I have liaised with teaching and premises staff who tell me that the later finish for upper school has not helped reduce congestion at pick at times and parents agree with 64% of you saying it hasn’t helped. 58% of you would prefer to return to the same finish time for all and 58% of you say this has not been a positive change. Therefore we will go back to 3.15pm finish time for all from Tuesday. I would continue to urge parents to park and queue respectfully to minimise disruption to our neighbours and keep children safe. 

We often hear about issues outside of school relating to WhatsApp/Snapchat. Given that WhatsApp has an age restriction of 13+, my first suggestion would be to not allow children to have the app. You will probably have seen about the potential damages of social media in the news so at the very least I would urge you to monitor your child’s usage and educate them on how to use it safely and responsibly. Mrs Lyons and Miss Andrews will be providing more support regarding online safety and phone use before the end of term. 

What Parents & Educators Need to Know about WhatsApp

I would like to draw your attention to the importance of regular attendance in this final term. Learning for the year is consolidated in this term and many one-off events are planned that your child will miss if they are not here. Absence affects not only the child/children that are not in school but also the rest of the class when the adults have to revisit missed learning to help them catch up. This has an impact on all of the children in the class. Of course, we understand that some absence such as illness cannot be avoided. We want children in school safe, happy and learning for as much time as possible. Contact Mrs Burgess on burgess@almondhill.herts.sch.uk if you need to discuss a barrier to attendance.

In our last parent forum, we discussed how we might 'promote' parents and the jobs they do more and at the same time, network with businesses we might be able to link with through parents. Working with parents in this way will strengthen our community and provide valuable services to the school which in turn, encourages our children to make progress. Whilst more thought will go into this over the coming term, we wondered if we might make a start by asking if there are any parents/carers who work in the communications industry and who have a sound understanding of tech and more specifically mobile phones. Miss Andrews and Mrs Lyons arel ooking at supporting parents in keeping children safe on their phones and on social media sites and apps. If you can spare 30 mins as a one-off to discuss some ideas with them it would be very much appreciated. Please contact year 4@almondhill.herts.sch.uk and mark email FAO Miss Andrews - thank you. 

If your child has been injured and is coming into school with a cast/sling or crutches, please have a conversation with the teaching or admin staff about what they can and cannot do before/at the point of them returning to school. This is to ensure they are kept safe and everyone knows what they need to do. A risk assessment may also be required depending on the injury.  

A reminder that for Years 5 and 6 swimming will be added to the school reports. The expectation as per the National Curriculum is that all children can swim 25 metres so your child’s school report will now state whether or not they can swim the required 25 metres. We have the data for children who were assessed in the pop up pool but there were parents who told us their child could swim due to external lessons. If this is the case for your child, please send evidence in (i.e their most recent swimming certificate) so we can add this to our information.  You can email a photo to admin@almondhill.herts.sch.uk. Please do this by Friday 30th May as reports will be written in June.