The sparkle of Christmas is definitely with us at Maidensbridge! I love this time of year when the corridors are filled with beautiful singing and children are working hard to remember their lines for the Nativity performance. I often pass in the hallway a wise man or two, a few sheep and many angels all getting ready to make their parents proud. 

We have had another busy half term with two trips to the theatre; our youngest children enjoyed The Gruffalo's Child and Years 2-6 were gripped by Tom's Midnight Garden last week.

OPAL is going well and it is lovely to see the children being creative at lunchtime, making decisions about what fun they can have and exploring their environment. We will be able to open up access to the field after Christmas, when we have secured our Welly Storage! Thank you again to the HSA for purchasing our Welly Storage and covers so they we can keep our wellies upside down, organised and in the dry. Mrs Nicholls and Mrs Shaw shared the site plan with the children so that they know the zones that we can implement in the Spring and Summer Term. Bubbles arrived this week, which the children have loved!

The national school data was released last week, which allows schools to be compared to one another based on KS2 SATs data. We are very pleased to say that we are 8th in Dudley for our overall data and we are 3rd in Dudley for our Reading achievements. This website is available publicly using the following address, if you would like to see this data. We are extremely proud of our children and the hard-working staff that prepare them so well for this milestone all the way through school. Search for schools, colleges and multi-academy trusts - Compare school and college performance data in England - GOV.UK

Thank you to everyone who donated to Children in Need. As a school we raised £169.

Thank you everyone who purchased poppy merchandise to raise money for the Poppy Appeal. We raised an amazing £616.48. Thank you so much for your support with this very important charity. Well done to our Charity Ambassadors who visited the classes every day to make sure all the children could buy the merchandise to support this important charity.

We are saying goodbye to two of our PLAY Team this term; Mrs Wright and Miss Green. We would like to thank them for their commitment to our children at Maidensbridge and the support they have given in all weathers at lunchtime. We wish you lots of luck for the future in your new adventures.

Thank you to the HSA team who have worked tirelessly, as always, this term to put on many events and occasions that have raised vital money for the children in our school. Our Bonfire Event was received with such warm and positive feedback from our community with over 1500 people coming together to share this event! The event has raised over £6,500 for Maidensbridge children, which is a fantastic success!

Thank you for contributions to the theatre trips and for our welly storage so far this year!

Thank you to all our new HSA helpers who joined us at the discos last week, your help is much appreciated.

The HSA would love to get to know more parents and their door is always open if you would like to get involved with some of the fundraising events. Our school survives on the goodwill and support of our volunteers and parents. Please email info@maidens.dudley.sch.uk if you would like to know more about how to get involved and we will pass these on to the committee members of the HSA. 

Well done everyone who has attendance of 96% or above for this term, we will be looking for our 100% certificates over the next week to award in assembly before the end of term. Our target that we have been set by the Government this year is a final school attendance of 96.2% in July, so this is what we are working towards all year.

Just a reminder please that term-time holidays should not be booked and will not be authorised by school.

Following my letter last week explaining the adaptations we are making to the uniform, I just wanted to share a couple of links to documents that are behind our reasoning for slightly tweaking our school uniform to ensure that children are appropriately dressed for the learning and activities that they do at school. There is a lot of change in this area of education that parents may not be aware of, so I wanted to share where we have had our information from, to support your understanding of why we have made the changes.

Always Active Uniform - Youth Sport Trust

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: saving parents money on school uniform costs  – The Education Hub

Play England backs new ‘Made to Move’ campaign on active school uniforms — Play England

Just a polite reminder please about parking around school. We have had several issues reported to us by our neighbours and parents of unsafe parking, inconsiderate parking and parking that causes dangerous blind spots for children crossing the road. We have also had incidents where cars have parked over our school gates blocking the vehicle entrance and exit. This is an emergency vehicle access and our disabled access and must be clear at all times. It is important that we all work on this together to make sure that we keep our children safe. Thank you for your understanding.

Please call: 0300 555 0050

If you are concerned about a child’s welfare please speak to a DSL in school, or call Children’s Social Care on the number above.