| FOH-6 September 2011 |
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Friends of Harrow Meeting Minutes: Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Jackie welcomed all the parents. The role of Friends of Harrow (FOH) is to be a friend: to help the school and parents and to have some fun. There will be a new format for meetings. Rather than having monthly meetings, there will be a few General Meetings. In addition, there are smaller meetings for Lower School and Upper School where Friends of Harrow will help and support. 2. Mr. Wilf Stout – Head Master Mr. Stout indicated that a lot of personal information is available on the Harrow website. Regarding communication, he stressed that if parents have a problem that they not keep it to themselves. Rather, speak to a teacher first (not a TA, although a TA will be asked to help clarify if necessary), and a head of department next. He sees the role of FOH to liaise between parents, teachers and governors. Mr. Stout has a lot of experience in all these areas, as he has been in all these roles before. Senior Management Team consists of: Ms. Nichola Sparrow – Director of Studies, in charge of timetables and curriculum Mr. Ian Connors – Head of Lower School, which includes Early Years, Infant and Pre-Prep (Junior) Schools. His initial focus is on improving communication. Mr. Denry Machin – Head of Upper School, which includes Prep and Senior Schools. Mr. Jonathan Horsnell – Head of Prep School. The move to Upper School was made to utilize the specialist teachers in secondary school and gain for their experience. Prep School will keep its own identity but will take on new initiative. More details will be provided at next week’s meeting: Sep 15 at X. Mr. Mathew Rees – Business Director, in charge of support to management team and contracted services (Montri buses, catering). Ms. Liz Hammond – Head of Boarding, in charge of two boarding houses, 105 students, providing all services including making sure homework is done. Mr. Darren Wise- Director of ICT, in charge of whole school ICT management and teaching. The entire management team encouraged parents with questions to come and talk to them. 3. Mr. Darren Wise – IT development. Mr Wise outlined that a virtual learning platform is a system to facilitate learning anywhere anytime. The virtual learning platform consists of four aspects: Access, Devices, Data and Training. FROG is the access system to all IT resources for students, teachers and parents. It will be rolled out for students first and parents a week later. Laptops are used in A-level and I-pads are being introduced in Lower School. Further development of the resources accessible will be developed over time. And training is key to successful implementation of the system. Darren showed a short presentation illustrating how the virtual learning platform will work. A training session will be organized for parents at a later date. The name FROG is a brand name (like Apple); it is catchy and illustrative of the advance in IT services. 4. Dining Hall – School is working with Epicure, the catering service to address issues related to consistency, quality of food, service from staff and queues. Epicure has appointed and on-site manager for Harrow to oversee the service provided. Mr. Machin has monitored the queues and indicated that serving 800 Upper School students takes a maximum of 22 minutes from the first student being served to the last student. Popular dishes are made in greater quantity and have more access to facilitate service. Mr. Reese is working with Epicure to provide more variety and strike a proper balance: more variety means longer queues. Students in Early Years are provided with a choice each morning and that will be served for lunch. A similar system is under consideration for Infant School. 5. Questions:
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