Over St. John's CE Primary SchoolHead Teacher Blog: Friday 21st March 2025
Date: 20th Mar 2025 @ 3:47pm
Winsford Decides
You may have heard about ‘Winsford Decides’ where local people get the opportunity to decide how the council spend £25,000 by voting for their favourite community projects and volunteer initiatives.
As a school we have put in a bid for £5,000 to help us, along with PTA donations, purchase new technology for our school.
Our initial bid has been accepted and we are through to the next stage where we have to deliver a presentation and then the audience gets to vote for their favourite project.
The more people that we have in the audience supporting our project, the more we have a chance of winning. We are only a small school and as such, our community reach is also small so please, please do consider going along on Wednesday next week to support Mrs Bettley, our Computing Lead, in making our presentation and then vote for us. Only people with a Winsford postcode can vote and only people that actually attend on Wednesday can vote.
Here is a link to get a FREE ticket for the event at 7pm on Wednesday 26th March at Winsford Academy and help support our fabulous little school.
Asda Cash Pot for Schools
You may remember that at the end of last year we asked you to sign up for Asda’s Cash Pot for Schools so that Asda would make a donation to our school every time you shopped there. We have had confirmation this week of our final amount collected and paid into the PTA bank account and it is a whopping £548.74! Thank you so much to everyone who shopped during this period and helped raise a fantastic amount of money for much needed resources at our school.
Attendance
Thank you to those who completed the attendance survey that was sent out last week. We are currently analysing the results.
As always, we are looking for attendance to be at least 96%. For the school this week we are at 94.20%. Since September, we are on 94.85%.
Here is a rundown of each class attendance this week:
Hatchmere: 95.00%
Sandymere: 91.90%
Delamere: 95.26%
Oakmere: 89.17%
Linmere: 95.38%
Blakemere: 98.08%
Well done to Blakemere for the best attendance this week who will receive our trophy in Collective Worship next Friday.
Once again, I would like to acknowledge that we continue to have some good attendance figures over the past few weeks, with several over and above 96% – thank you.
As always, I appreciate how difficult it is when there is illness circulating but also appreciate you checking Is my child too ill for school? and being reassured that we will send them home if they are too ill to be in school. You might also be interested in this link from the Government about support for parents for attendance:
Improving School Attendance - Government Support for Parents May 2024
Wake Up Wednesday
You may already know that livestreaming plays a major role in children’s entertainment, with a wide range of personalities influencing young viewers in both positive and negative ways. While watching streamers can be fun, it also comes with significant risks, including misinformation, financial harms, and inappropriate content.
Popular streaming platform Twitch has over 2.5 million viewers at any given time, which is why it’s more important than ever to stay informed. This week’s guide, also available as a podcast, explores the potential dangers of livestreaming and offers essential insights to help you protect the children in your care.
Absence During Term Time – Reminder
As I have shared a number of times previously, there have been some changes to the way that Penalty Notices are issued for absences during term time. Penalty Notices are issued for irregular attendance, with days off here and there throughout the term including holidays.
The new National Framework for Penalty includes:
A Penalty Notice must be considered for 10 sessions (5 days) of unauthorised absence within a rolling 10 school week period – these days do not have to be all at the same time, they can be a couple of days here and a couple of days there; they can be a combination of a couple of days holiday and a couple of days absence at other times too.
An increase to the amount of a Penalty Notice is now £160 if paid within 28 days, and £80 if paid within 21 days. This fine is issued to each parent separately for each child, so both parents receive the £80 fine, meaning that for one child it equals £160 (£80 for Mum and £80 for Dad) if both parents take the child.
A second Penalty Notice could be issued to the same parent for the same child within a rolling 3 year period being charged at a higher rate of £160 with no option for this second offence to be discharged at the lower rate of £80.
A national limit of 2 penalty notices that can be issued to a parent for the same child within a rolling 3 year period, so at the 3rd (or subsequent) offence(s) another tool will need to be considered (such as prosecution or one of the other attendance legal interventions).
School Dinners
School dinners currently cost £3 per day, £15 per week. We sent out information this week that Edsential are increasing their costs and from 1st May, school dinners will cost £3.30 per day, £16.50 per week. Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 receive free meals as part of the government’s Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) scheme. Dinner money must be paid in advance via School Spider.
If you are in receipt of benefits and think that you may be entitled to free school meals, please click here for more information and support and how to apply. It is very important to apply for free schools meals whatever year your child is in, even if you receive the UIFSM in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, as the school receives a sum of extra money to further help support your child and their education.
Confirmed Dates for the Spring Term 2025 – new dates highlighted
Dinner Week 2
Wednesday 26th March: Winsford Decides at The Winsford Academy 7pm
Friday 28th March: Open the Book Collective Worship
Monday 31st March – Wednesday 2nd April: Year 2 and 3 Residential to Robinwood
Friday 4th April: Easter Service in St. John’s Church at 9.15am. All welcome.
Friday 4th April: School closes for Easter at 2pm
Tuesday 22nd April: School opens at 8.35am for the Summer Term
Have a lovely weekend.
Take care,
Mrs E Snowdon