and social media access; this alongside their photo and recording capabilities means that they are a safeguarding issue.
If you need to contact your child we will always enable this through Reception, likewise if they need to contact you we will facilitate this. The Academy takes no liability for any loss or damage to any mobile phone as it is our policy they should not be brought on site.
