Newsletter 1 - 5 September 2024

Dear Parents/Carers of St George’s,

Welcome to the new academic year of 2024 – 2025.

I hope this letter finds you and your families and friends all safe and well and I hope that you have had a wonderful summer holiday.

The children have made a fantastic start to the new year and have settled quickly and happily back into school routines and expectations.

PE Days from Week Beginning 9 September 2024

We will continue to ask children to come into school wearing their PE kits on the days they have PE. Please see below:

Class Open Evenings

We will be running our Class Open Evenings as usual this year. This is to enable parents and carers to meet their child’s teacher and to gain some perspective on new routines and expectations and what to expect from the academic and wider curriculum throughout the year. The Class Open Evenings will be held in each relevant classroom and will begin straight after school at 3.15pm and should last 45 minutes to an hour. Please check the new Dates for your Diary for the Autumn Term to see when your child’s open evening is. If you can’t make arrangements for your child to be collected at the end of the school day by someone else, your child may stay in school and they will be supervised by staff in another area of the school.

These are important sessions where lots of information is shared. Please make every endeavour to attend. Thank you.

MacMillan Fundraising  

We are changing how we run our MacMillan fundraiser this year. To help us to raise more money and to encourage more parents and carers to attend, we are going to combine our MacMillan Coffee Morning with our Reading Cafés. These will be for Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6 and we will be hosting the coffee mornings over the week beginning 23 September. We will be hosting our usual Reading Cafés for both Nursery and Reception later in the term when the children have settled into school more. More information to follow.

Class Masses

I’m sure you all know that Father Paul has left St George’s Parish and is now in residence elsewhere. I know you will all join me in wishing Father Paul the very best of luck in his new parishes. He will be a huge miss to us all.

Father Arockia Mariadass Pagyasamy, will be taking over as Parish Priest at St George’s. We are really looking forward to getting to know Fr. Mariadass better and working alongside him in the faith formation of our school community.

We are hoping to continue our Class Mass programme with Fr. Mariadass and as soon as we are able to confirm future masses with the children, we will share this information with you.

Attendance Policy Review and Updates

Government and hence, local authorities have introduced new policies and procedures re: managing school absences and these came into affect in August of 2024. We have reviewed our policies and procedures and will be sharing these with parents and carers week beginning 9 September 2024.

Keeping in touch with school

Please ensure that you are always reachable by mobile phone during the school day so that we can contact you should we wish to speak to you. We only ring when there is an important matter we need to speak to you directly about or in case of emergency. Thank you.

Welcome to our new Caretaker

After much upheaval over the last year with site staff, I am pleased to say that we have hit the jackpot with our newest addition to the St George's Team. Please give a very warm welcome to Mr David Eagle who joined us at the back end of the six weeks holidays. Mr Eagle used to work as a painter and decorator and was one of the painters who actually decorated St George's during the refurbishment. Mr Eagle knows St George's really well and he's already made a huge difference to the school. I know that our community will make Mr Eagle feel welcome and I hope he stays with us for a long time. 

Dates for your Diary

Please visit our school website on the News section to check the Dates for your Diary for the Autumn Term.

If you have any questions for your child’s class teacher or you wish to share any pertinent information, please use the following email addresses below or ring the school office on: 0191 2675677.

misslawson@stgcps.org Nursery and Reception

mrsdouglass@stgcps.org Year 1 and Year 2

mrsellin@stgcps.org Year 3 and Year 4

missmcmahon@stgcps.org Year 5 and Year 6

We are very much looking forward to the new school year and are ready to embrace any challenges which come our way. Thank you, as always, for your support, it really is very much appreciated by each and everyone of us.

Best wishes,

Mrs Bullerwell (HT) and the Staff of St George’s