St Cecilia's News

Dear Parents,

As the happy faces above show, it's good to be back!

Welcome back to the new school year and a very big St Cecilia's School welcome to all our new pupils in Nursery, Reception and across the school. It is lovely that we have returned to school and can still enjoy some good weather before Autumn begins.

The children have settled well into their new classes and routines and are all enjoying being a year group older and wiser.

Music

Mrs Miller, our new music teacher joined us this week, she works Tuesday to Thursday and takes all of our classes, from Reception through to Year 6. She is following the New National Curriculum for Music through the SingEducation curriculum. She uses the Kodaly teaching method, there's lots about that online if you are interested

Gates return to usual next week

Our building work is now complete and we can return to our usual gates from next Monday. Parents for Years 3-6 can now drop children off at the main gates and collect them from the front playground. The steel containers will remain in the playground until the half term when they will be removed.

After School Clubs (ECAs)

Thanks for your patience with our SchoolCloud issue, the company is still having a national outage in parts of their site. The office staff are sending out ECA information today, Orchestra is being delayed by one week so that we can make sure that the grouping is correct.

The PTA have revised some of the dates of their events in order to fit on with the school calendar:

Pre-loved Uniform Sale

Before and during the Marsden Coffee Morning, Thursday 5th October, 08:35

Year 5&6 Disco

Friday 6th October, time to be confirmed.

Annual General Meeting

Thursday 12th October at 08:45, School, Hall.

Doughnut Sale

Friday 20th October, after school.

Race Night for Parents

Friday 3rd November, time to be confirmed.

Just a few dates for your diary. Thanks to Liz Khan our Chair of the PTA, the Committee and volunteers for all your hard work in building community, friendships and supporting the school at the same time.

Please remember that three years have passed and all children need to be in the new school uniform with our mosaic logo. Many thanks for all your support as we made the change, the children look so smart and really present a wonderful example of the school as they go out into our community.

We have plans in place to work with the Archdiocese of Southwark and local Catholic Schools to form a Catholic Academy Trust.

I am pleased to report that our Trust, Sancta Familia Catholic Academy Trust has now been given approval by the Department for Education, incorporated and registered at Companies House and schools will be consulting with their communities on making the move to join the new Trust.

If agreed through consultation and through their governing bodies, the first schools will join the Trust in the Spring of 2024. We will be consulting with our community as part of the second phase of schools to enter the Trust, you will hear more about this nearer the time.

We will be joining local Catholic primary schools in South West London and possibly three Catholic High Schools. Many of these schools are awaiting the results of consultation.

We are being called to create and become part of a Trust by our Archbishop, here is a snippet of one of his letters to staff and governors at the start of the summer holiday.

" For the common good of our Catholic schools, I am grateful to those of you who have considered my letter of January 2023. In that letter, I urged all of you to engage with an open heart in a conversation about what will strengthen Catholic education here in the Archdiocese of Southwark. I’m delighted to know that the model of schools moving to academies is now possible, not only by the expansion of our two existing trusts, The Kent Catholic Schools Partnership and SELCAT, but also the development of three further trusts: Christ the Redeemer; Sancta Familia; and, Saint Benedict.

Whilst there may be solace in adhering to what we know and are used to, we must face up to the fact that the landscape is changing; forming trusts will allow families of schools to celebrate their successes together. As with all families, there will be the opportunity to share concerns and overcome difficult times through mutual support, too. This is a true sign of ensuring the Church’s mission in education is real and impactful: allowing the work of God’s love to be shared and deepened."

This is an exciting development for Catholic schools in our area, I will come back to you with details of our consultation as soon as we are given the go ahead by the Trust.

A lovely way to meet others, please come along to our coffee morning on Thursday 5th October in aid of the Royal Marsden Cancer Centre.

Doors open at 0835 when we open the gates. Come along and join us in the hall, there is also a pre-loved uniform sale by the PTA. If you are a baker please think of baking a cake for us, all donations welcome.

It was special to see Mrs Kolendo return last week so that the children could say a proper goodbye. Through a treasure hunt with clues around the school, Mrs Kolendo visited each year group for a song or performance. This was all scheduled for the end of term but was abruptly interrupted by our early closure.

Thirty years in any workplace is a tremendous achievement, even more so in a school where so many lives have benefitted from her talent in music and performing arts.

We wish Mrs Kolendo a wonderful retirement!

You can find our term dates for this year and next on our website, link for you below. We have just one training day left for this year, this will be notified after Christmas, in will be in the Spring or Summer terms.

https://www.stcecilias.school/News/Term-dates/

Our residential visits to the Cumulus Centre in Dorset are now booked. Year 6 have a residential visit each summer, we're really pleased to have secured our dates for the next two years.

July 1-5 2024 for our current Year 6

July 7-11 2025 for our current Year 5 when they are in Year 6.

You can find out more about Cumulus on their new website, link below.

London Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9DL

Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Phone: 020 8337 4566

September

18th - Y6 Bikeability begins and takes place over three weeks for pre-booked students.

25th - Y6 Open mornings start at St Philomena's and evening meeting at Holy Cross

October

5th - 08:35 PTA pre-loved uniform sale and Marsden Coffee Morning.

6th - Y5&6 Disco

9th - Flu Immunistions

11th - Y4 visit to Morden Hall Park

16th - Y1 Mission Week

23-27th - Half term - We get new gates and fencing!

30th Training Day - School Closed

November

1st - Parent Teacher Meeting booking opens at 20:00

1st - All Saints Day Mass for students in Y3-6 at 2pm.

3rd - Attendance, reading Writing and Maths attainment report published for Y1-6

3rd - PTA Race Night

7th - Parent-Teacher Meeting for all classes N-6

9th - School Photographer

16th - Parent-teacher Meetings for all classes N-6

20th - Y6 Sutton Junior Citizen at Sutton Life Centre

22nd - St Cecilia's Day Concert - 1:45pm.

27th - Y5 swimming Fortnight begins

27th - Y3 St Augustine Class Assembly

December

2nd - PTA Christmas Fair

4th Y6 Mission Week

7th Y6 Sleepout

12th Y2 Nativity 2pm.

20th - Candlelit Carols

20th - Term ends for Nursery

21st - Term ends at Midday, no afternoon childcare.

21st - Attendance and levels for all national Curriculum subjects published Y1-6, EYFS levels for Reception and Nursery.