attendance! andpunctuality · 10/7/2012 · !!!!!attendance! andpunctuality!...
TRANSCRIPT
Attendance and Punctuality !
Thank you to everyone who has been making an effort to get into school BEFORE 8.55am so that the children are ready to go into
class when the bell goes at 9am. !This will be a continued focus of ours, along with our general
attendance monitoring (see additional article below). Soon, we will be starting to close the gate when the bell goes and all
latecomers will have to go through the main door and be signed in as late.
PLEASE SUPPORT US, punctuality is a great life skill for your children to learn and we really appreciate your cooperation. !
Unfortunately, in the last fortnight, NO classes achieved our target of 97% attendance. Each class’ attendance Nigures were: !
Year 4: 96.8% Year 2: 96.7% Reception: 96.5% Year 5J: 96.5% Year 3V: 96% Year 3U : 95.2% Year 6: 94.7% Year 1: 94.5% Year 5E: 94.2% !
Dates for the diary
8th March: 9.00 -‐ 9.45: Nursery (am) Nine motor skills Parent Cafe
9th March: 9.10 am: Y1 class assembly -‐ parents welcome
10th March: 2.45 -‐ 3.30: Nursery (pm) Nine motor skills Parent Cafe
14th March: Nursery trip to Maritime Museum ‘Ahoy Gallery’ and Y3V trip to Regents Park Mosque
17th March: Harmonica assembly -‐ parents welcome
18th March: Y6 cake sale -‐ 3.30pm
21st March: KS2 Spring assembly
22nd March: Easter play by St John’s Church
24th March: 9.10 am: Y2 class assembly -‐ parents welcome and Y1 trip to Discovery Recycling Centre
25th March -‐ 8th April (inc) Easter break
18th -‐ 22nd April: Science Week
20th April: Family Science workshop -‐ 6pm
26th April: Mindset information sessions for parents -‐ 9am and 6pm
5th May: INSET Day (school being used as a polling station)
30th May -‐ 3rd June: Half term break
Saturday 18th June: Summer Fair
22nd June: KS1 Sports Day
23rd June: INSET Day (school being used as a polling station)
24th June: KS2 Sports Day
1st July: EYFS Sports Day
7th July and 12th July: Parent-‐Teacher Meetings
14th July: Y6 production
jnhttp://ashmeadprimary.wordpress.com/ ! ! ! ! 7th March 2016
Things to know! !INSET Days: You will see from the ‘Dates for the Diary’ section opposite, we have now allocated our last INSET day of the academic year. As the school is used as a polling station, we will be closed to children on Thursday 5th May and Thursday 23rd June and so to minimise disruption, we have decided to take these both as INSET (staff training) days !Dinner Money: On the 4th February, Schools Forum agreed an increase to the cost of Primary School paid school meals from £1.90 to £2.00 per meal with effect from 2nd May 2016. There has been no increase in the school meal price since May 2014 and at £2.00 this compares favourably with other local authorities. If you have a child in Reception, Y1 or Y2, they will remain entitled to a free school meal. !Free School Meals: Applying for free school meals has never been easier, either click on this link (http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/education/schools/Pages/apply-‐for-‐free-‐school-‐meals.aspx) or go to the Lewisham Web Site and search for Free School Meals. It only takes a few minutes and you could be reducing costs for your child (clubs and school journeys etc) and getting extra funding for the school – so if you think you might be eligible don’t delay – apply today!
Ashmead Governors Focus on Key Strategic Issues!Dean Johnstone, Chair of Governors!!
On 10 February the Governors held their annual development evening. This is a less formal meeting and a chance for governors to focus on the key strategic issues facing the school. !Governors completed an annual skills audit, which highlights the required skills and knowledge and any gaps within the governing body. !The main part of the evening was focused on three core issues facing the school, all of which will be followed up by governors in the coming months: !Resourcing -‐ you are probably aware that national budget cuts are having an impact on schools. Whilst our budget is still to be set, it is clear that the school will face signiNicant reductions in income in the coming years. The governors started to consider where efNiciencies can be made and what steps could be taken to ensure that the school maintains a balanced budget. !Pupil Premium strategy -‐ Ashmead ensures that all children do well, but children from poorer backgrounds do not always do as well as they could. Governors started to think longer term about the steps that could be taken to ensure that family background is not a factor in determining how well children do. !'Loveable child' -‐ As part of the Ashmead vision, we talk about children knowing that they are loveable, yet we recognise that we do not have measures to evaluate this part of the vision. Governors started to consider how this key part of the vision might look in the future and how we can measure our success.
7th March 2016
News from Nursery and Reception Amazingly there has been 'space and alien' fever across the whole setting over the last two weeks so all of our EYFS have been following this child led interest in space. In Nursery we found an alien crash landing in Forest School and decided to write a letter as a whole class to see if we could help the alien. We explored the different planets and have been making our own 'spray painting' planets this week. In Reception, there has been lots of writing generated from this interest in space, with one of the projects surrounding children writing postcards to their parents from the moon! They also had a visit from a couple of interesting looking aliens this week and have been inspired to create collages
and galaxy art when imagining the planets that these extra-‐terrestrials came from! What will next week have in store? Ashleigh Mugridge
News from Y1, Y2 and Y3
What a busy start to this half term we have had already! We all enjoyed a brilliant book week last week, dressing up as our favourite characters, making reading dens with buddies across the school, sharing ‘sneak peeks’ of our favourite books and listening to our visitor on World Book Day, the poet, Paul Delaney. This week, the teachers from Y1 -‐ Y3 will be visiting other Lewisham schools and sharing our Literacy and Maths learning with colleagues. This is a useful process for moderation and is also a great opportunity to share all the great work we do at Ashmead. Well done everybody! Jane Bickley
News from Y4, Y5 and Y6 There have been lots of exciting things happening in Key Stage 2 recently. Year 4 returned bleary eyed and tired after an incredibly successfully school journey. The children accomplished so many things and have brought this conNidence
back to school with them. Year 5 and 6 have both enjoyed fascinating school trips to launch their new spring topics and the whole key stage have been eagerly preparing for our Spring Sing-‐a-‐long which is being held on
Monday 21st March. Andy McPartland
Dear parents and carers, !As you know we are having a big push to try and improve our attendance and punctuality this year. Our school target is 97% but we still have some way to go to meet this. I’m sure we can improve this percentage and we really want to work with families to help this happen. !We do, though, want to recognise the many children who attend really well and we are working hard on celebrating classes with good attendance every week and are now working on the best way to celebrate the many children with excellent attendance, including more than 30 who have 100% attendance since September. !I thought it would be useful for you to see what the different percentages of absence looks like in terms of days off: !At the end of the school year if your child’s attendance is 95% they have missed 10 days of school. !If attendance is 90% they have missed 20 days of school – that’s four weeks! !If attendance is 85% they have missed 30 days of school or six weeks -‐ this is about half a term of learning. !In talking to families about attendance there is often surprise that their child’s attendance percentage is so low. Please remember that a day here and a day there can quickly mount up. !But I would like to make a special plea to all families to please avoid booking holidays during term-‐time. As you can see above, a two week holiday brings your child’s attendance down to 95% for the year – and that’s without any other absences. We still have far too many days of school missed for this reason. I would really appreciate families remembering that there are 175 days each year when children don’t go to school. !The government recently re-‐deNined their deNinition of when a child is “persistently absent”. This is when the absence is of very serious concern and discussions with the local authority are likely. This is now deNined as attendance below 90%. At present there are 34 children whose attendance is below this Nigure and we are contacting all these families. Our next step will be to contact families whose children’s attendance is between 90% and 96%. !In working with families to improve attendance one thing that has really helped is agreeing to get children into school even if they aren’t feeling particularly well, e.g. if they have a cold. If you let us know we will keep an eye on them and will contact you if they become too unwell to remain at school. When children are brought in like this they are nearly always Nine once they are here so please use us to support your child in attending more. Of course, please keep your child at home if they are vomiting, have a temperature or have diarrhoea. !We are working closely with one of Lewisham’s Attendance and Welfare OfNicers to improve attendance. He is strongly encouraging us to start issuing Nines to parents. These start at £60 and court action can be taken if things don’t improve. The governing body has not taken this step yet but we will have to consider this very seriously if the school’s attendance does not improve. !Your children are the reason we come to work every day so please support us in getting as many as possible of them here every day. !Thank you, !Sean !!!