Welcome to the first bulletin of 2024
On behalf of all the team, we hope you had a lovely time over the Christmas break and that you have a happy, healthy new year. As we’re only two days in, this will be a rather short bulletin!
It has been an interesting start to the year weather-wise. Our hearts went out to some of our more ‘far flung’ members of staff who had horrendous, long, scary journeys into work and back on Thursday. Some staff living east of the city had to completely re-route, turning 30-40 minute commutes into several hours.
The children have been reminded of the changes to the allocation of House Points. As previously reported, these will now be recorded for individual children on our information management system. The points will still count towards the competition for each house, but the big end-of-year-treat will go to the children with the most points personally.
We have also started consultation with the children on changing our school rules. We are hoping to simplify these and structure them in such a way that better supports positive discussion and learning when things go wrong. As part of this, we’re also thinking of doing away with the concept of a ‘detention’ and replacing it with something more positive, with slightly less ‘secondary school’ connotations. Our detentions have never really been detentions in that respect; more some time spent reflecting and planning how to avoid further problems and, if appropriate, to re-establish positive relationships. More on both aspects of this next week…
A reminder that we remain active on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/parkdalecarlton
…and that notification of new stories our website auto-post on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parkdalecarlton
Over the holidays, we’ve had a new phone system installed – our apologies to anyone who might have struggled to get through to us first thing on Thursday, when it was proving rather erratic. All seems fine now. You might have also noticed an electrical socket appearing on the playground wall; that’s for the swimming pool! We’ve also had a small ramp created into nursery, which should make access to there, particularly for pushchairs, a little bit easier.
Diary
Nothnig much to report as yet, beyond a reminder that Friday the 9th of February is an INSET Day.