Rev Becky will be joining us in school to lead the Harvest assembly for the children on Monday. Please send any donations for the food bank in throughout the week. We will be taking the donations on Friday 17th, I will be taking some children and to experience the food bank in operation – hopefully helping to process the food and stick on some stickers.

Dried/tinned products only please.

Thank you for supporting local families in need through our Harvest donations.

Mrs Lyall

As you may be aware, Market Drayton swimming pool is due to close next Tuesday for repairs due to a rather large leak. Due to this the swimming plans for KS2 have been amended.

Next week Y5&6 will now have their last lesson on Monday 13th October. There will be no lesson on Friday 17th as the pool will be closed by then. We just managed to squeeze in their session before they closed! Huge thanks to Leanne Bradley who has made this possible for us.

Unfortunately we do not have any new scheduled dates for Y3&4 but it will no longer be straight after half term as originally planned. We await further information from the pool staff and will let you know when lessons can commence when the pool reopens.

Parents/Carers are invited to attend our parents evening after half term to discuss how their child/ren have settled into their new class and the progress they are making. This is also an opportunity to see their learning books and leave them a ‘positive post-it’ to celebrate their achievements. We ask that all parents attend, ensuring that they can meet the teacher/s and therefore work together to ensure a strong educational partnership for the bests interests of the children.

We use an online booking system to enable families to book their own convenient time slots, the times will be available to book via School Cloud from Wednesday 15^th October. Parents need to log in to School Cloud using their first name, surname and email address, this must be the same information registered with school. A letter with the log in link will be sent home next week. Parents will then be able to access the parents evening and book a slot for their child. We ask that separated parents come together and have one appointment per child, unless there is a court order or other safety reason why this cannot take place. If you would like to discuss this further, please contact Mrs Lyall. If you are having difficulty booking a slot, please see your child’s teacher in the first instance.

• The booking system will open for parents on Wednesday 15^th October at 3pm
• The booking system will close for parents on Monday 10th November at 4pm
• Parents evenings are on Tuesday 11^th November 3.30 – 5.00pm and Wednesday 12^th November 3.30 – 7.30pm. Parents only need to book one appointment per child on one of the optional days, we have two days to ensure we can meet demand.

We look forward to seeing you.

Mrs Lyall

Thank you to families who purchased books this week from the book fair. We now have £315 to spend on new books using the commission from the sales.

Yesterday we had an external audit of our school safeguarding procedures, completed by Telford & Wrekin Safeguarding Team. The findings were overwhelmingly positive, as we expected them to be, but the feedback was simply outstanding. I am so proud of us all!

A few of the key findings said by the team at the feedback session:

• ‘Safeguarding at Hodnet is exemplary.’
• ‘The culture of safeguarding, compliance, care and compassion for children at Hodnet is powerful’.
• ‘The quality of provision is exceptional’.
• ‘The ethos, values, culture of safeguarding are clearly evident – leaders and staff care at Hodnet’.
• Early Years provision for safeguarding is outstanding. The audit team were very pleased with our EYFS team led by Mrs Noden. Stating that her knowledge and diligence for the changes to the EYFS framework this year were very impressive – she blew them away!
• The team were delighted with our grounds and the health and safety of our school site. They saw calm purposeful classrooms with a strong culture of keeping children safe running throughout everything we do. Huge thanks to Jemma and the team at KSPlantscapes for maintaining our grounds, ensuring our children have a safe place to play and learn.
• Our children simply shone, what fantastic ambassadors for our school. All the children spoken to were overwhelmingly positive about our school and knew how to be safe, who could help them with a problem, they knew about Childline and the NSPCC and had a good knowledge of online safety. Thanks to Miss Darmanin for her early work with the school council for 25/26, who were only formed last Friday!
• The team were impressed with all other areas, including but not limited to; our safeguarding curriculum, our support for all pupils especially those in need of early help, our record keeping and our website.
• Our provision for children with additional needs also received high praise, thanks to Mrs Williams for all the hard work she put into ensuring the needs of our learners with SEND are valued, supported and recognised.

We are delighted with this recognition for our strong safeguarding culture in school. I’m sure you will join with me in congratulating our whole school community team for their hard work and determination in this crucial area of education.

Thank you for your continued support,

Mrs Lyall.

The last week of this half term is our careers and aspirations enrichment week. 13th – 17th October. We aim to inspire our pupils about life beyond school and the world of further education and work.

During this week the children will learn and out different jobs and the journey people have taken to get to their chosen career path. We would appreciate some support from the wider school community, to showcase our differing strengths and talents and ultimately aim to inspire the next generation!

How can you help?

If you free to come in and talk to the children about your job, your career pathway, the qualifications you needed (or didn’t need!) to get there, please contact Mrs O’Connor on admin@hod.318education.co.uk. We will be hosting a carousel of workshops on Monday 13th and Fri 17th between 1-3pm, which we have done several times before and found to be very successful. If you can spare an afternoon session to talk to multiple groups of children, we would be grateful.

So far, coming in that week are:

• An illustrator, an author
• A firefighter, a Ryanair pilot
• A secondary school teacher,
• A nurse, a scientist, a food inspector, a radiographer
• An RAF pilot and air traffic controller
• An RAF careers officer, an engineer (tanks)
• A veterinary nurse, an archaeologist
• A royal baker

We thank you in advance for your support and hope that you will be able to come in to share your career journey with our children.