A somewhat snowy end to this week – as there’s more snow forecast for over the weekend, I thought I’d just remind you of the procedures for informing you if school is open or not in very bad weather. Generally – assume we’ll be open – we’ve only ever closed once in the last 10 years in what were very extreme weather conditions!
If that were to be the case, we would send you a text before 7.30 in the morning to let you know if school was closed. Before and After School club would contact you separately if your child attends. Our winter plan is on the website under policies if you need more information.
We had a couple of interesting events this week; on Monday some of our staff were involved in special training focusing on Speech and Language development called ‘Talk Matters’. We’ve got some really good ideas from the Speech Therapists which we will be implementing in school such as a whole school listening code and ideas to ensure all children’s voices are heard.
Our school Finance Officer was in on Wednesday to meet with myself and Mrs Sanderson, looking at how our school budget looks for the next 3 years. As ever, the budget is tight (as we have very few children in school who generate the ‘Pupil Premium Grant’ which is additional funding for disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils) but we think we spend what we do get well! Our budget is the lowest in Aireborough even though we are a larger than average school which is why we value the extra income generated by our hard working PTA so highly.
Yesterday all staff received online safety training and parents had the opportunity to attend a cluster wide e-safety briefing held at St.Oswald’s. Today, all pupils have had an e-safety assembly reinforcing those key messages about how to keep themselves safe on line. The golden rules which we reinforce to children are; NEVER to disclose any personal information on line and to tell an adult straight away if they see or hear anything online which makes them feel uncomfortable. We also talked today about sharing photos after some worrying incidents at local High Schools – our rule was to never post a photo that you wouldn’t be happy to show to your gran!
We also had a chilly fire drill this afternoon…everyone was out of the building in 2 minutes and back in again in less!
2 weeks into the new school year already…it does go quickly!