Newsletter 14 March 2025

Dear Parents and Carers of St Cuthbert’s,

Please check the Dates for your Diary for more information re: the rest of this term so that you don’t miss out on anything.  

Workshops of Hope

Thank you to all of our families who were able to attend our Workshops of Hope. In addition to the children and families, all of the staff have completed a cross too and together we have produced some beautiful designs and personal images of what hope means to each of us as either individuals or as families. We will be combining these crosses into a whole school cross which will be completely unique to our school.

St Cuthbert’s Book Day Book Sale – Save the Date!

As you know, on Friday 21 March, we have our St Cuthbert’s Book Day Book Sale. This is a family event where you can browse the books we have on sale with your child/children, choose a book(s) at your leisure and then get yourself some light refreshments and enjoy your new purchases alongside your child.

Please continue to send your book donations into school and do your utmost to attend the book sale on the day. This is a lovely opportunity for you to spend some time, if you’re able, with your child in school.

As always, children are invited to dress as characters from their favourite books or come into school in their pyjamas as if ready for a bedtime story. This can include face paints but please ensure these are washable and removed by return to school on Monday 24 March. Please do not feel under pressure to buy any expensive costumes for your child and please join us in dressing up if you fancy! More information to follow re: arrangements for the day.

Climate Change and Walk to School Week, week beginning: 31 March

As part of our curriculum work on climate change and the impact this can have on the environment, we have been learning all about the little differences we can make in our everyday lives to contribute positively to the prevention of the negative impact of climate change.

One of the messages we will be sharing with the children is the impact of our ‘carbon footprint’ and how this can affect changes in climate. As part of raising awareness of this with the children, we will be hosting a ‘Walk to School Week’ and will be encouraging all of the children to walk to school during the week beginning 31 March.

We fully appreciate that some of our children live quite a distance away from school and families do need to use cars to get to St Cuthbert’s. We would politely ask those families to park a few streets away from the school gates so that their child has the opportunity to fully take part in the week.

We will be doing a ‘Travel to School’ survey each day of this week and every child who has managed to walk all or at least part way to school will be getting a certificate of achievement for that week for trying to reduce their own carbon footprint.

Please do your utmost to support your child’s participation in our Walk to School Week. Thank you.

New Leave of Absence Form Trial

We are introducing a new Leave of Absence Form for parents and carers to complete should they request to take their child out of school during term time. We have included the codes school need to use on our school registers which provides the local authority with the reason why a child is not in school. We hope this clarifies school absence and attendance monitoring procedures further for our parents and carers. We would appreciate any feedback you can provide on the new form. Please share this with the school office. Thank you.

Easter Craft Sessions for Early Years and Key Stage 1

We will be hosting our Easter Craft Sessions in school for our parents and carers to attend alongside their child in Early Years and KS1. If you have more than one child in Early Years / KS1 (Years 1&2) we have added a sibling session that you can attend instead.

The sessions for parents/carers to join their children are as follows:

Monday 7 April	9.00am	Sibling Session for N/R/Y1 and Y2 parents/carers welcome
Tuesday 8 April	9.00am	Year 1 and Year 2 parents/carers welcome
Wednesday 9 April	9.00am	Nursery and Reception parents/carers welcome

Punctuality

Our school day begins at 8.45am prompt. We have a number of children who are consistently late and who are missing the first 10-15minutes, and in some cases even longer, of their learning in school. We have collated some seriously concerning data re: the number of lates and minutes of learning missed for some of our children. We will be reaching out to parents and carers directly over the next couple of weeks to see how school can best support them in helping their child to arrive in school on time to begin their day properly alongside their friends and peers.

If you wish to discuss any item in this letter or anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me via the school office.

Best wishes,  

Mrs Anne Bullerwell

Executive Headteacher