St Cecilia's News

Dear Parents,

I hope that you are well and have had a good start to the summer term. Time has flown, as it always does in the summer term and we are already at the half term break.

To celebrate the arrival of half term the PTA are providing ice lollies on Friday afternoon for a £1 donation see their poster below.

Congratulations to our students who participated in the swimming gala (winning bronze, silver and gold medals) and the Y5 Boys Football Sutton and Cheam Cup this week (coming second in the competition after a superb match.) At both events children showed tremendous determination and sporting ability. Thanks to Miss Fry for her leadership of PE and Sport and to the staff and parents who have supported the children at so many events. You can find full details of our achievements within Class Dojo.

We hope that you enjoyed our parent workshop with Sharon Girling on internet safety and how to protect your child online at home. Sharon spoke with all year groups about being safe online, protecting our data and information, ensuring that we are connecting with real people.

It's good to check in with your child, especially over a holiday period when they can be online more, about who they are online with. How do they know that the 11 year old they are chatting with is an 11 year old? We used our School Values in assembly and discussed how, when we are online, we should still remember our core values - our digital footprint is a lasting reminder of how we behave online. The video is attached for you below.

Please don't forget that we return from the May Half term on Tuesday 6th June as we have a staff training day on Monday 5th.

Best wishes for the break,

Vince Burke

Head Teacher

We are moving away from Pupil Asset and have contracted a new company, Arbor, to provide our Management Information System.

We will send out joining instructions for Arbor on Monday 5th June.

Please make sure to make all necessary payments through Pupil Asset before that date. The accounts will be transferred to Arbor after the May Half Term.

The Pupil Asset parent portal provides access to your child's historical academic reports. If you have not done so already, please download these reports to your own system as they will not be carried over to Arbor.

All payments for childcare and school trips will be made through the Arbor app after the half term, not Pupil Asset. We hope that the Arbor app will prove to be more stable and less problematic for parents.

The school team have been busy training on Arbor over the past few weeks. Attainment data will be moved over to the new system gradually through the month of June.

If you have children in the Ursuline, Wimbledon College or St Philomena's you will already have access to the app and will soon be able to attach our school to your account.

Thanks for your patience as we make the move over to Arbor!

We celebrate May as the Month of Jesus' mother, Mary. As part of remembering Mary, we have a traditional Crowning of Our Lady this Thursday morning. Please send your child in with a flower or two so that they can process and lay them at the feet of Our Lady's statue. All flowers are then made into lovely bouquets and donated to the hospice.

Excitement will be building as we approach our Y6 visit, it's very late in the term this year. We have a meeting for Y6 parents about the Dorset residential visit on Friday 16th June at 9am, will share any slides with you. A packing list will be sent out after the half term holiday.

We will be in touch with Y4 parents shortly regarding their children's residential in 2025.

Thanks for your continued patience with our school gates.

We are still awaiting planning permission, it has been refused yet again by the Council on a technicality. We are hoping that the new fencing and gates will be installed over the summer holiday but we have still not been able to reserve the builders as planning is running so late.

The gates are largely funded by the Government however as a Catholic school parents are required to contribute £18k to the installation. This part-funded arrangement has been in place for faith schools since 1944. We will use the donations to our Governor's Fund to pay for this contribution, many thanks to all of you for your continued financial support to the school.

The new gates will offer us enhanced security, additional CCTV and monitoring and a more secure pedestrian route to the school office which does not go through the open playground.

We design our curriculum to enable children to revisit key themes and vocabulary as they progress through the school. The teachers also revisit key facts as part of the learning warm up in lessons and we often have "retrieval quizzes" to help children think back, remember and connect past learning to present learning.

With this in mind, we are moving to a new Science programme from this September. Ms Humphrey, Science Subject Leader, will be updating the Science area of our website with information on the new curriculum.

Our new Science Programme of Study has smaller blocks of learning and returns to key concepts on a more frequent basis, this will help the children to remember key concepts and rehearse science skills more frequently.

You can find out more details about White Rose Science through the link below, we will also have full information at the Year Ahead meetings.

We are currently finalising class arrangements for the next academic year and planning for our curriculum changes.

Parents will have the opportunity to meet with the teaching team for the new class at the Year Ahead Meetings. Year groups relate to the year group for the next academic year.

Years 1&2 - Tuesday 11th July at 9am

Years 3&4 - Wednesday 12th July at 9am.

Years 5&6 - Friday 7th July 9am.

Mrs Kirkwood, our Midday Meals Supervisor leaves us after 9 years of service, caring for the children as they have lunch each day. We wish her well in her future employment and thank her for all the care and dedication she has shown to the school community at so many of our events.

As we come to the end of this academic year please remember that our transition period for our old uniform has now passed.

All children will need to be in the "new" school uniform from September. Please do not forget that skirts, pinafores and trousers need to be navy blue. Links to popular stores which provide the navy items can be found on our website.

In order to have a timely delivery from Price and Buckland, please make sure to order in plenty of time and certainly before the end of July. Orders placed in August are not guaranteed for delivery. Our PE kit and jumpers are made just for us and stocks can run low during periods of very high demand so please make sure to order in time to avoid any disappointment.

Our Sports Day takes place on Thursday 15th June for children in Years 1-6. Gates open at 08:30 and the first events start at 9am.

The Sports Day ends with a prizegiving ceremony which should conclude by 3:30pm.

Parents are welcome throughout the day and free parking is available on the field opposite the entrance road to the Sports Centre. Parents are asked to wear a security bracelet that we will send home before the event.

We ask all families to make their way to the Centre which is located at

David Weir Sports Centre
Middleton Road,

Carshalton
SM5 1SL

If your child usually has a school lunch a packed lunch will be provided, make sure to order on Schoolgrid. Parents are welcome to join their child for a family picnic at lunchtime.

Please make sure to prepare for the weather.

• We will have regular times during the day when the children will apply sun lotion, please provide a small bottle for your child to use, labelled with their name.
• Please also apply a good coat of sun lotion on your child before the start of the day.
• Children will need a named water bottle, there is a water station on the field

We will have more information for you nearer to the event.

Over the past two weekends it has been lovely to see the children receive the sacrament for the first time, beautiful Masses with Fr. Rob and some lovely sunshine. I hope that you all had a great celebration afterwards. Good luck to all our candidates receiving the sacrament over the next two weekends at St Matthias and St Christopher's the weekend of 17th and 18th June, please remember the children in your prayers as they start the next step on their faith journey.

Our Going Forth celebration Mass for First Holy children who have just received the sacrament for the first time will be at 0910 on Thursday 29th June, Mass will be celebrated by Father Rob.

Thanks to all those who supported the recent PTA Quiz Night, it was great fun and I'm sure everybody really enjoyed themselves! Many thanks to our wonderful PTA for all their arrangements, the school hall looked lovely. Thanks also to Mrs Scripps and Mrs Dean for hosting the event and working out all the tricky questions and activities!

We have a new School Nurse, Justine Hinckley

The School Nursing team works with parents, carers, children and young people providing advice and support on the following:

• Children with additional needs and complex health needs
• Sleep
• Behaviour
• Child development
• Healthy lifestyles
• Eating concerns
• Toileting
• Alcohol, drugs and smoking
• Emotional and mental health issues
• Sexual health and relationships

School Nursing team offer:

• Confidential drop in offered in high schools
• PSHE health education in schools
• Enuresis (bedwetting) clinics
• National Child Measurement Programme
• Supporting health needs in school- health care plan where required
• Home visits
• Safeguarding
• Referral to other specialists

You can contact Justine by phone on 020 8770 5409
By email at hcpadmin@sutton.gov.uk
Ask at your school’s office

The NHS will be contacting the parents of children who are not fully vaccinated to

sign a consent form for school-based vaccination or book an appointment at their GP

practice. However, the situation in London is serious with many children under-

vaccinated and unprotected. We are asking for your support in facilitating a school-

centric vaccination programme for these children and helping to raise awareness of

the importance of routine childhood vaccinations amongst your school community.

London Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9DL

Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Phone: 020 8337 4566

May

25th - Y3 Assembly - Crowning of Our Lady's Statue

29th May - 2nd June - May half-term holiday

June

5th - INSET Day - School Closed

15th - Y1-6 Sports Day at David Weir Centre (Children go straight to the Centre)

16th - Year 6 Residential Meeting 9am

16th - Borough Sports Afternoon for selected pupils

23rd - Reports published

24th - PTA Summer Fun Day

27th and 29th Parent-Teacher Meetings

29th - First Holy Communion Celebration Mass 0910

July

3rd - ECAs end this week

3rd - Y5 Swim fortnight begins

7th - Years 5&6 Year Ahead at 9am.

7th - Y3 at the British Museum

10th-14th Y6 Residential in Dorset

11th - Years 1&2 Year Ahead at 9am.

12th Reception Class Visit to Bocketts Farm

12th Years 3&4 Year Ahead at 9am.

19th End of Academic Year for Nursery

20th End of Academic Year Y1-6 at Midday

September

4th - Start for academic year for Y1-6 (EYFS start dates vary)