Class Stars 🙂 Well done to…

Our Early Years… Nevaeh Legg

Class 2… Reuben Brooks

Class 3… Bodhi Harrie-Thompson

Class 4… Tilly Kennedy

Could you ensure our teddies come back the following week please? …thank you!

This ½ term’s school value is…

We are Confident.

We help our children lay foundations for the rest of their lives by helping them develop self-esteem and belief in themselves.

‘I know the plans I have for you… plans to bring about the future you hope for.’ (Jeremiah 29 v11)

Attendance so far…

School average for this week
Class 1: 100% Class 2: 96.4% Class 3: 96.5% Class 4: 99.3%

With attendances like this ⬆, we’ll improve our average.  Well done Class 1 and class 4 for excellent attendance! 

School average for the year so far: 95.8%

Illnesses and holidays impact our attendance data and the children’s learning opportunities.
It can also be a trigger for Ofsted, as they expect attendance to be in the high 90’s.

(Please have a look at our Attendance page on our website for more information.)

Please note that the school will be closed on Wednesday due to industriual action called by the NEU.  We emailed all parents about this during the week to give as much notice as possible.  Preschool is open as usual.

This is only for Wednesday 1st February, but we will inform you about what’s happening on the planned strike days of March 2nd, 15th and 16th as soon as we can.

Teachers are striking across the country due to concerns about funding that are having a significant impact on the education and care of the chidren we look after, and the recruitment and retention of school staff.  Our staff are committed to supporting your children but we all feel that the concerns raised by the school and teaching unions are having both short-term and long-term effects for our pupils, school and community.

If your child is eligible for benifits-related Free School Meals and you would like to collect one on Wednesday, please let us know and we can arrange for a school Packed Lunch to be available for collection from 12pm.

We’ve issued out a Uniform Booklet this week too.
Some of the things we’ve been focussing on is shoes (need to be plain, black shoes with little or no heal) and long hair being tied back.

We also request that toys aren’t brought into to school.  These items distract our children and disrupt their learning – whether this is through playing with them, being mindful about where it is or who’s got it and, we’ve recently found, that some children have swapped items and we’ve had to deal with some upset chidren.  Our main goal and intent at school is to help children feel safe and confident, and for them to learn.  Sadly, we spend a disproportianate amount of time sorting out issues which could be solved by simply not bringing these items in to school.  Your help would be very much appeciated.

What an amazing morning of Basketball yesterday… where we won!  Here’s some photos…
Thank you so much to David Roper for organising the event and to Charlie Smith and his students for refereeing the games.

The children improved so much over the morning. If they wish to carry on playing Basketball, David Roper has a Half Term Club, after school clubs and competitions; the children can get involved in: davidropersports@gmail.com

There’s a Kitchen Assistant position available at Braunton Academy – please see their website for further information.

The Braunton Learning Cooperative Trust is putting on another Internet Safety Session for parents (not for children) on Wednesday the 1st February at 8pm.  The session last year was extremely informative and I hope as many of our parents log in as possoible.

Please follow the specific set of ‘joining instructions‘ just prior to 8pm on Wednesday evening.   And click this link to join.

Thursday 2nd March – is World Book Day. Please note that we dress up as a book character for the day, so do please have a think about who / what you could dress up as!

If this can’t go ahead on Thursday the 2nd, it will be rolled over to the Friday.  We’ll keep you informed.

We’re a Nut free school, so that means that most kinds of tree nuts (such as almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pine nuts) and also peanuts shouldn’t be brought in to school. Sadly, this also means that pesto sauce shouldn’t be brought into school as it contains pine nuts. Sorry if this causes any inconvenience, but I hope you can help us as best as you can to keep our children safe.

As a result of the resounding success of the Let’s Talk Teenagers programme… South Devon and Dartmoor Community Safety Partnership are pleased to offer FREE online sessions for parents and carers of pre-teens this month.

The Let’s Talk program is designed to increase parents’ and carers’ knowledge of the key risks, whilst giving simple tools and techniques to help them support their child.

As a partnership we acknowledge that parenting can be really difficult, especially in such challenging times. We want to get these resources to as many parents and carers as possible and would be really grateful if you could share this information with your parents and carers.

Attendance is free, and access and registration is available at Let’s Talk Pre-Teens .

The topics covered will be:

already held – Biology, Difficult emotions, Substance misuse

24th January 2023 – Relationships, Exploitation, Pornography, Societal Stereotypes

31st January 2023 – Physical risks, Safety planning, Mental health, Self-care

Clubs Webpage for more info…

Wrap Around Provision & After School Clubs

Attendance… We frequently report the attendance of individual year groups as it’s a really good way to see if school attendance is at a good percentage… with it as high as possible of course! The DfE have a target of 96.5% but sadly, we finished the year, last July, being slightly below this.
Attending school regularly is vital to help children achieve and to give them the best possible start in life. It’s also a legal requirement of parents once children are of school age and enrolled in mainstream education. Ofsted has a strong view about attendance of course and, therefore, too many absences can lead into difficult discussions about how we can support children to achieve and do well – we could even be downgraded for our current Good status as a result.
Absences will only be authorised if they meet exceptional circumstances. With only 190 statutory school days in the year, there are 175 days (weekends and school holidays) left to plan for family visits, non-urgent medical/dental appointments, holidays etc. School holidays are published well in advance and parents are expected to plan and take family holidays at this time so as not to disrupt their child’s education. We also try to arrange our Inset (training) days to provide time for travel… such as this term’s October 21st.
Holidays… are almost always not recognised as meeting ‘exceptional circumstances’ and therefore an absence would be unauthorised. This could result in a penalty notice being issued by DCC.
Punctuality is important too, and the earlier we get our children into the right habits, the better. You may not realise that being just 5 minutes late every day equals 3 days of school lost a year. Please bring your child for 8.45am when they door is open and the classroom has a learning activity ready for them.

Dates in the diary… bottom of the front page…

https://georgehamceps.wpengine.com/

Dinner Menu…

https://georgehamceps.wpengine.com/dinner-menu/

The school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead is Julian Thomas
Our Deputy Safeguarding Leads are Emma Hill and Laura Hapgood (our interim SENSCo)
You can contact us on dsl@georgeham-primary.devon.sch.uk

If you have any concerns that you’d like to discuss, please call through to Lottie and ask for an appointment. You may also find some useful or helpful information on our Safeguarding webpage… https://georgehamceps.wpengine.com/staying-safe/

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