I hope that you had a good weekend – it was a pity that we had so much rain considering the beautiful weather last week. The children love being able to use the field at lunchtime. We are so lucky with the amount of green space we have on our school campus
Over the past two weeks during twilight sessions, a number of the staff have been renewing their First Aid qualifications, which have to be renewed every three years. Our instructor, Alan Jobling from Northern Training Partnership, talked us through basic life support, choking, bleeding, burns and fractures. This also involved us in a range of practical activities including using the dummies for chest compressions and bandaging each other. We do hope that we will never have to use these skills in school or outside of school.
I am also very grateful to Mrs Sheena Carrick, mother of Olivia, for giving up her time to come into school to teach basic first skills to some of our Year 7 students during the DLE sessions on Friday afternoon – these basic skills are so great to have.
All of our associate staff will also be undertaking training for the use of defibrillators during this term and we will have a defibrillator on our school campus once this training has been undertaken, hopefully in September.
Can I please remind all parents of the importance of good attendance during the school year? 64 children at the end of the Spring Term had a 100% attendance and these names will be celebrated in the May newsletter. At present the Government say that a child is classed as a persistent absentee if their attendance is less than 85% (at the end of the Spring term, 15 children at Chantry came into this category)
As from September 2015, persistent absence will be classed as less than 90% – this will present more challenges and we hope that you support us with this. Please remember that if your child has less than 90% attendance then they have missed the equivalent of half a day for the whole of the academic year.
I do hope that you will make some time to read our May newsletter which will be published on Friday 1st May, celebrating the achievements of the previous month and informing you of important dates and events for the remainder of the school year.
With best wishes for the coming week
Enjoy the May Bank Holiday.
Steven Johnson
