Dear Parents and Carers

This week has seen the first meeting of the academic year for our School Council. The School Council is made up of representatives elected by the pupils and with Mrs Melia, they have a role in sharing ‘pupil voice’ on decisions made in school. This contributes to an understanding of democracy and more widely to pupil’s personal and social development. In the past our school council have taken part in the recruitment of staff and have championed our fundraising activities. Over the coming weeks, they will be involved in both of these again.

Our harvest celebrations will focus on the work of the Black Country Food Bank who provide nutritionally balanced emergency food-aid for local people in crisis.  (www.blackcountryfoodbank.org.uk). The past year has been incredibly challenging for many of us with the cost of living crisis and increased fuel bills following on from the pandemic. Sadly, more and more families are having to use foodbanks. At Black Country Foodbank, distribution of food parcels has risen by 20% compared to last year with over a 1/3 of all food distributed throughout the year going to children.

We will be collecting donations of food and toiletries as part of harvest celebrations, which will be taken to the Store House in Brierley Hill for distribution to local families. In next week’s newsletter we will issue a list of items that are especially welcome. In the meantime please note the dates and times of our Harvest Assemblies, which you are very welcome to attend. For fire safety purposes we are repeating the assembly and ask that where possible’, you attended the relevant assembly to the key stage of your child. (If you have children in both key stages please come whenever is most convenient)

• Friday 6^th October         10.00 a.m.            Reception and Key Stage 1 Parents
• Monday 9^th October       9.00 a.m.             Key Stage 2 Parents

On Wednesday Year 3 and 4 will be heading off on residential to Astley Burf. We hope that they have a wonderful time and the weather is kind. We look forward to hearing all about their adventures!

Kind regards

Mrs D Hudson

Headteacher

Tuesday 26^th September

• The photographer will be in school in Tuesday 26^th September.

On this occasion, uniform – either summer or winter -  is parental choice, unlike the class photos in the summer where we ask for everyone to be in winter uniform.  Children due to take part in forest school or PE can bring their forest school clothes or PE Kit to change into after their photos have been taken.

Friday 29^th September

• McMillan Coffee Morning. 9.00a.m. – 10.00 a.m. in the school hall. Please come along and support this very worthwhile cause. Donations of cakes, both bought and home baked would be very welcome.

The Ridge Friends, our PTA, will be having a planning meeting straight after the coffee morning to start looking at fund raising and social events for the rest of the year, starting with the Christmas Fayre. Please do come along. You will be made very welcome.

Further information and nomination forms for the Parent Governor vacancy have been published.  No special qualifications are needed for the role: the most important thing is to have a keen interest in the school and be prepared to play an active part in the governing body’s work. However, we would particularly welcome nominations from parents with the following skills:

• Experience of building management
• HR experience

If you would like further information about the role, please speak to Mrs Hudson, who can arrange for you to speak to our Chair of Governors, Julia Simmonds or one of our existing parent governors. Completed nomination forms must be returned to the School no later than 12 noon on Friday 29^th September 2023

• Please remember that if your child arrives after the gates have closed at 8.47, the must come into school via the main door and report to the office. Children should be accompanied by an adult to sign in at the office. If they are not in the classroom when the register is taken they will be recorded as late. Please see our Attendance Policy for further information about what this means.
• Missing school will make your child fall behind in lessons and will impact on their academic progress and achievement. If your child takes too much time off school they are categorised as ‘persistently absent’. (Attendance below 90% = persistent absence).
• It only takes 3 ½ days absence between September and October for your child to be classes as persistently absent and 7 days in the Autumn Term from September to Christmas.
• Mrs Povey is our attendance officer and she monitors attendance on a daily basis. We will contact you if we have concerns about your child’s attendance to see if there is any support that we can offer.

This Weeks attendance 

Whole School - 96.91%

Reception - 98.67%

Year 1 – 93.10%

Year 2 – 99.33%

Year 3 – 98.00%

Year 4 – 96.43%

Year 5 – 96.00%

Year 6 – 96.67%

Well done Year 2!

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. Mrs Hudson is the Designated Safeguarding Lead and any concerns should be shared with her or the Deputy Safeguarding Leads – Mrs Hadley, Miss Beddoes and Mrs Gledhill.  Where child protection concerns are raised, the school has a statutory duty to refer these concerns to children’s social care.

Children who live in homes where there is domestic abuse, or who experience domestic abuse in their own teenage relationships, can be negatively impacted by this experience. West Midlands Police are part of ‘Operation Encompass’, a scheme which means that our school will be told, prior to the start of the next school day, when police have attended an incident of domestic abuse where there is a child or young person who attends our school who is related to any of those involved in the incident.  This allows us to use the information that has been confidentially shared with us by the police, to understand how a child may be impacted by domestic abuse and to then offer support to the children in our care.

Follow us on Twitter