A happy New Year to all our school families

A Review of Last Half Term

We were very pleased to see so many of you at parent consultations; please remember that we are always happy to arrange to meet you if you have any concerns at all about your child's progress.

Year 4 enjoyed a wonderful music project for 2½ days with visiting music specialists. Year 5 had a Sound workshop linking science and music work. Year 6 had a visitor to help them in learning to use History artefacts. Every child in school took part in one of the Christmas presentations and many of the older children helped to present our end of term service. The children are a credit to yourselves and the staff when they take part in such presentations and performances. Thank you for your support for St Anne's Shelter. We were able to send a cheque for £265.25 to them.

The PTA have worked as hard as ever and we had a super Christmas Fair, again raising money for resources for school.

The term ended with Christmas lunch and parties which were enjoyed by all.

There were 2 uncharacteristic and disappointing events this half term. During the half term holiday in October the school was broken into. The alarm system alerted the police so quickly that nothing was stolen, but an amount of damage was done in gaining entry. So far we have no clues about who did this. Also, during the evening of the key stage 2 performance, a cloakroom tap was turned on and the wash basin bunged up. Overnight this caused a flood that again has caused very costly damage. It is very disappointing to think that one of our children has done this, but again we have not yet found out who it was.

Friday Assembly

It has been great to welcome so many of you to our Friday assembly when children receive a good work certificate. In order that the children can talk confidently about the work, it has to be a recent piece of work. This means that short notice only can be given to parents. However, in talking to many of you it seems that a 9.00am assembly would suit you better and so we have changed the time accordingly.

Prayer Group

Meetings this term will be on Wed. 14 January at 1.45pm and Thurs. 12 February at 8.30pm.
For further details and venues, please ring David and Julia Thompson on 0113 2402036.

Security and Safety

Concerns have again been raised about safety in the car park. We are working with Education Leeds to look at possible solutions to the problem, but action needs to be urgently taken. Safety officers who have visited the school are concerned about the amount of parking in no-parking areas such as the dropping off bay and on double yellow lines, the amount of reversing especially up the drive and out of the gateway, and children being insufficiently supervised by parents after school. Please help to make all our children safer at each end of the school day.

Local events over Christmas have again pointed out to us how important security in school is. Please help us to ensure that our building is secure when your children are inside and bear with us if there is not somebody immediately available to answer your ring of the doorbell.

Contact Details

Please ensure that our emergency contact details for you are up to date. It is important to your child that we can contact you at work in case of emergency. Also we need addresses of any parents who do not live with the family.

Assessment in School

The spring term is traditionally the term where a great deal of hard work is done with little to distract us. Children are being continually assessed by class teachers and the parent consultation evenings in March will be an opportunity for you to find out in more detail about the progress your child is making.

Children in classes from year 2 upwards will undergo more formal assessment in May; statutory assessment in years 2 and 6 and optional tests in years 3, 4 and 5. For parents who are new to this assessment process (SATs) or for those who wish to be reminded of aspects of it or have questions to ask, there is a meeting for parents on Thursday 26 February at 7.30pm to which you are all invited.

SATs tests are taken between Easter and Spring Bank holiday in year 2 and during the week beginning Monday 10 May in key stage 2. These dates cannot be changed.