Friday 12th Jan 2024

Happy New Year 2024

Happy New Year to all our Parents and Carers!

I do hope you all had a lovely break and have made some exciting new resolutions (‘read more with my children’ as an example! 😊) looking forward to 2024. One of our parents who I was chatting to on the gate told me it is minus 17 in Poland at the moment; we’re clearly not that cold but my goodness it is chilly – do be careful on the roads and footpaths and look out for ice!

It is lovely to have both Mrs Wells (previously Hart) and Mrs Cremonini (previously Smith) back with us from maternity leaves not least because I can compare notes with them about my new grandson! We are also really pleased to welcome back Mrs Chaudry who will be working with some of our SEND pupils, as our school’s specialist teacher, moving forward. We have been particularly fortunate to have such a stable staff and robust systems in place to cover short term absences – consistency for young people is so important.

Fundraising

I wanted to spend just a little time thanking you for your generosity in raising money for the school over the past few years. We are all very aware that finances are tight at the moment for families and although this is also the case for schools I do want to emphasise you should always put your children first. Please do get in contact if you are struggling in any way.

That said, we have managed to raise around six thousand pounds over the past few years. This has been through both the Summer and Winter Fayres, the various Year group activities, School Discos, some cracking work by our Friends of Ryvers (thanks especially to them and please do get in contact if you would like to join the committee), our ‘Easy Fundraising’ initiative (https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/ryversschool/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pmc&utm_content=gs-email1 ) and our textiles recycling bank by the double gates on Trelawney playground – every little helps as the advert says!

We have spent a little of the monies on various projects, for instance repairing the slide in the Nursery garden, but we have mainly been saving to spend a significant amount on some outdoor equipment to benefit all year groups. We are presently investigating both some quiet areas where pupils will be able sit,read and talk during breaks and lunches and some more physical equipment and soft play areas to encourage burning off some energy during our out of class times. We are hoping that the first resources will be in place before the end of this term or early in the summer – watch this space!

Parking

I know I ALWAYS have a paragraph about this in every letter home but it really is important. As the cold weather persists, I understand that more of you will be coming in by car. However, this does add to congestion around the school. If you could park a little further out and walk the last few hundred yards that would help.

Please also be mindful of our neighbours who, understandably, get cross when people park across their drives. ‘It was only for a few minutes’ is not an excuse – imagine if you were needing to leave your house and couldn’t!

My other pet hate is horn blowing. I’m not a scientist, but I am pretty sure that irritating noise does not make traffic flow more quickly! 😊 Yes, it can be annoying to be stuck, but is blowing your horn really likely to improve the situation? We are also in a very public place being, whether we like it or not, role models to our young children – perhaps take a breath and think how they might be viewing you!

On a number of occasions, I have seen parents parking on the yellow zig-zag lines – this is both illegal and inconsiderate – today it stopped a bus from being able to get through. I often have to play ‘traffic warden’ to get traffic moving – I don’t mind doing so, but ‘grrrr!’ to those who park inconsiderately!

Please also remember, the small car park just past the double gates is private for residents only – we should not be using that area!

Finally

I would again encourage you all to dip into our absolutely lovely ‘SWAY’ newsletters Newsletters | Ryvers School which give such a great insight into all the wonderful work and activities that are occurring regularly across all our year groups.

Please see attached to this letter a list of dates for the various activities and meetings occurring this term. Please note in particular the online safety activities we will be undertaking soon – this is a vital area for our children to be made aware of and is equally important for parents and carers too.

I hope we all have a cracking 2024, best wishes to you all!

Friday 15th December 2023
Christmas Wishes
Dear Parents/Carers,
It’s always an exciting time of the year as we draw to the end of our Autumn Term. Whether you and your family celebrate Christmas or any other of the festivals around this time, it is clear that our children enjoy the opportunity to dress in Christmas jumpers, swap presents and perform in the various end of year plays and activities. And then there is the fantastic Winter Fayre to delight in too! Do make sure you and all the family get some rest in too over the break and come back in the new year ready to work hard and ‘Grow, Learn and Give’ even more!
As I look back over the term, I would thoroughly recommend that you take a few moments to look through our Newsletters: Newsletters | Ryvers School that give such a lovely insight into all the exciting activities our youngsters get up to in and out of school – you might even catch a glimpse of your own child in one of the photos! Whilst I am always proud to see the hard work and exciting opportunities that are showcased in these newsletters, for me, the thing that shines through the most is how happy, safe and secure all our pupils look. There are times this year where the world news has been very sad and upsetting and whilst we will have conversations with our youngsters about world events the best thing for their well-being is for them to be excited to come to school each day and know they are safe and loved by both you and us.

Health and Safety
Just a few points for you to please take note of. Please don’t walk through the double car park gates rather than the pedestrian gate. The car gates can malfunction when a small object (your body!) is in the way of one censor and put simply, if the gates are open cars can swing in from the road going at a speed which can be a little too dangerous if you are in the way! The pedestrian gate takes a little time to open with a timed motor – tugging at it actually stops the motor working and then needs to re-set; making your wait even longer 😎
I’m hoping we don’t get such bad weather that we will need to close the school but just in case, we have sent you all a reminder of how we will alert you to the situation if that does occur. We have our school communication app which we do encourage you all to download, we will text you and information will be on both the school website and Slough Borough Council’s website too.

Parking
Every single letter! Please, please be careful how you drive and park around the school area. The residents only car park by the school gates is over used, people doing u-turns in the road at school rush hour and parking in front of neighbour’s drives are all too common occurrences. As many of you know, I spend some of my gate duty time as a local traffic warden and my pet hate is horn blowing – it just never helps! We are all role models for our children so please think about the example you are setting.
Attendance
We continue to press for children to have the highest attendance in school as possible – post-covid every hour missed is even more learning time being lost. Whilst we entirely agree that children shouldn’t be in school if they are very ill and contagious, a sniffle and mild sore throat is not the end of the world. We recommend the NHS ‘Healthier Together’ app if you want to receive some simple medical advice around childhood illnesses and next steps. We will not authorise any term time holidays and you are likely to be fined if your child is away for 5 days or more. Of course, if there are issues around anxiety or mental health then please do get in touch and we will work with you to find solutions and the support that is needed.
We still struggle to obtain parental consent for planned trips, visits and activities in school sometimes. Without your consent your child will miss out on the opportunities that all the other children in their class receive. The learning around these activities will be lost and the social interactions and playground chat about their experiences can leave a child feeling they have ‘missed out’. As always, if you are struggling due to financial pressures, please just have a chat with one of us and we will see what we can do to help out.
After School Club
You will remember that this term we have changed our provider for our After school Club. We are extremely impressed with the care and activities our new group now offer and with this letter is a flyer to give you the information and contact details if you would like to take up the offer for your child.

Other
We are saying goodbye to Mrs Mugglestone, our specialist SEND teacher, at the end of this term and want to thank her for her many years of hard work on behalf of our children and their families. We wish her well in her retirement. We are extremely pleased that Mrs Chaudry will be returning to our school to take on Mrs Mugglestone’s role from January. We are also welcoming back Mrs Wells and Mrs Cremonini (previously known as Miss Smith) from their maternity leaves.
A small point about Christmas gifts. We have asked staff not to give gifts that cost any money to the children as, frankly, teachers are underpaid and like many of you, need to be looking after the pennies. Equally, please do not feel obliged to buy gifts for any staff. We love to receive them and cards that say thank you but we are all very aware that money is tight and would prefer you spend what you have on your children.
Finally
In my role as Consultant Headteacher for Slough, I have the privilege of visiting schools all over the borough. Slough is very fortunate (due to a lot of hard work!) to have so many wonderful schools in the area. Each has its own flavour and one of the key elements that makes Ryvers the school of choice in our area is the close and positive relationship between our staff and our parents and carers. It is an absolute joy to stand on the gate each day to meet and greet you in the mornings and wish you well in the afternoon. You are all doing a fantastic job and deserve our praise – have a wonderful family time over the break and Jurgen and I look forward to seeing you all in the new year too!

Ho Ho Ho!

Pete Rowe
Executive Headteacher
Ryvers School

15^th September 2023

Dear Parents/Carers

Welcome back to the new academic year at Ryvers. A particularly warm welcome to families who are new to the school; it has been lovely to drop in to our Nursery and Reception classes to see how quickly the youngsters have picked up school routines and are already beginning to ‘Grow, Learn and Give’.

You will all have seen the shocking news about failing concrete in school and hopefully will have read my note out to you all before the start of school to reassure you that Ryvers has none and that our buildings are safe, secure and well maintained – many thanks to our school team for ensuring this is the case.

As you know, we have a new After School Club group running our sessions and having dropped in a few times already this year, I can thoroughly recommend them as they have an excellent balance of physical and academic activities and a lovely friendly atmosphere too.

As always, as you would expect from a Headteacher 😊, I want to encourage you all to take a strong partnership role in child’s learning this year. We have a ‘Meet the Teacher’ session next week on Monday and even if you’ve been through the system a few times, it is always worth attending to get a picture of the specifics for your child’s class and year group.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of reading for all our youngsters. Research has proven a clear link between early reading skills and success at GCSE maths and indeed in A Levels and university too. Encourage your child to read alone, with you, in your home language, listening to an audio or e-book – absolutely any and every way you can!

Please also have a look at the Knowledge Organisers which are sent home for each subject. These will give you an overview of the areas your child will be covering in all the different curriculum areas and will allow you rather than just asking, ‘How was school today?’ to be much more specific and enquire, ‘What did you learn about volcanos (etc.) today?’

Trips and visits

We have worked hard to create an exciting and educational range of educational trips, visits and school-based activities to enhance the curriculum in each year group. We are particularly aware of financial constraints and have chosen low cost activities which we hope most families will be able to afford. Can I please ask you to book these up as early as possible as, if we don’t get the required numbers within a reasonable time, we will have to cancel events which would be a real shame. Our office staff, honestly, spend a little too much time chasing parents/carers for deposits with, ‘Sorry I forgot,’ or ‘I was very busy’ as the most common reason!

School Uniform

We are gradually moving over to all our uniform having our new logo on it but please don’t worry if your child has the older version with clothes that still fit. There’s no rush or pressure to change. We still have a number of pre-loved items available if any families are struggling with rising costs. If your child has an after-school sports activity they should wear school uniform all day and bring their PE kit in to school, unless it is their designated PE day.

Please do remember we no longer have shirts and ties in the older year groups – everyone is in the more comfortable polo shirt now.

Parking and travel to school

EVERY letter home has me asking you all to be thoughtful about how you bring your child to school. I love seeing pupils who live close, walking, scooting and cycling – well done you; very healthy! I often think we should have a parents scooter race on the path outside as I see you all carrying them after dropping your children off! 😊 The red cycle shed, just further on from the small gate through which you all exit, is where you should leave any scooters or bikes you want to leave in school. If you leave them anywhere else (Key Stage 1 playground) our pupils think they are school property and want to play with them during break and lunch!

For those of you who live further afield and come by car, can I again remind you to be mindful of our local neighbours. I have already had two complaints about parking across driveways and we are only two weeks into the year! For those of you new to the school it is worth me explaining again that we have had discussions with Slough BC about increasing the yellow zig-zag lines and various other strategies but at the moment they have no money to put into such schemes – I will continue to press our case!

Slough Borough Council has recently made improvements to their A4 cycle route, details of which can be found here A4 Cycle Route and Road Safety Improvements - Slough Borough Council - Citizen Space

Gates

If you are coming into school by the pedestrian gate to the Office, could I please ask you to note that this gate has a slow opening time. Nothing you or your child do to push or pull will make it open more quickly and indeed will inevitably damage it; so please don’t.

We have had a couple of occasions where people have parked across our gates (‘I’ll only be a couple of minutes!’) Again, please don’t – staff and other visitors are regularly moving in and out of school and it would be awful if an ambulance was delayed entrance due to selfish parking.

Coffee Mornings

We will be starting up our monthly coffee morning get togethers for parents who can make it again this term. We have changed the day to a Tuesday to allow some parents/carers who had commitments on Fridays to join us. Our first session is straight after drop off on the 26^th September – please do come and join us. Other dates for your diary are 17^th October (this is also Harvest week), 4^th November and12th December – all are Tuesdays.

And finally

We are really looking forward to electing our Head Students over the next few weeks. Once elected, they will be welcoming you to many of our events and activities and generally representing all that is great about Ryvers!

Please do always feel free to have a chat with me (and Jurgen) on the gate – I love our interactions whether on a Marvellous Monday or a Fantastic Friday. That said, if you have a minor concern or question it is generally better to ask the adult on duty in your child’s specific area as they are more likely to know the answer and be able to pass on a message more quickly.

As always; thank you for all the support you give to our Ryvers family; we can all be very proud of our school and community and we ‘Grow, Learn and Give’!

Best wishes

Pete Rowe

Executive headteacher

Ryvers School