St Mary's Newsletter

Dear Parents/Carers,

Welcome back to a new half-term and the beginning of the second part of the school year. I hope that you and your children had a restful and very enjoyable half-term break.

I hope that you like the new format of our school newsletter; this is now completely website based and will be able to be viewed better on devices like phones, tablets and computers. Reminder that there is the useful ‘translate’ button at the bottom left of the screen, which will translate much of the information on the website into over 100 languages.

Covid Update

As you know, things on the Covid-front are gradually easing. This week we have been provided with updated Department for Education and local authority guidance about what we now need to do following the gradual easing of restrictions – see below. Wonderfully, we will once again be able to have face-to-face parental consultations meetings at school and these will be held during the week of 7th-11th March. These appointments are currently being organised by the school office and you will be notified within the next few days about when your child’s class meetings will take place. It will also be good for you to be able to come into school once again and see the progress that your child is making in their school books. However, and for the time being, we respectfully ask that when coming onto the school site, you sanitise your hands and wear a face mask.

World Book Day 

World Book day is also coming up (next week Thursday 3rd March), and as ever, children are invited to come into school dressed-up as their favourite book character. We will also be doing some fun book-related activities throughout the day which will include ‘Drop Everything and Read’. We will encourage children to have with them the book that features the character that they have dressed up as.

So for all of us at St Mary’s, it feels as if life is returning to what we have for some time been hoping for and this will make for a much happier and more enjoyable spring and summer at our school. Let’s keep everything crossed that this will indeed be the case.

Goodbye and Good Luck Mrs Plimley

On a sad note for us at St Mary’s, today we say goodbye to Sophie Plimley, my PA and clerk to the governors. As mentioned in my letter to you before half-term, Sophie has been nothing short of amazing on so many levels (including driving the development of our fabulous new website) and we wish her every success in her new role. Once again, thank you for everything Sophie – you will be hugely missed by us all, especially me!

Have a lovely weekend all,

Calvin Henry
Headteacher 

Information and reminders

World Book Day – 3rd March

• Children are invited to come into school dressed-up as their favourite book character! Don’t forget to bring in the book that you are a character from, if you can!

Parent consultations – w/c 7th March

• A booking link will be sent out next week.  The meetings are likely to be after school on Tuesday 8th and 9th March.

Parent and carer survey 2022

In advance of the parent consultation meetings, we would like to gather your feedback in a parent and carer survey, based on the questions that Ofsted would ask parent and carers prior to an inspection.  The survey is short and anonymous and will help us continue to improve the provision in school for all our children. Please feel free to fill the survey out more than once if you have children with different experiences at St Mary’s.  Additionally, you will have the opportunity to meet some of the school governors at the upcoming parent consultation meetings where you can give further feedback on other strengths and development areas of the school.

Click on this link to access the survey – Parent and carer survey – March 2022

Covid update from Haringey Public Health:

• The legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive COVID test has been removed. However, adults and children who test positive will continue to be asked to stay at home, not attend school/nursery and avoid contact with other people for at least 5 full days and then continue to follow the guidance until they have received 2 negative test results on consecutive days.
• Children, staff and other adults should continue to self-isolate when required to do so.
• Children should not come into school/nursery if they have symptoms, have had a positive test result or for any other reason requiring them to stay at home due to the risk of them passing on COVID-19 (for example, they are required to quarantine following travel).
• If your child develops COVID-19 symptoms while at school/nursery, we will ask you to come and collect your child, and they should be tested as below.
• If your child experiences a fever, a cough or a loss of sense of smell/taste then they should self-isolate and book a PCR test.
• If your child experiences wider symptoms of COVID-19 (sore throat, runny nose, headache, excessive sneezing, fatigue) then they should take a lateral flow test before returning to school/nursery.
• This testing requirement will be reviewed when access to free testing is ended nationally on the 1st April.
• Please report all positive cases to Mrs Walker on swalker@stmarysn8.co.uk

Class News