Our weekly message: Friday 10 January 2025

A belated happy and healthy new year to you all.

What a tricky start to the new term! Despite this, children came back to school on Tuesday cool, calm and collected, all ready for lots more learning! Thank you again for your understanding and support when we had to make the difficult decision to close on Monday.

New year, new contact details?

Let’s start with a short request: If you’ve got any new contact details for you or other contacts, please remember to let us know. We need up-to-date details for the people on our lists in case of emergencies. (The people on our lists are the ones you gave us when your child started school – in most cases, we should have details for three different people.)

Attendance matters

Our school attendance in the Autumn term was 95.3% – much higher than for the same term last year (93.8%). Brilliant!

Compared to other Leeds schools, it puts us around the middle place (116th place out of 223 schools. Compared to other schools nationally, we’re around the mid-point (decile 5: in the 40%-50% band).

Thank you for continuing to make sure your child gets to school as much as possible. (And a big thank you and well done to Year 5 pupils and parents for their attendance in particular: 97.5!)

As always, if you’re unsure, please check the NHS app: Is my child too ill for school?​

Talking of attendance…

Don’t forget our Spring Attendance Competition!

All pupils with attendance of 97% or higher this half-term will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Love to Shop voucher!

So… for the full Spring 1 half-term, Tuesday 07 January to Friday 14 February (six weeks), if your child comes to school 97% or more, their name will be entered into a prize draw. We’ll select one lucky winner on the last day of the half-term (Friday 14 February).

Money matters

This time of year can be difficult for many families dealing with additional costs and pressure on their household budgets. The Money Information Centre offers access to free, confidential, and impartial help and advice on a range of money-related matters, with a range of useful information about employment support, energy, fuel and food support and the healthy holidays programme.

Watch Us While We Work: you said, we listened

​Our Watch Us While We Work and Topic Review sessions are really popular – lots of you attend these. However, some parents have told us being able to visit just one class is frustrating. We’ve listened.

The next Watch Us While We Work session is coming up – it’s first thing on Thursday 23 January.

This time, we’ve asked teachers to plan for two parts within the half hour session. This means after the first 10-15 minutes or so, you’ll get a chance to switch classrooms without disrupting the learning going on.

We realise this doesn’t help if you’d prefer to visit three classes or more because you’ve more children, but we think these 10-15 minutes parts are as short as they can be while making sure you still get the most out of them.

Enjoy your weekend – stay warm!

Weather update for Wednesday 08 January

Just like today, we aim to open as normal tomorrow.

Registers will be open for longer. Your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.

This is to make sure you can get to school safely despite the freezing weather.

Weather update (Tuesday 07 January)

We’re open today (Tuesday 07 January).

Registers are open for longer so your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.

Please travel safely.

Snowy weather: update for Tuesday

We’re happy to confirm school will be open tomorrow as normal (assuming there’s not a drastic change in the weather conditions!).

When we’re faced with the question of whether to open or close, we have to factor in travel conditions for families and for staff (some of whom live quite far away); the availability of site staff to clear paths and make them safe; the condition of the rooms (and whether there have been leaks caused by snow, as was the case today, but thankfully only minor ones)…

Thank you for your understanding today.

This half-term's Christian value is...

…honesty.

At St James’ CE Primary School, we learn about Christian values that help us to become well-rounded citizens in society. Each half-term, we have a new Christian value that will be embedded into our collective worship and our reflection areas.

What is honesty? Honesty is being trustworthy and truthful in our friendships, our relationships, our school and our community. We understand that we need to be honest and truthful with others when working together as a team. There are challenges for us:

• How can we be honest in our daily lives?
• How can we encourage people to be honest?
• What can we do to fix it if we forget to be honest?

‘Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.’ (1 John 13:18)

In the Bible, we hear about Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), the tax collector, who was dishonest and stole money from others. Jesus went to visit him and he realised he had made a mistake. He saw the error of his ways. He had a total change of heart and got rid of his dishonest ways to follow Jesus.

Help at home!

Talk with your family about the consequences of not being honest or write a story or draw a picture to show what happens when people are dishonest. Bring it in to add to your class reflection areas.

Snowy weather: school is closed

School is closed today.

The weather situation hasn’t improved enough overnight so we’ve taken the decision to close school today.

Snowy weather

The weather conditions at the moment mean that any sort of travel is tricky. However, the forecast is an improving one. As it stands right now, please expect that that school will be open tomorrow. We’ll keep the registers open for longer so you can travel safely.

We’ll keep you updated online if there’s any further updates.

Finally… Happy new year! We hope you enjoyed a lovely break.

Spring 2025 Attendance Competition

St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to be – and maybe even a lucky one, too!

From Monday, we’re excited to launch our Spring 2025 attendance competition… All pupils with attendance of 97% or higher will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Love to Shop voucher!

So… for the full Spring 1 half-term, Monday 06 January to Friday 14 February (six weeks), if your child comes to school 97% or more, their name will be entered into a prize draw. We’ll select one lucky winner on the last day of the half-term (Friday 14 February).

Remember, arriving late for school counts as an unauthorised absence. This affects a child’s overall attendance figure, and that might mean they lose out.

In the Autumn term , 40 pupils had 100% attendance and 87 pupils had 97% or more attendance – well done to the children and their families!

Our last weekly message of 2024: Friday 20 December

If you came to one of our Christmas performances, we hope you enjoyed it and thank you for your donation. We raised £95 for our school charity: Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Highlights

It’s our last message of 2024! We thought it would be nice to share some of our highlights…

• Mr Freeman: ‘Handwriting and presentation has been impressive. This has been noticed by parents and other adults looking in books across all subjects – the children have really worked hard in daily handwriting and dictation practice. And another: Year 3 have consistently sustained a happy and healthy attitude. They look after each other, show compassion to each other and are willing to help children and staff at any opportunity. Their fantastic manners were noted on our trip to Lotherton Hall by the workshop organisers!’
• Miss Ward: ‘The children in Nursery really enjoyed a particular story this term: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. Their favourite part was going on a bear hunt into our forest school! After lots of searching and recalling key parts of the story, we found the bear! In the story the bear walks away from the family home and looks sad, so the children wanted to invite the bear back to Nursery to enjoy snack time together. We spoke about how it’s nice to be kind and caring towards each other. One of our Christian values is compassion.’
• Mr Kilner: ‘Children in Year 5 and 6 continue to arrive at school happy and healthy, ready to achieve. We’ve seen progress across all subjects and this has been supported with recent assessment results. Our recent Art topic has been a huge success. We’ve even incorporated this Art work with our yearly calendars. Some other highlights include our trip to Leeds Discovery Centre, The Royal Armouries, Tempo FM, Wetherby Town Hall and Wetherby High School (here we continue to build links, helping children with their transition to high school).’
• Mrs Kendrew: ‘My highlight for the autumn term has got to be how well the Reception children have settled into school. They’ve adapted amazingly to school life making new friends and establishing the school values and routines. They really have been shining stars for St James.’
• Mrs Poole: ‘The highlight of this term for me has to be all things related to times tables! It has been wonderful to see children’s enthusiasm for Mastering Number and to demonstrate our learning to teachers from other schools across West Yorkshire. It was also exciting to celebrate many of the children achieving their personal best at the times tables check last week.’
• Mrs Bye and Mrs Palmer: ‘The real highlight of the autumn term in Year 1 has been the children’s fantastic attitude to learning, which has led to amazing progress since their first day. By applying their Christian values to all aspects of their work, they have shown great courage, compassion, and perseverance.’
• Mr Nash:‘My highlight is this half term’s art topic. The children have been really engaged when learning about Georges Seurat and his work, and have been fascinated by pointillism. They’ve loved exploring different mark-making techniques to the point where pointillism has infiltrated our everyday… any opportunity to be artistic has been characterised by pointillism. Move over Georges Seurat!’

…and the highlight from Miss Beatson and me is a simple one: standing at the school gate at the start of the school day and being greeted by happy and healthy children as they arrive at school – it’s such a positive way to start the day! ​Our teachers at St James’ CE Primary have been great, pupils have been great, and parents have been great. Thank you to everyone.

Spring Attendance Competition

Just like last year, we’re excited to launch our Spring attendance competition… St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to be – and maybe even a lucky one, too!

All pupils with attendance of 97% or higher will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Love to Shop voucher!

So… for the full Spring 1 half-term, Monday 06 January to Friday 14 February (six weeks), if your child comes to school 97% or more, their name will be entered into a prize draw. We’ll select one lucky winner on the last day of the half-term (Friday 14 February).

Remember, arriving late for school counts as an unauthorised absence. This affects a child’s overall attendance figure, and that might mean they lose out.

So far this term, 40 pupils have 100% attendance and 87 pupils have 97% or more attendance – well done to the children and their families!

Leeds at Christmas

The ultimate guide to Christmas in Leeds includes a whole host of information about what’s happening over the Christmas and New Year period, such as visiting the Christmas markets across the city centre, family attractions including Northern lights at Temple Newsham and where to see Santa.

Finally, all that needs to be said is have a happy Christmas. We’ll see you all again on Monday 06 January.

Christmas lunch

We’ve had a wonderful final day of term and our tummies are full!

Thank you to all the catering team for cooking a delicious Christmas lunch.

Wishing everyone a lovely Christmas break and we look forward to seeing you all back on Monday 06 January 2025.