'Egg'cellent end to the term

Once again we have a newsletter packed full of the amazing opportunities and enrichment from across the half term. For our families, this has been emailed to you directly. However, it can also be found on the Parents tab above, clicking on the newsletter option.

Thank you to everyone for supporting us this half term. Parents' evening and SEND reviews have been well attended - with a clear commitment to working together to achieve the best outcomes for our children. Working together is the most effective way to help children succeed.

Attendance and punctuality has also improved. Thank you for working with us on this. As I write this report, our whole school attendance sits at 96.58%. This is high considering the challenges we have faced with various childhood illnesses. Only 10 children out of 213 have attendance below 90%. Below 90% is considered persistently absent and this level of absence has been shown to have a real impact on a child's academic success. We will update our families by text over the coming days, to alert you to your child's current attendance percentage - from September up to the end of this half term.

If we keep working together we could achieve our 97% target by the end of the year.

Congratulations to our attendance winners for this half term. The winners were drawn from all of the 100% attenders and from the 97%+ attenders. Each half term we have a raffle - and you've got to be in - to win! We also had some Easter winners. Thank you to everyone who chose to enter our Easter raffle. This money raised from this will all help towards school resources.

The children themselves are taking a proactive approach to school life. Our child Governors in Y5 and Y6 met with the Chair of Governors, Cllr Murphy and played a role in making decisions as to how we move forwards. We value these opportunities to hear directly from the children and seek their views on current issues. They've been consulted on the value for money in our school trip offer; evaluating our approach to British values; our school library and the 'do you need to talk?' box for our top juniors. Their ideas all help to shape our decisions. Well done Y5 and Y6!

Our school library has been undergoing some developments. We've modernised the environment and purchased even more new texts. We are also launching a book recommendation process - an idea from our child governors! It's our goal to open our library one day per week, after school, for children and families to use - like they would a community library. We were sad to hear our local library had closed and we want to still provide this opportunity for access to wider reading. We are using some of our fundraised money for more new books. Watch this space and as soon as we can get a new library scanning system up and running, we will open our doors after school. Exciting times ahead!

Another example of super leadership from our pupils was our MFL ambassadors. This group, with the support of Mrs Calderbank, hosted a modern foreign languages competition earlier this half term. There were quizzes, word searches, poster competitions and a scavenger hunt. The children were so enthusiastic and we had some fabulous entries. Congratulations to all who took part and especially to those who won!

Following on from our consultation last half term we hope to soon be advertising even more extra curricular opportunities. This will include a junior art club and a maths/board game club for Y2 and Y3. We've also got the 'mad science' club starting a little later in the summer term. We'll send out further information as we get it. We are also launching another round of cookery club so hopefully some more children, who have not yet had the chance to join, can enjoy this tasty treat to end to their week with the Friday cookery club. We know it can be tricky to choose when there are so many different clubs on offer, however, with the number we provide the clashes are unavoidable.

What a fabulous turn out for the Easter egg competition! We had some splendid bonnets and cracking creations. Thank you to our school council who chose the winners. What a difficult task for them!  Well done to everyone who took part.

We return after the Easter break on the 15th April 2024 and look forward to seeing everyone. Don't forget, at the end of this first week, on Friday the 19th April, we're hosting another popular Bike it Breakfast. Cycle or scoot into school and enjoy a breakfast when you arrive. We've also invited the Police to come along with their bike marking equipment to enable you to have your bikes security marked. We do hope you can make it.

Do enjoy reading the newsletter and looking through the photographs before enjoying your break from school. We look forward to welcoming everyone back to school, safe and sound, on the 15th April 2024, before 8.45am.

Kind regards,

Pamela Potter

Head teacher