Carcroft School

Dear Parents/Carers,

I am writing to inform you that we are proposing a slight change to our start and finish times from September 2021.

I have been thinking about the start and finish times at Carcroft for a while now, in particular since we lost one of Assistant Headteachers, last Summer. One of our lovely AHT’s left Carcroft last summer in order to take up a role in a school closer to home; she had shared that since having her little boy, her mornings had become a struggle, with us starting at 8.25am.

I did start to reflect upon this last year, but unfortunately, with us being mid way through a global pandemic, it just wasn’t the time to make any changes. However, since December, I have started to plan ahead and do believe that September is the right time for us to make some changes to our start time and finish times in order to better support our fab staff team.

One of the hardest parts of being a Headteacher, is trying to ensure that all stakeholders are happy with the way in which the school is being led and managed; I have a duty of care to all of our pupils, but in addition, I also have a duty of care to our staff team too and at times, this can be a challenge trying to please everyone.

I am hoping that the changes I am proposing will not inconvenience our parents, will still cater to the needs of our pupils, whilst showing our staff team, that their well-being is important to us too.

We have a number of Teachers at Carcroft, who are also parents, and I do worry that at the minute, they are working incredibly hard to spin all of their plates, in particular on a morning, when they have to not only get themselves ready for work, they also have to get their little one/ones ready for the day ahead and then finally, have to prepare for a full day with a class of approximately 20 pupils (as well as ensuring that their support staff are well briefed in order to ensure the smooth running of the day!); I am sure you can imagine, this is no easy task when you have to plan and deliver 14 subjects throughout the week.

After school, a Teachers job is not done when the children go home. As a staff team, we have two working meetings per week, which usually run from 3.30-4.45. These meetings are professional development meetings, whereby we meet to discuss everything in which we are doing, in order to ensure that it’s the best that it can be for our children. Following these meetings, Teachers then go on to prepare their resources, creating, printing and trimming ready for the next day.

After much thought and reflection and testing out a model school day, I have taken the decision to start our school day at 8.40. This will therefore allow our Teachers the time to get into school, after organising their own childcare etc and set up for their day in class without additional stress and anxiety of feeling that there is not enough time.

In order to allow sufficient time for staff to plan, prepare and organise for the next day, we are proposing that our school day finishes at 3pm on a Monday-Thursday and 1.50pm on a Friday. This way, meetings can start 15 minutes earlier and can finish 15 minutes earlier, giving staff an additional 30 minutes per week to spend on planning and preparation after school.

I have discussed our change of school day timings with our Executive Headteacher from the XP Trust in order to ensure they he is happy that our school day allows us to provide a full broad and balanced curriculum for our pupils whilst supporting staff well-being, to which he was happy for me to move forward and share with parents.

I have attached a copy of the proposed model school day below in order to demonstrate the coverage of our curriculum across a school week. so that parents can see what our week will look like.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C-z6M_l5YGcNluooRg2VSCAJxNnCm-OPoVYUY9u1Wq0/edit?usp=sharing

I am hoping that parents can see that despite slightly changing our timings, we can still fit everything into our school week, whilst ensuring that our fabulous staff team have the time to undertake their role to a high standard. Without our dedicated staff team, we would be unable to run our school and we want the best staff around in order to make our school the best it can be. I am hoping that these slight changes will support us in keeping the best team around.

I would be grateful if you could complete the Google Form in order to express your support or share any queries in which you may have. There are two options, one to express that you understand the rationale and are happy to move forward with the revised times and one where you can share you are unhappy and can share your reasoning as to why.

https://forms.gle/DjLzYqBAnFS7b7HM6

I will review parent voice and will ensure that I reflect upon any comments/queries and suggestions made before finalising the changes; I will be in touch in due course.

Wrap Around Provision and After School Clubs

I have also started to plan for our clubs to fully reopen after the summer break. In addition, we are looking to offer a wrap around care option for our working parents, something which we have been hoping to do for a while. This is the provision in which we are hoping to offer and would love to hear if this is something that would support/be of interest to you from September.

We are looking to offer a breakfast club from 7.30 at a small fee (to be confirmed).

We will also be offering 1 hour clubs until 4.15 (Monday-Thursday) at a small fee (to be confirmed).

Finally, we are going to be offering an extended after school club until 6pm (Monday to Friday) at a small fee (to be confirmed).

We hope that by offering these clubs, we can better support parents, pupils and our community as we move forward on our journey.

Please express your interest in our wrap around care offer/after school clubs by completing the form below.

https://forms.gle/U5Tj1Kszz4EvL5ZF9

We will be coming back to parents with our price list for clubs and wrap around and will be in touch with regards to booking places for September after our half term break.

Thank you in advance for your support. You may have noticed that Facebook commenting has been switched off, as the more efficient way for us to collate parent views is via a Google Form. It also means that myself and Mrs Lythe do not have to manage the Facebook feed/thread over the weekend as it cane become extremely time consuming.

Thank you for your understanding, have a lovely weekend.

Miss Laing

Our handwriting stars from this week… 🎉🥳

I got to celebrate an improvement in handwriting from two wonderful pupils- Freya and Macey.

Both girls are taking pride in their work and are trying to ensure that their work is always beautiful.
They also read their work aloud- it was lovely to listen to them read their work and see them feeling so proud. Some great word and phrase choices selected to keep the reader interested. You certainly had me gripped.

I am hoping for a few more next week… 🙏🏻

This was Freya’s work in September….

This is Freya’s work now.. such fab progress 🙌

And Macey…

Today I celebrated with this fabulous bunch of Carcroft stars ⭐️ These children were chosen because they have made good progress with their handwriting and presentation which is something we are really working on as a school post lockdown. We also listened to Shay and Lacey read their writing aloud- wow! 🙌 They blew me away. Proud of them both. I’m also really pleased with how much work our Year 1 pupils Daisy and Lyla are now producing. Finally, Ray’s book is beautifully presented as always. ⭐️⭐️

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Thank you to those parents who have provided us with feedback regarding the XP Calendar. I have looked through parents comments and have made some slight changes to our final version of the 2021/22 Academic Calendar.

Carcroft staff will work the same number of days as outlined on the Local Authority Calendar. However, you will see that we will start our term, 1 day earlier in-line with the XP Schools. Then, in July, we will continue our term for a further 4 days once the XP Schools have broken up for Summer.

I would like to thank parents for their understanding in terms of the rationale behind us proposing that we would like our staff to attend the 5 additional INSET days alongside XP Staff, as we truly believe these days will be essential in terms of moving our school forward.

The calendar is never going to be straight forward, as everyone’s context is different. However, I do believe that this calendar is going to be a really good fit for us as a school next year. Staff will have 5 additional days to improve the education in which they provide to your children, whilst aligning the dates with the local authority calendar for 2021/22.

We will then fully align our calendar with the XP Trust from September 2022, but there will be more to come on this in the Autumn Term so that you can plan for the following academic year.

In the meantime, if there are any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me via email on [email protected].

Please can I ask parents to refrain from commenting on the post over the weekend period, in order to allow school staff a little bit of a respite after a busy first week back.

Thank you,

Miss Laing