Salesbury School information for parents and pupils
School news: 2nd October, 2007
Jeans for Genes Day
I hope your children enjoyed wearing their jeans for a day. We raised £238.43 to send off and Year Six led assembly for us all about the charity.
Thank you.
Harvest Festival
I would also like to thank you for all the Harvest Gifts that you sent in to school – we filled over six tables in the Hall and the Church looked lovely for the weekend. The food has already been sent to Leyland prior to distribution in Eastern Europe.
Hospice Service at Blackburn Cathedral
I would like to thank all of you who brought your children to sing in the Choir on Saturday evening at Blackburn Cathedral – I am sure you will agree with me that our children were wonderful and also to express your thanks to Mrs. Fourie and Mrs. Gray. The evening raised over £800 for the Hospice which receives its main funding through charitable donations. Harry Grayson, the Hospice Fundraising Organiser, would like to thank all staff, children and parents for their tremendous support.
Meeting with Parents
It is my custom to arrange a termly meeting for a group of parents to come in and talk to me about school. I select the parents at random, choosing a parent from each class, of different genders, with children of different genders, some with children on the SEN record and others with children who are perhaps able, gifted or talented and to ensure a good selection across the age groups.
At these meetings I am open to listen to your views about school, what you like, what you dislike, what you think we do well, how you think we could improve. We usually have a cup of tea/coffee and follow up with a tour around school. I have found that often parents come up with issues that school has not thought are an issue and that these can easily be solved by communication. I have also found that parents are on the whole generally very happy with school and this is nice to be able to communicate back to the staff.
If you do receive a letter from me asking you to come to one of these meetings please don’t worry that you will be expected to do anything other than just come and talk and listen – I will be very pleased to hear your views about our school.
Parent Questionnaires
Many thanks to the parents who returned their questionnaires. We sent out 304 questionnaires and received back 99 a total of 33% (an increase on last year’s 19%). Some families however only filled in one sheet – as we have 220 families in school the returns may therefore be nearer to 45% which is even better.
I have read every returned questionnaire and all your written comments have been recorded for me to take to a staff meeting.
I would like to address the issue of split classes, which so many of you wrote in about asking why we have to have them here at Salesbury:
Salesbury Primary School takes in 40 pupils per year: the law in the Early Years of schooling forbids schools from having classes with more than thirty pupils in; however the funding for teachers is worked out on the number of pupils in each school and not on the number of classes each school has, therefore schools which take in more than 30 pupils each year (and also schools which take in smaller numbers of pupils) have to mix together the different year groups to the number of teachers they are funded to employ: in the case of Salesbury School this is just under 9.5 teachers. As you are aware we have 10 classes at Salesbury so the Governors here have found extra money to keep the 10 classes running so that the Junior classes are not much larger than the Infant classes.
In order for the school not to have split classes we would have to loose a large number of pupils! Clearly this is not acceptable so we have to put the children into mixed year group classes.
I hope this explains why we have to do this – I am also aware that many of you wrote in with other queries about the mixed age groups and I am reading them through at the moment.
The car parking issue was also another problem for many of you – overwhelmingly the complaints were about people not following the one way system, blocking the car park by dropping off children instead of finding somewhere to park and generally making things difficult in the mornings and evenings. The car park is not the property of the school but that of the Local Authority – we rely on the goodwill of parents to follow the guidelines set but at the moment the one way system is not compulsory only advisory – I will however be making further enquiries with the Local Authority to see if we can change this to make it mandatory, I think this is unlikely but I will try! I will also look into a dropping off area, but staff at school can not be responsible for the safety of children outside of the school grounds, it would remain parental responsibility and it would be for you to decide if your child was old enough to be dropped off. The local PCSO officers do frequently come to look out for parking problems at school but in fairness to them they split their time with other schools in the area and can not be at our school everyday. The vast majority of parents do follow the guidelines, so thank-you to you if you are one of them.
Homework is always a thorny issue – we had equal complaints for there being too little to there being too much! Clearly we can’t please everyone, however the Homework Policy is due for renewal at the end of this year so this is something I can discuss with parents and staff during the year.
I would like to clear up a complaint about the school’s Healthy Eating Policy – children are allowed a biscuit or a piece of cake in their packed lunch, but they are not allowed chocolate bars.
Overall the only other main area for concern was communication with school, again this is something that always proves difficult in schools. Teachers are available for brief messages at the start and end of the day, but clearly when they have 30 children in their room it is impossible for them to leave the children alone to talk to parents. If you have a problem that you need to discuss with your child’s class teacher please do make an appointment and then they can give time to listen to you and for you to feel you are not rushing to tell the teacher something that they are not able to concentrate on. As you have seen from my letter above I intend to hold meetings with parents about such matters as communication so I hope you will feel that things are improving.
Finally – it is important to add that there were many complimentary comments about school from all of you and I will also be passing all of those comments on to staff as well. I would like to thank you on their behalf for all of the nice things that were written.
From the Vicar
Harvest
The vicar would like to thank all the families who contributed to the donations of food and money. The perishable food was given to the local Hospice while the non-perishable has begun its long journey to Eastern Europe, for distribution through the local churches there. The gifts of money, presently totalling £380, is given to the Bishop of Blackburn’s Harvest Appeal "Sowing Seeds of Hope".
Parade & Family Service
This Sunday, 14th October at 10.30am, when you are warmly invited to share in the Family Service. This month it is the turn of the Sunday School ‘family’ to take part – some of the children have written the prayers for the service.
Confirmation Classes
Would those who have indicated their wish to start these classes please note that we begin on Thursday 18th October at 6.30pmin the church.
After-School Worship
The next service is on Tuesday 16th October at 3.50pm. Do come along and enjoy the ‘fun’ !