St Mary's Welcome back September 2024
Welcome back to the new school year!
Lord Jesus, we ask for your help as we begin this new school year.
Allow us to experience your presence in the many blessings you put before us.
Open our eyes to the new challenges and exciting opportunities that this new school year brings. Open our hearts and mind to new friends and new teachers.
Give us a generous spirit to be enthusiastic with our learning and courage to accept new opportunities. Help us to be attentive to my each other and let us experience your presence in our school family. Jesus, inspire us to do our best this year!
Amen
We are really looking forward to seeing all of the children on Tuesday. We hope you’ve all had a lovely break over the summer and that, together, we are ready to tackle the new year! We can’t wait to start! Click here to see the term dates for 2024-2025.
A reminder of our Vision and Mission:
Our school family at St Mary’s wants this to be a safe, caring, creative and happy place, where we all have a fair chance to learn and grow together and to do the best we can. We do this by knowing and loving Jesus more every day and by following his teachings in a joyful way.
Together with our families, parish and local community, we will have an unwavering focus on high quality academic, spiritual and social growth for all our children. We will have a particular emphasis on developing well-rounded young people ready for secondary school. We are committed to providing a holistic approach to education that unlocks the full potential of each individual.
At the start of the new year we will all be re-establishing our routines and getting the children back into being in school. Teachers will restate our expectations often and rehearse them regularly with all of the children so that everyone is clear. You can see our school behaviour policy here: www.smi.hounslow.sch.uk/docs/policies/Behaviour_and_Discipline.pdf
and our Code of Conduct here: www.smi.hounslow.sch.uk/docs/policies/School_Behaviour__Pupils_Code_of_Conduct_.pdf.
A reminder that we do not allow children to bring mobile phones into school for any reason. We do not allow jewellery or earrings in school.
School Uniform Trial March 2024 - March 2025
Children moving from reception to Y1 can continue to wear their EYFS uniform until October half term. Children coming into nursery and reception wear a different uniform which you can read about here: https://www.smi.hounslow.sch.uk/Parents/Uniform/
For children in Y1-6 a reminder that our Uniform Trial is running until March 2025.
You may have seen the media coverage of recent research that shows that in some cases school uniform is restricting physical activity for children. This is having a greater impact on girls. Being physically activity across the day (ideally for at least 1 hour each day) is a vital part of being healthy. We don't want our uniform to restrict physical movement in any way.
In addition it's important that our uniform isn't prohibitively expensive. Schools, by law, are not allowed to operate a monopoly with their uniforms. We are hoping that these proposed changes will also bring our uniform costs down and that you will be able to buy the uniform from a variety of places.
We want to gather the views of all of the children and yours too. In order to do this we are running a trial of the proposed changes over the coming months (March 2024-March 2025) as we need the trial to cover summer and winter uniform.
The trial does not include EYFS children as they have a different uniform.
There are no changes to the PE uniform.
These are the changes which we want to trial:
White 'school shirts' become optional; the main shirt will be a white polo shirt (with or without logo) across all terms. All children can wear the white polo shirt and trousers in winter time.
Ties become optional - these are not worn with polo shirts
Summer dresses become optional (winter dresses and pinafores already are optional with more and more girls wearing trousers). In the summer girls can wear a white polo shirt with shorts, trousers or skorts (these are new) or a summer dress (as now with many wearing shorts underneath so that they can still be active).
You can look at the 'Uniform page' of our website under the 'Parent tab' for a full list of uniform.
Staffing
The new year always brings changes and this year, you’ll remember, that we have some new members of staff you have joined our school family. A reminder that staffing can change throught the year and that your child will probably be taught by all members of the year group team.
To check who you need to speak to about any issues you might have please see our Communications Guidelines here: www.smi.hounslow.sch.uk/docs/Communication_Guidelines.pdf.
You can see our staffing list on our website. There have been some changes of the summer holidays in Y2.
Drop off and Collection
A reminder of the routes into the classrooms please follow these so that everyone can come in calmly and go home in the same way:
Rosary (nursery) are at the far end of the EYFS building with Loreto and Rome (reception) in the middle and at this end. EYFS children need to enter via the back double gates (by the church) and then via the pencil fence gates please.
Year 1 are at the far end of the KS1 block (main block) and so Westminster and Willesden should come in via the back double gates on the Church side please.
Cardigan and Walsingham (Year 2) should enter through their classrooms outside doors from the carpark.
Children in Year 3 (Doncaster and Ipswich) and Year 4 (Knock and Lourdes) come in via the double gates from the carpark side and enter via their downstairs classroom doors. Czestochowa and Fátima (Year 5) enter via the carpark side gates and then in via the doors at the end of the KS2 building whilst Year 6 (Carmel and Guadalupe) also enter via the carpark side and use the door at the back of the KS2 block.
Only Y6 can walk to and from school on their own and children up to Year 4 must be handed over to an adult and collected from them too. For more on this please have a look at the FAQs on our website: https://www.smi.hounslow.sch.uk/Parents/FAQs/.
Over the coming days more and more events will be added to the school calendar so please keep checking it.
We will let you known when PE lessons are starting via your child's class teacher and the school app. On their PE days children must wear correct PE kit - click here to see what this is: https://www.smi.hounslow.sch.uk/Parents/Uniform/.
We will let you know via the school app when clubs are starting - these will also be on the school calendar.
Learning at Home will start from Monday 9th September and will be uploaded to the google drive here.
Here's to a great start to the new year!
The St Mary's Team
