Author: Mr Roundtree

The Secretary of State for Education has written to children and young people to recognise the impact of the disruption they have faced over the past year and to thank them for their resilience – read the letter here.

Let’s start the message with a few non-Covid things…

Thank you

We raised £139.98 for Comic Relief last Friday. Thanks to everyone for their contributions to our Red Nose Day.

Junior leaders

Rearranged from earlier in the term, next week, we have elections for our Junior Leadership Team (our new name for the School Council, to bring this group inline with the Senior Leadership Team in school). Democracy is a key feature of life in countries such as ours. We want to promote democracy as a way for people to have a say in what goes on. Our Junior Leadership Team is one of the ways that children are encouraged to take an active part in school life.

The election process allows children to develop an understanding of one of the British Values, democracy, with two representatives from each class, chosen democratically by their peers.

Today’s whole school homework is all about the election and democracy, ready for the elections next Thursday.

We’d like to thank the current school councillors for all their contributions over the last year (remember you can stand again). Good luck to the children who choose to stand in the election.

Recruiting

Our school meals provider, Catering Leeds, are looking for staff to join their teams, working in schools within this area. They pay the Leeds Living Wage (a minimum of £9.30 per hour) and have available part-time roles which are term-time only. If you’re interested, visit jobs.leeds.gov.uk website and complete an application form.

And now, one (just one!) Covid-related thing…

Self-testing at home

Lots of families now have access to home self-testing kits – these are called lateral flow tests. These tests are useful because they help find asymptomatic cases of Covid 19. That means they can sometimes identify that someone has Covid-19, even if they don’t have symptoms.

The tests shouldn’t be used to confirm a positive or negative infection.

If your child has any Covid-19 symptoms, they should isolate at home. The rest of your household, including brothers and sisters, should also isolate. Don’t send any to school. Book a PCR (lab) test.

Negative results from a lateral flow test do not rule out Covid-19 infection. This is especially in the early stages of an infection when the viral load is lower.

Even with a negative result, if your child has symptoms, don’t send them (or siblings) to school.

Also, if doing a lateral flow test, do it carefully. The tests are good at identifying if someone has a high viral load of Covid-19. They never confirm that someone doesn’t have the virus.

And finally for this week…

Here’s the latest Families Leeds & West Yorkshire magazine…

Have a really good weekend, hopefully enjoying some sunshine along the way.

This week, we’ve had to close Year 5,6 bubbles in two of the three Sphere schools. This is such a shame, but really does highlight that Covid-19 is still out there.

Testing for Covid-19 at home

In one of the situations, the bubble closing stemmed from a pupil who had tested positive at home with a home testing kit (a lateral flow device test, or LFD test). The family then went to get tested again, this time using the central test sites where the tests are processed in labs (a polymerase chain reaction test, or PCR test) and the test result was positive.

This shows the value of doing the home-testing. It helps spot cases when someone has Covid with no symptoms, but can still spread the virus. (These are called asymptomatic cases.)

If a pupil has symptoms of Covid they should get a PCR test. A home LFD test isn’t enough – a negative LFD test for a person with symptoms isn’t sufficient evidence that they are negative. If your child has symptoms of Covid, or just doesn’t seem right in any way, please don’t send them to school.

You may have read some worrying reports recently about a chatroom website called Omegle. The website has as its tag line ‘Talk to Strangers’ – as you can imagine it’s for 18s and over.

We’ve had some worrying reports that younger children have been accessing this website and may have seen some inappropriate things.

Please check your child’s device regularly.

We’re a happy and healthy place to work!

Moortown Primary is a happy and healthy place to learn, but we’re proud to be a happy and healthy place to work, too.

Every year in the Summer Term, we ask you to complete an annual survey – it’s always good to hear your views. Every two years, we also ask staff to complete a survey – the most recent was in February.

We’re delighted that across all three schools in Sphere Federation, 100% of staff agreed that pupils’ behaviour is good and that pupils are safe. You might think staff would say this, but the survey is an opportunity to ‘tell it how it is’ in an anonymous way, so these outcomes are great.

Other questions related to staff wellbeing and workload; leadership; the curriculum; and assessments. The outcomes in these areas were also really high – typically over 95%.

Typical comments from staff at Moortown Primary are:

• ‘All staff are vigilant and confident in safeguarding procedures – if they’re not then they ask. The curriculum empowers children to know how to be safe in many different areas.’
• ‘The Head of School and Head of Federation work very well as a team and are supported well by leaders across the federation.’
• ‘Over the years, the school has effectively adapted to challenges, especially during the current pandemic, ensuring staff and student’s safety and wellbeing.’
• ‘Leaders have been really understanding and supportive when I have faced challenging times.’
• ‘Workload is considered whenever new initiatives or procedures are introduced. Views are sought by teachers before, during and after implementation.’
• ‘Leaders listen to everyone and if there’s a problem, it will be addressed if at all possible, or there will be a clear explanation if this isn’t possible.’

 

Finally today, I found out that one of the fans of our daily / weekly messages is Mrs Weekes’s mum, so I’d like to say a big hello to her, and a happy Mothers Day to her, and of course to all mums!

Hello to all of you Times Tables Rock Stars

This Friday is Red Nose Day and the people at TTRS have come up with a great challenge to raise some extra money for Comic Relief.

 

Prices for a new nose start at 50,000 coins so we’d best get saving.

We’ve got until Friday –  Red Nose Day. Let’s do our bit to help the nation reach that £5,000 target.