Dear Parents and Carers,

What a superb week it has been! We are starting to get into the festive spirit and were lucky to see our children perform in the annual Christmas nativity. What an excellent show with fantastic acting, speaking, and singing! Thank you to the staff who helped organize the production.

A huge thank you to FROGS for providing tea, coffee, and cake—not to forget the Christmas wreaths that were quickly snapped up!

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST PANTO – FRIDAY 13TH DECEMBER

Thanks to FROGS and the generous contributions from the school community, the children are being treated to a panto on Friday, 13th December, to watch Beauty and the Beast at the Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple. At 12:30 pm, a coach will transport the children and staff to the theatre for the afternoon showing.

After the panto, the children will be escorted to Barnstaple Library for parent collection—we won’t be traveling back to school. We anticipate that the children will be ready for collection from 4 pm in front of Barnstaple Library. If you are asking another parent to collect your child from Barnstaple Library, please let your child’s teacher know in advance—this will enable a smoother transition.

This week, the children have been learning about:

Class 1: Birds – a favourite was the pheasant
Class 2: our knock knock books are finally finished !
Class 3: we made catapults out of wood.
Class 4: in science we learnt about light, reflections and shadows.

Congratulations to the Class Stars of the Week!

Class 1:  Noa and Sophie
Class 2: Toby
Class 3: Sampson
Class 4: Bodhi W

and, Benji W received the  TT Rocks Stars Trophy !

We hope that you all have a lovely weekend—please stay safe, and we look forward to another week of fun!

Kind regards,

Mr Kevin Fry

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Arbor

98% of parents have signed in to the new Arbor parent app which is amazing. THANK YOU !

All trips will now be entered into Arbor; an email will be sent with information each time they are added. ‘Sign up’ is required every time.

At the moment there are 2 trips that require sign up – the whole school panto and for those in C4, their Residential in 2025.

Please log on and sign up for the panto trip, this should be 100% of school aged pupils, it is a no cost whole school activity for all children paid for by FROGS. We have had 55 replies thus far.

You can also purchase tickets for the Panto in the school shop which you can find below Activities (Clubs and trips) …

All debts and credits from Scopay will be transferred over into Arbor next week. You will have had a letter home if that applies to you, do call me if you have any questions on that.

As you can no longer access SCOPAY do pls go ahead and delete that App. Yay !

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Spirit of Adventure –  C4 residential

C4 only, please log in to Arbor to sign up and pay the deposit for the C4 residential.  The deadline is 12 noon on 13th December.
There are 14 more still to sign up.

A paper letter was also sent home so please return that too – we have only had 2 of those back. Maybe the new system is working well already …

(We are double doing this one as it has a deadline for deposit payment and sign up that is needed to secure the places.)

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St George’s Georgeham, and St Mary’s Church in Croyde, also have a number of Christmas services over the festive period,  welcome to all.

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Spring term clubs run by DTA
Please see letter from Rob Cook re the clubs run by him in the spring term.. Sign up is with Rob directly….   Georgeham Clubs Spring 2025

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Panto – Fri 13th Dec.

C3 Swimming

C3 will be having swimming lessons on Thursday afternoons in the Spring term.   More on that before the end of term, it will also be entered into Arbor trips.
Over the holidays please check that they have costumes, swimming hats, and goggles that fit; a sensibly sized towel, and suitable bag to carry it all in.  Thank you.

The school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead is Mr Kevin Fry
Our Deputy Safeguarding Leads are  Emma Hill and Lucy Rinvolucri
Our SENCo is Mrs Lucy Rinvolucri.
Make contact with us via  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/

• Attendance… We report the attendance of individual year groups as it’s a really good way to see if school attendance is at a good percentage…  as high as possible of course! The DfE have a target of 96.5%
  Attending school regularly is vital to help children achieve and to give them the best possible start in life. It’s also the legal requirement of parents once children are of school age and enrolled in mainstream education. Ofsted has a strong view about attendance of course. 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.
  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.