Swavesey Primary School Parent Portal - Newsletter 66 (02.07.2023)

Updates from Mrs Norden

Last week began with our fabulous Sports Games Day which was enjoyed by all, and we thank Mrs Turian for all her hard work in organising and setting up the day for us. A news article about the day, including results will be available on the website soon.

The week finished with the excitement of our annual Swavesey's Got Talent Final, which again was thoroughly enjoyed. The auditions led to difficult decisions for phase staff on finalists and the final brought more difficult decisions for the panel of judges. We thank Mr O'Neill for all his organising and the judges for giving up their time to support this event. Again more news, including the overall winners, will be available on the website soon.

The rest of the week brought complexities with our Internet being down for nearly 3 and half days with just intermittent periods of being accessible from Tuesday morning through to Friday. This included it going down again on Friday after we had advertised its return. It is amazing how much we rely on the Internet not just for day to day organisation, especially as our phone lines run through it, but for our wider working and organisation. Having moved everything into a 'cloud' based system since Covid lockdowns began, to support more efficient and accessible working, weeks like this last one show how technology is great but only when it works. Hence, why some of our 'news' will be delayed making it to the website and newsletter.

I would like to thank the office team for their ingenuity running a single computer by hot spotting with the one mobile on site which who had some signal (although this also kept dropping out) so that we were able to maintain emergency contacts and follow up at least some queries. Also, a huge thanks to the staff generally for rallying and managing to keep teaching despite not having access to resources they had wished to use, and to you for being patient through this period.

Unfortunately, the 'down period' means there is much for us to catch up on, and we can only hope that the Internet will be working tomorrow. EdIT, the LA department with oversight of pour provision, assured us the engineers would keep working on the issue over the weekend, and we hope that they will have been able to resolve it fully.

Friday 7th, all being technologically well, will see the children's school reports ready to go home to you. Please make sure that you have updated MCaS with permission for these to be brought home by the children, which is part of our GDPR processes. If this permission is not 'ticked' in Bromcom then parents will be able to collect the report/s from the school office from Monday morning. If those with parental responsibility do not live in the same household, and you would like to request a second copy of a child's report, please ensure you let us know by email to the office. If you need this posted please ensure this detail is also provided with the correct address.

The report envelope this year will also include a paper copy of your child's personal data sheet. We have found on several occasions across the year that the information we hold, especially for contact numbers, is incorrect with information not having been updated through MCaS. We are therefore sending the sheets out for you to check, and ask that if there are any corrections needed that you return the sheets to the office with this information annotated.

Thank you to all those who supported Louie's fundraising. He has reached his target and is looking forward to having his bionic arm fitted very soon. This week another of our children is asking for us to support their efforts. Evie, one of our Year 6 pupils, is having her hair cut on Wednesday 5^th July, and donating it to The Little Princess Trust so that it can be made into a wig for children who have lost their hair through cancer treatment. Alongside this, she is also hoping to raise money for the charity as it costs £150 for a child to have a wig fitting and £550 for a wig to be made. Evie has set herself a target of raising £150 to support these processes as well as donating her hair. If you think you might be able to support Evie please click here to go to her justgiving page.

Our newsletter continues with more updates, so please keep reading to ensure you have all the relevant information for the last few weeks of term which will continue to be busy.

_{Anna-Claire Norden}

_Headteacher