Dear Families,
As a new arrival at SRI KDU Subang Jaya, I have been hugely impressed with the level of parent engagement in the school. This engagement is indicative of both our community’s passion for learning and its willingness to invest time in our students’ futures. The shared responsibility of achieving our vision of ‘Safe, Happy and Successful’ students relies on a united approach to holistic and academic education and both parent engagement and involvement are key factors in ensuring this vision is realised.
The terms parent engagement and parent involvement effectively describe how parents and families support their children's academic achievement and wellbeing. Whilst parent involvement usually focuses on school-based activities such as attending events or volunteering in class, parent engagement encompasses children's learning at home, at school and in the community, recognising the cultural and social diversity of families and communities. There is strong evidence from multiple sources that links parent engagement with improvements in academic achievement, and health and well-being for children of all ages. Emerson, Fear, Fox and Saunders sum this up succinctly in their book ‘Parental Engagement and Schooling’:
Parental engagement in learning underpins children and young people’s cognitive and
social and emotional development, shapes family practices and behaviours, and can impact
the nature of the school community and the experience of schooling. Parental engagement
is therefore a highly significant leverage point for enhancing the academic attainment and
wellbeing of children and young people (Emerson, Fear, Fox & Sanders, 2012, p. 34).
Furthermore, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S.A recognises
that this engagement is a ‘promising protective factor’ against future unhealthy habits and
behaviours.
Therefore, at SRI KDU, we recognise the long-term value of a purposeful Parent
Engagement Programme (PEP) to meet the school’s vision for our young people. This
begins with positive communication between all our stakeholders. As a school, we want to
encourage parents to have a voice, to express opinions, help review our systems and
processes and have a solution-based approach. With any potential issues, it is always useful
to have subsequent initiatives and solutions in mind that will help our school community
support the vision for all to be Safe, Happy and Successful. One of the key objectives in
ensuring parents can support the school community, is to have visible school leadership,
who are present, approachable, and keen to listen. This is part of maintaining and
developing a positive SRI KDU school climate that we believe is essential in meeting our
school vision. In their journal article The Enduring Influence of School Size and School
Climate on Parents’ Engagement, Goldkind and Farmer (2013) reiterate that higher levels of
parent engagement are evident in schools when the climate is safe, trustworthy, respectful,
inclusive and collaborative. As a school, this kind of climate is our expectation, aligning with
both our vision and our 5 promises. We sincerely hope we are fulfilling these objectives and
that our school environment encourages parents to share thoughts and suggestions that
can be gratefully received and considered by the leadership team.
One way of reviewing our success as a school community is to collect useful parent
feedback via the Parent Satisfaction Survey, which will be available from the 20th November
to the 1st December. This is a great and simple way to support the school with its growth
and development. We hope that all parents will engage in completing the survey as we
endeavour to constantly improve.
Today, we also had our first joint Parents Teacher Association (PTA) and Senior Leadership
(SLT) Meeting where we outlined how we can ensure parents are connected to the school in
as many positive ways as possible. One key agenda item was to ‘help build collaborative
partnership amongst all stakeholders.’ The PTA and SLT discussed a number of proposed
new initiatives which will enhance our PEP further, and the PTA intend to share these with
the wider community in the near future. Of course, the existing PTA cultural and community
events are obviously continuing, with the next one of these events being the popular Diwali
bazaar.
Other existing PEP initiatives initiated recently have also proved popular. Our Year 7
‘settling in’ meetings, and Primary Target Setting Meetings have been face to face and the
85% attendance has been evidence that parents enjoy the personal engagement of being
physically present in school. CCA’s such as ‘yoga for parents’ are also well attended, and
several parents have supported with reading in the younger year groups. Primary
assemblies are also proving to be well supported by our parent community. These Primary
student-led assemblies celebrate learning and recognise achievement and are entirely run
by the students themselves. The assemblies are well attended, demonstrating again how
invested our parent community are in their children’s learning and in the school.
Attendance at your child’s performance or the recognition of their achievement at school,
are valuable shared family experiences as they highlight to your child that you value what
they are learning day to day. Also, on the subject of the shared celebration of learning, the
wider implementation of the SeeSaw app, presented in a workshop by Mr.Roberts, our Year
4 Leader today at the Parent Coffee Morning, allows parents to have a window into the
classroom and engage with their child’s learning regularly.
We hope to improve and enhance all our PEP initiatives in the coming months and further
share our collective responsibility for ‘Safe, Happy and Successful’ students. We look
forward to seeing you there, wherever ‘there’ might be. Thank you as always for your
support
Warm regards,
On behalf of the leadership team,
David Wilcock
Head of Primary
We visited numerous international schools in Klang-Valley and Sri KDU Subang Jaya was not even on our list. Reason being it is way out of our travelling radius. However, we are glad we made the visit to the school before our final call, and it was the best decision ever! It was a huge transition period for us during the first 2 weeks into school, but the school’s team (Teachers, Administrative and Parent’s Teacher Association) made us feel right at home. We were given clear guidance and was kept well informed on the happenings in the school. My daughter blended into the community quite well with the care provided by the Homeroom teacher. All the teachers here are the kindest, as she told me. She looks forward to going to school and has become more disciplined in terms on knowing what tasks she needs to complete daily. She has gained so much confidence during this short period of time and was given the encouragement to explore and develop her abilities here. She was just selected as the new Primary House Captain for Year 6 AY2022/2023.
Every parent want to find the ‘perfect’ school for their child and are afraid of making the wrong decision. For us, as long she is safe and happy, we believe, she will eventually find the way to her own success.