St Cecilia's News
End of January 2021
A March Return?
I hope that all your family remain well. Many thanks to all those who have kept in touch with us about any outbreaks within their family, we assess each case against guidelines from the Department for Education and issue isolation notices accordingly. Whilst the number of cases notified to us have increased, we have been very fortunate that children are generally testing negative or have not been in school during the infectious period. It is clear that there is much more infection about however, so I do hope that you are all keeping safe. We have many families coping with bereavement and sickness within the family that is not necessarily COVID related, but coping with that pressure is so much more difficult in a pandemic, our thoughts and prayers are with you all as you face these challenges.
I'm sure that you will have heard that the Government have indicated that we may have a return to school on March 8th, we hope that we can now aim for that date, it will be good to have everyone back in school as usual, let's hope that the date is confirmed. Home learning is so tiring and complicated, we fully understand and we appreciate all your efforts at home, the experience of home learning is so different for each and every family. It has been wonderful to see all the hard work taking place on Dojo and in Google Classroom, thanks again for all your support and keep up the hard work!
As a school staff, we are all now undertaking COVID testing twice weekly, this helps us to provide an added layer of safety to our provision in school.
We are working with Rising Stars to offer the Reading Planet reading scheme online, please look out for an email from us over the coming week if your child is on the reading scheme.
Next week is the National Children's Mental Health Week. From 1-7 February 2021 schools, youth groups, organisations and individuals across the UK will take part. This year’s theme is Express Yourself.
Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. This could be through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film, and doing activities that make you feel good.
It’s important to remember that being able to express yourself is not about being the best at something or putting on a performance for others. It is about finding a way to show who you are, and how you see the world, that can help you feel good about yourself.
Class teachers have arranged some special activities which you will see during your child's learning programme next week.
Many thanks for all your support for the school during the pandemic,
Best wishes and stay safe,
Vince Burke
Head Teacher
Logo
It was clear from all of the children's entries that St Cecilia's lyre and the Crucifix are very important symbols to them. We also wanted to include an element of community coming together in Catholic school and so the mosaic outline has been chosen to indicate our coming together to form a whole school. In other editions of the logo we can make more use of this idea. We hope that you like the logo, it is much simpler for us to reproduce and it will feature prominently on our uniform, printed and online materials. The logo shown here is the style that will feature on our jumper and cardigans.
Many thanks to all the children for your entries, all of your entries helped us to form the new logo. Thanks also to our Governing Body for their support with the logo redesign. Our previous logo is still cherished as an important part of the school's history and will still feature on display in school.
Uniform
Over the past year we have been working with parents and governors to evaluate our uniform. We are very grateful to all those parents who have taken part in different ways:
- many have provided feedback on our current supplier and uniform items
- others have sent in old jumpers for us to evaluate wear and tear
- a number of parents have road tested jumpers from different suppliers so that we could check on quality, bobbling, colour fastness and shrinkage
As a result of this process we are going to be making some changes to our uniform requirements, these changes will be introduced gradually. The new uniform reflects some changes including our new logo and a new PE kit.
A new provider
A principle change will be in the provider that we use. Following our consultation programmes, we are changing our uniform provider from Clothesline in Grand Drive to Price and Buckland. They are a national company based in Nottingham and will provide the service through their online shop. We will have a range of samples in school so that parents can check for sizing.
Thanks go to Delia and Canute at Clothesline for all their support for the school over many years, we wish them all the very best. As our contract with them has now ended, our uniform is no longer available from them.
We are finalising arrangements with Price and Buckland now and expect stock to be available to order online in March.
We are simplifying the options available to parents and will share these with you in March through a new uniform brochure and short video which will give full details of uniform requirements.
No need for immediate change
I must emphasise that there is no need for any immediate change, our new uniform is being phased in over years as your child's current uniform needs replacement or as new cohorts of children join the school.
Purchasing in February
If a parent desperately needs a jumper, cardigan or tie please contact the school office as will have a few items of old stock here at school for purchase, although stock for some year groups is no longer available during this period of change to the new supplier.
Full implementation
We ask that all children are in the new uniform by April 2023.
RSPB Birdwatch
There is also a lovely app which can identify the birds near you through their birdcall, it's quite amazing to see the variety of birds that are about.
Communicating with school
St Cecilia's Catholic Primary School
Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Phone: 020 8337 4566