Week 2

Subject: Weekly Update – Thank You & Looking Ahead

Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you to all who were able to attend our Meet the Teacher sessions this week. It was a pleasure to see so many of you in school. These opportunities are a great way to begin building strong home–school partnerships, which are so important for your child’s success.

Looking ahead, we are hoping that clubs will begin the week of the 22nd. We encourage every child to take part if they can — these activities often provide some of the most memorable and rewarding experiences of primary school.

A gentle reminder about contact protocols:

• In the first instance, please speak with your child’s class teacher regarding any classroom or day-to-day matters.
• For more significant concerns, a member of the senior leadership team will be happy to help. Their contact details are on our website.
• The school office remains your first point of contact for general queries or practical information.
• Our teachers are also available for email communication with parents and carers. To help in managing expectations, we wish to be clear with parents and carers that teachers are expected to respond to correspondence from parents and carers within 48 hours, when working; however, we have numerous teachers that work part-time, therefore emails might not be responded to within 48 hours of being originally sent.

As a school, our core business is to provide high quality teaching and learning. Whilst this seems an obvious thing to say, it is a reminder that we are an education institution first and foremost; whilst we wholeheartedly support other functions, such as in welfare, financial support and healthcare (including mental healthcare), please remember that we are a school. We will always endeavour to support our families where appropriate and possible, however there are limits to what we can do and what should be expected of us. Please remember, our main function, energy and time is concentrated on providing the best quality teaching and learning. 

Supporting Us on Facebook: We remind all of our community that the use of our Facebook page is to share the workings and approach within our school. Our social media provides a window into our world, for parents, carers and our community to see our progress, achievements, and to offer genuine advice. We do not publicly criticise anyone; we hope for the same respect in return from our community when sharing our hard work.

Children Using Social Media: As we work to keep our students safe online whilst at school, we need your support in keeping our children safe online when not in school, especially with regards to mobile phones. We strongly recommend that if parents/carers wish for their child to have a mobile phone for safety walking to and from school, that it is not a ‘smartphone’. We   suggest an ‘old style’ phone that can only make calls and send text messages to be able to keep in contact with you; no wider internet access.

One of the many difficulties that come from children and young people having such smartphones is their significant, often unregulated exposure to social media and the connections between their peers; this is often done without parent/ carer supervision. We (the school) must be very clear that we will not become involved in issues involving anti-social and/or toxic social media which occur outside of school. This is for parents to manage and resolve.

Thank you, as always, for your continued support. We look forward to an exciting, productive term ahead.

Warm regards,
Miss Harris

WEEK 1