Newsletter 3 Autumn Term 2021

Covid19 Update

We currently have one confirmed positive case of Covid19 in school. I’m happy to report that the individual has not been too unwell and is already feeling better. As you will be aware, schools are no longer required to take part in contact tracing; this is now done by NHS Test and Trace. We are closely following governmental advice which can be found here. All procedures and events in school are run in line with our risk assessment and contingency plan.

Many children in school currently have symptoms of a heavy cold. As ever, if your child has a high temperature, a new continuous cough or a loss of taste or smell, please take them to a testing centre for a PCR test. Children with these symptoms should remain at home until a negative test result is received. However, their siblings may attend school as long as they themselves do not have any of the symptoms. 

Contacting School

As you may remember, the staff email addresses changed during the summer term. Please could you use the email address [email protected] or school gateway if you need to report that your child will be absent or to contact the office. Messages sent to the old email address (which does not have the .uk at the end) are no longer received. My email address is [email protected]

On the subject of contact, please ensure that we have up to date contact details (phone numbers and emails) for your child. We need to have more than one point of each contact for each child and it is particularly useful to have details of a contact outside the family home. 

If for any reason you arrive at school when the gates are closed, please come up the ramp and ring the bell for the office. Please do not enter the school car park on foot or by car or block the entrance by parking in it. 

CLEAPSS PRIMARY SCIENCE CONSENT FOR THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Dear parents,
We are very lucky to have developed a partnership with CLEAPSS Primary Science, who will be coming into school to work with some classes to trial investigative science activities. This will provide excellent enrichment in Science for the pupils. They would like consent to publish images of children or their work as detailed below. 

Permission to publish images of children or their work
With more than 22,000 member primary schools nationwide, CLEAPSS is the nation’s leading advisory service for primary school practical work. As part of our commitment to ensuring high quality safe and exciting practical science, D&T and art we are currently trialling new resources and activities in your child’s school.
The outcomes of this work will include journal articles, leaflets, other printable materials, and video clips available to our membership. These will be published on our password-protected website (www.cleapss.org.uk), and, possibly, in publicity materials and in the paper newsletter we send to schools. We are seeking permission to use photographs which include images of your child participating in educational practical work and/or copies of your child’s written materials. Such examples help bring our publications to life and play an important role in helping teachers visualise the activities we are describing.
Note that we will never include the name of any individual child, and in most cases will not give the school name. If you are happy for us to include unnamed images of your child participating in school-based practical work in our publications please give consent through the payments section of your school gateway accounts.
CLEAPSS has been supporting schools for over 50 years. It is a members-only, not-for-profit organisation restricted to educational establishments and suppliers, not the general public. By agreeing to let us use your child’s image and/or work you will be supporting the improvement of science, D&T and art in schools across the country.
Thank you for your help.
 
Steve Jones
Director

Thank you to all those of you who have already recorded your consent. If you have not yet done so, please could you give consent through the payments section of your school gateway accounts. There is no charge for this. 

Little Beacons Preschool

You should all have received an email on Friday about a consultation meeting about the proposal to build a new preschool building on the school site. The meeting is on Thursday 30th at 3:45 and further details can be found here.

We currently have a vacancy for a new teacher to lead our preschool. If you or anyone you know may be interested in this lovely opportunity, please find further details and an application form here.

Drum Lessons

We're delighted that Ben Waring from Devon Drum School will soon be offering drumming lessons at South Tawton Primary. For further information and to contact Ben, please click here.

Message from the Immunisation Team

Dear parents and carers,  
 
We have had an unprecedented demand for our early community Flu vaccination clinics and these early clinics are now full. Most children and young people will be vaccinated in school as in other years and we will be visiting schools from now until January 2022.  We will be arranging further community clinics for children who are clinically vulnerable or who have missed their immunisation in the school setting. As soon as we have more clinics available to book into we will send out further information to you, in the meantime please do not call into the Single Point of Access (SPA) to book a community clinic appointment. 
 
Thank you for your understanding and we will be in contact with you again as soon as there is an update. 
 
Best wishes 
Immunisation Team

PTA News

We held our AGM this week and thank you to Liz Davidson and Hannah Passmore for taking on the role of Joint Chair. Plus a massive thanks to outgoing Chair Katie Wright for all her input and efforts over the past few years. 

We'd also like to send a huge thank you to all PTA supporters for their amazing contribution towards fundraising events over the past year. We raised over £8000 which is the highest total we've ever achieved, and that is despite Covid restrictions, home-school and many of our regular in-person events not being possible. Fantastic! 

In this new school year, we have already agreed to spend some of the money raised on 15 new Chromebooks at a cost of over £2200.

We hope that you are able to continue to support us this coming year and can announce two fundraisers this term: 

- Non-uniform day Friday 22nd October for £1 donation per child. 
- An Autumn Safari Trail. Similar to previous Autumn and Easter trails, trail sheets will go on sale ahead of the half-term holiday, more details to follow...
- This weekend is also the deadline for those who wish to sign-up to or renew their 100 Club membership - see below. 

PTA 100 Club - New Members Needed!

If anybody would like to join this year's 100 Club, there is still time and there are plenty of numbers left. 

For the cost of £12 a year i.e. £1 per month, members are allocated a number between 1-100 that is entered into a monthly draw with three cash prizes to be won.  The more members of the 100 Club, the higher the cash prizes and the greater the money raised for PTA funds. The Club is open to all parents, grandparents, carers, staff and friends of the School in the wider community. 

If you would like to join the 100 Club, please complete the sign up form attached to this newsletter and then email the completed form to [email protected].  The £12 annual subscription fee should be paid by direct bank transfer to the PTA bank account, details of which can be found on the sign up form.

The first draw is due to be carried out at School at the end of September, so please can all subscriptions be paid as soon as possible.


A big thank you in advance for your support of our School's PTA.

The sign up form can be found here