Family Information and PTA News 13 January 2023

Happy New Year to you all. May 2023 be a good one for you, your family, and friends. I hope that you have been able to relax a little over the holidays. I know some of you have spent time in hospitals with sick children and hope they are recovering well. I do wonder if our immunity has been compromised by the COVID bubbles, but that is my personal view.

We have had a couple of new starters, and I would like to extend a welcome to those families. I will be in contact with those families imminently to introduce myself, my role and how I may be of assistance.

This will be a shorter blog. This week has been a busy one, and I have had limited time to do my usual research.

Information

I know that when we have advertised class/departmental events there seems to be confusion so I thought I would try to clear the fog, so to speak.

Coffee mornings/events:

I host social coffee mornings for parents/carers each half term. These are always morning events, 09.30-11.00 when the dining hall is available for longer. They are open to the whole school and do not involve the class team. You are welcome to bring extended family (grandparents etc), to arrive/depart at any time during the event. The purpose of these is to bring parents together and feedback from parents is that this is what you most value. As a parent of a former student myself, I know how useful I find speaking to other parents, who understand the issues and often have suggestions which help other parents/carers. I do ask you to provide names of attendees; this means I have enough refreshments and the sign in process is easier when your name is added to the “event”. I include details in the weekly Family Liaison Blog, which is published on a Friday and back issues can be found on the school website.

Classes/departments host coffee afternoons/mornings and/or special events which are specific to them. You will be notified specifically about these, usually by letter, but often by text/email and they will be included in the School Blog which is published weekly on a Friday and back issues are on the school website. Reminders are normally sent by text and on Facebook. The latter is usually where we get queries, but I hope this helps.

Next week I will include the Pathways and which classes are in each one.

16-19 Bursary.

Thanks to all who have returned forms. If you have not submitted the evidence, we will not be able to process your application. Most of you have, thank you. I will be going through these in the next week and will contact you if I need further information. As I have previously said, my role is to gather information, work with class teams on the application. I then assist finance with information they need to submit.

Deputyship/Mental Capacity/Will and Trusts

I have had some conversations with parents about these, with some asking where they can get information. If this is of interest to you, please get in touch. We could arrange a coffee event in school where you can share information you have. It is difficult to signpost people to the correct place, as all can involve the legal system and I would not want to influence people.

Activities/Resources

Free Online Books

This was shared with me by one of our therapists and may be of use to families. A website with online books about all kind of topics for early readers and engagement with different access methods for turning the page. It’s a very useful free resource!

School staff are happy to support use at home if parents want any further info or advice regarding appropriate choices and/or how to access.

The link to the website is below:

PTA

 Thanks so much to those parents/carers who have got back to me about meetings/AGM. We really do understand the demands on families, work, appointments, distance, impact of caring, non-drivers etc which mean that attending a PTA meeting slips down the list of priorities. However, you do value and support the PTA so we will find a solution.

Meeting: We had a meeting scheduled for Tuesday January 24^th. We are changing this to daytime from 9.30 to 11.00. This will be different, in that there will be no agenda as we want to use it to get your suggestions. You are welcome to come into school and join, or you can join via TEAMS. If you would like to join via TEAMS, please let me know and I will send an invite, although the link is below. It helps me to know who plans to attend. The link to join via TEAMS is below:

PTA 100 CLUB

I am including the link to join the 100 Club, as I know we have some new starters. We will do the first 6 draws at the AGM, so there is still time to join.