Latest News from the Head
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
-
March News
Wed 29 Mar 2023As we approach the Easter holidays, I would like to start by thanking all of our pupils, parents and staff for their hard work and contributions to school life this term.
The biggest thing that has stood out for me in March is reading. What a PHENOMENAL achievement for our school community to have raised nearly £5,000 during our sponsored read. Reading is one of my favourite things to do, and in fact, one of the first things I did as Headteacher was to set up a shelf in my office for books that have helped my understanding of education, schools and leadership. I am incredibly proud that it is a passion shared by our families at Rushy Meadow. Our team have been busily discussing their book wishlists with Miss Knight and I cannot wait until we are able to fill our school with new Usborne books!
BSL Week
During the w.c. 13th March, we celebrated British Sign Language (BSL) Week. There are 7,000 spoken languages across the world, but did you know there are also 300 different sign languages? As we have a base for deaf pupils at Rushy, we constantly talk to our children about deaf awareness and are trying to raise the profile of BSL within school. We have introduced a weekly sign of the week and during BSL week, we took part in the UK’s largest ever online BSL lesson. This online event involved over 223,000 pupils from 1,350 schools. We also challenged children to learn to fingerspell their name. If you would like to try this at home, you can find fingerspelling alphabets here:
https://www.british-sign.co.uk/fingerspelling-alphabet-charts/
Two areas we have been working with our families on are attendance and punctuality. I am pleased to share that we are seeing improvements in both of these areas. As the table below shows, overall school attendance and the number of pupils achieving 100% attendance has improved in the Spring Term. Meanwhile, the number of pupils arriving late has fallen.
Attendance
Late marks
Number of pupils with 100% attendance
Autumn 2022
91.22%
1103
64
Spring 2023
92.07%
728
77
In Assembly this week, we celebrated the many pupils who have attended school every day and also those pupils whose attendance has improved by 10% or more since the Autumn Term. I have set the children the target of having 100 pupils with 100% attendance in a term. Let’s see if we can achieve this in the Summer!
Parent Governor
We are looking for a new parent governor! As a parent governor, you will join our Local Committee. This is a group who offer support and challenge to the school. As a new Headteacher, I have found the Local Committee incredibly important to the ongoing success of our school. I am constantly learning about our pupils and our community. Governors - and in particular, parent governors - provide a voice that I am eager to hear from.
With this newsletter, we have attached a letter from Pauline Cook. Pauline is the Chair of our Local Governor Committee and has been working with Rushy Meadow since 2016. If you are interested in either applying for or nominating another parent for a governor position, please see the instructions in her letter.
Journeying safely to school
Those of you who have been following my newsletters closely will know that I am passionate about ensuring that our pupils’ journey to and from school is as safe and calm as possible. This term, I have been working with one of our parent governors to see what more can be put in place to support safe travel.
We have met with different members of Sutton’s Sustainable Transport and Commissioning Team to see what options we have available. We are aiming to improve signage and develop safe crossing points on both Fellowes Road and Rushy Meadow Lane.
An area that we are particular interested in is seeing how we can reduce the number of cars on these roads at drop-off and pick-up. We would like to work with you on this in order to come up with solutions that will support the needs of our families.
Please could I ask all parents to complete this online survey: https://forms.office.com/e/LMz3yn48v1
We will be using the results of this survey to inform our action plan going forwards.
In the meantime, please could I remind parents:
- Aim to walk, cycle or scooter to school as much as possible
- Park in designated bays
- Turn off engines when parked outside school
Lost property
Please note that we have distributed any named lost property. Any non-named items will be on a table outside the Office on Thursday 30th March at 1pm. There are a lot of jumpers/cardigans, coats and winter wear. Please come and take a look if your child is missing something!
*Please note that any unclaimed items will be donated to our second-hand uniform store or donated to charity.End of Term reminders:
- Thurs 30th March : Parent Consultations
Rec-Year 6 pupils finish at 1pm. - Fri 31st March: Last day of term
Nursery normal finish time
Rec-Year 2 pupils finish at 1.30pm
Year 3-6 pupils finish at 1.35pm - Monday 17th April: all pupils return for normal school day
Finally, enjoy the Easter break and we will look forward to welcoming pupils back in the Summer Term.
Yours,
Mr Needham
