Weekly Newsletter

Week 6...Thank you so much for the food gifts sent in this week for our Harvest celebrations, which will be very much appreciated by the Selby Food Bank. We hope those who joined us enjoyed the songs, prayers and thoughts shared by the children. Many thanks to Martin Pearson and the team at St Wilf's for welcoming, to the staff for their work in preparing with the children, and to Mrs Watson for her musical skills.

Reminder: start of the day The school day starts at 8:50am and children arriving after this time are marked as 'late'. The registers close at 9:10am which means that children arriving after this time are marked as 'U' ('late after registers') which counts as an unauthorised absence.

Attendance & illness In line with the new regulations around attendance, we are now having to share attendance information with North Yorkshire on a monthly basis. This includes where children have already missed a lot of time due to illness, and where we have reason to believe they may miss 15 days or more over the year (looking at patterns in the previous year) so the attendance team can pick this up. Obviously where a child has specific medical conditions or has had surgery we are mindful of this, but we do have children who have missed significant amounts of school through shorter blocks of illness which have added up to 20 or more days.

North Yorkshire Community Messaging (from NY Police) North Yorkshire Community Messaging allows members of the public to register to receive alerts, crime notifications and community news from North Yorkshire Police, this also includes businesses and schools within our communities in Selby to sign up to. This allows us to create an appropriate list of contacts and be able to reach out to you with crime prevention advice, this is a free service, and the information comes to your email only. (There are no text messages pinging away all day and night.) Sign up on this link https://www.northyorkshirecommunitymessaging.co.uk/#signup-section

Safeguarding newsletter The October Spotlight on Safeguarding parent newsletter is available here https://primarysite-prod-sorted.s3.amazonaws.com/brayton-cofe-primary-school/UploadedDocument/27c470af-783e-4561-a455-86148a57c03d/2024-october-primary-newsletter.pdf This month's edition includes advice on sharing images.

Contacting school Messages about absence, medicine, appointments & changes to after school picks ups must come through the school office either by phone 01757 704308 or email admin@bp.starmat.uk. Messages through Dojo don't work if a member of staff is absent, and also staff do not have their phones with them in the classrooms while they are working with the children so they can't always pick them up.

Term dates 2024-25 The term dates for this year are on the school website at https://brayton-cofe-primary-school.secure-primarysite.net/term-dates/

Jewellery No necklaces, bracelets, rings or other jewellery should be worn to school. If your child has earrings, these must be removed for PE sessions, or earrings can be left at home on PE days. Earrings for school should be small stud types so they don't get caught and cause any injuries.

Free school meals: save up to £450 a year Apply online at https://fisportal.northyorks.gov.uk/Synergy/fsm_prereq.aspx The application is very straightforward and there are only a few questions to answer. All the information is on the NYCC website at https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/free-school-meals

If you would like any advice or support with this, please contact the school office. We treat these matters with complete confidentiality and are always happy to help if needed.

If your child is eligible for free school meals you can also access other support, such as for visits and school holiday activity vouchers through FEAST https://northyorkshiretogether.co.uk/feast/

Whole-school attendance fell again last week, mainly due to holidays taken within term time.

Due to the national tightening of the rules around attendance, fixed penalty notices (fines) will be followed up by North Yorkshire Council for any 10 or more sessions of unauthorised absence within a 3-year rolling period as below:

• The first Penalty Notice issued to a parent in respect of a particular child will be charged at £160 if paid within 28 days, this will be reduced to £80 if paid within 21 days.

• A second Penalty Notice issued to the same parent in respect of the same child will be charged a flat rate of £160 if paid within 28 days.

• A third Penalty Notice cannot be issued to the same parent in respect of the same child within 3 years of the date of issue of the first Penalty Notice.

• In a case where the national threshold is met for the third time (or subsequent times) alternative action will taken. This will include considering prosecution but may include other tools such as one of the other Legal Intervention to address poor attendance.

Please remember, we will always contact you if your child is unwell during the day, so please make sure they are here as much as possible. With your help we made massive improvements in attendance over the last 2 years and this is now better across school than it has been in a very long time!

Monday 21-Wednesday 23 October - Y6 residential

Wednesday 23 October - School closes for half term

Thursday 24 October - Training day (school closed to children)

Friday 25 October - Training day (school closed to children)

Monday 4 November - School opens

Thursday 19 December - School closes for Christmas

Zaine H

Isaac W

Alfie B

Jaxon B

Ayan C

Sam J

Poppy B

Stars - Trae K

Moon - Francesca L

Mercury - Hope C

Venus - Teddy A

Galaxy - Jagger R

Earth - Esme C

Mars - Isaac L

Saturn - Oscar J

Jupiter - Miles S

Neptune - Braxton W

Meteor - Riley C

Asteroid - Sienna-Rose S

Pluto - Conor Y

Nebular - Sam S

Constellation - Lily Cole