Dear Parents/Carers,
Now that we are at the end of another school year, I thought it was important to write to you to get ready for the next year and also to summarise the great year that we have had.
In October, we became an Accredited World School for the International Baccalaureate and this is a real achievement after two years of preparation and hard work. In December, we took nearly all of the school to see The Lion King, which was magical. Throughout the year, there have been many events where the children have been able to share their work with parents and celebrate their learning; ranging from watching lessons to assemblies. Recently, we have been awarded the Foundation International School Award for the links that we have been making in the wider world community and how we have been teaching our children about International Mindedness. We have been able to offer our children a wealth of co-curricular clubs and activities to complement their learning in the curriculum. Additionally, we have continued to strengthen our links within our local community and this has been of real benefit to the school.
I would just like to say a huge thank you to the whole staff team as they have worked really hard and given a wealth of enrichment and experiences to our children over the course of the year and it is hugely appreciated. I am also very proud of our wonderful children at Peninsula East as they are real superstars, showing all of the Learner Attributes that we follow as part of the IB; they are all an absolute pleasure to have in the school. We are very lucky! I would also like to take this opportunity to say goodbye and good luck to our Year 6 pupils. It has been great to get to know them and their personalities over the past two years and I am sure that they will absolutely shine as they move onto their secondary schools.
In September, we have three staff training days and so the children will return to school on Friday 2nd September. Our Nursery will return on Monday 5th September. Nursery children will need to arrive from 8.30am and can be picked up at the Nursery gate for 3pm at home time. We have sent out some extra play and stay dates for Nursery parents to help their children settle in when they return in September and these would have been emailed separately. For parents of our new Reception class children, you will still be having meetings with Mrs Hartung on Thursday 1st September as planned.
Our school gates will open at 8.30am on both sides of the school as normal and will close at 8.45am for morning registration. Any child that arrives after this time will need to be signed in by parents through the office. We will send out more information about this, attendance and being late for school in September. At the end of the day, all children (apart from Nursery) will need to be picked up at 3.15pm from both side gates please. We will be opening two gates to ease the flow at home time for the KS2 side from September and we will also be looking at staffing for this to move onto the playground for pick up, but we will release more information about this in September.
When I wrote to you previously, I referred to the government’s White Paper, please see this link for more information: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9511/. This is why we have had to review the times of our school day so that we are in line with the recommended 32.5 hours that we have to have in place by September.
As we have been using MCAS as our main point of contact with you now as well as emails, we will also be moving over to payments through MCAS in September and this will include school dinners and trips. This should make it easier for parents as everything will be in one place through the app.
From myself and all of the staff here at PEPA, we wish you all a wonderful summer break and we will look forward to seeing everyone back in September.
Kind Regards,
Mrs L Rimmer
Principal
