NewsletterSummer Term - 12th July 2024

All children should have brought home a letter, on Friday 5th July, with information about which class they will be in next year, and who their teacher will be. 

Whilst in their new classes, the children voted for their new class names. We will be keeping the theme of 'trees' but each of the Key Stage 1 classes will have a new name. In September, the classes will be:

Mrs Jacques - Maple class (Reception)

Mrs Buckle - Willow class (Reception)

Mrs Pilborough / Mrs Farnsworth - Pine class (Year 1/2)

Mrs Attwood - Hazel class (Year 1/2)

Mrs Holt - Elm class (Year 1/2)

Mrs Dodd will be be with us for the first few weeks of school, before she goes on maternity. We are currently working on plans for our wonderful team of teaching assistants, and will update you on this, as well as plans for strengthening the school leadership team in light of my promotion from Deputy Head to Head Teacher, and the retirement of Mrs Marshall, our Special Education Needs and Disabilities Co-ordinator (SENDCO).

On Wednesday 17th July, we are inviting parents in for a ‘Transition Information Meeting’. We will hold two meetings to try and accommodate as many parents as possible; 2:30pm and again at 5pm. During these meetings, we will provide information regarding what our weekly timetable will look like and the lessons and topics we will be teaching.

We look forward to seeing you at one of the meetings.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Mrs K Ryan

On Wednesday 24th July, all our families are invited to have a picnic on the school grounds, from 3.30pm - 5pm. Please bring along a picnic blanket and your own food and drink and enjoy spending some time together in our lovely school grounds. Each class will have a stall and so please bring plenty of change.

The Year 1 choir will be doing a special performance, on the stage in the hall, at 3.30pm

The weather has been a little sporadic so far and so we will keep you informed of any changes to our plans nearer the time. Fingers crossed for sunshine!

Please see the poster, designed by our brilliant School Council Team, regarding a toy sale at our family picnic.

Thank you to everyone who completed the parent survey. Here is an overview of the results of some of the key questions in the 2023/24 survey, compared to the RMI parent survey from 2022/23, and national data from 2022/23. We are thrilled to see an improvement in most areas and really appreciate the lovely comments that so many of you made regarding the school and the staff.

As always, some areas for development have been raised, which we will be working on as a team, in liaison with parents (and children where appropriate). In particular, we will be looking at how we can ensure our communication methods are consistent, as well as reviewing our homework policy.

As you may have heard in the news, the government are bringing in new regulations to improve school attendance. In February 2024, the Department for Education (DfE) published ‘Working together to improve school attendance’, which provides statutory guidance for schools. It applies from 19th August 2024.

Under the new national framework, all schools will be required to consider a fine when a child has missed school for unauthorised reasons. As term-time holidays are counted as unauthorised absence, except for in exceptional circumstances, they will be included in this. Although many other schools already have this in place, we have not yet referred any families to the local authority for fining purposes. From August 2024, we will need to ensure our procedures are in line with the new statutory guidance.

We are currently in the process of updating our Trust / school attendance procedures, including providing more guidance on what the threshold for fining will be and what counts as exceptional circumstances, in line with the government guidelines. We will send more information regarding this when the updated procedures have been confirmed.

You can find out more information in the DfE’s guide for parents on school attendance.

You can also download a full copy of the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ document here.

In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you

Mrs Ryan

• Please click here to download information about holidays clubs for children in receipt of benefits-related free school meals.

• Please click here to download a newsletter from Aspens, our school meals provider.