St Cecilia's News

Dear Parents,

Our Lenten Journey

This term has flown by and we have almost finished our Lenten journey. How lovely that we are in school for Holy Week and we can complete our preparation for Easter together.

We have had a great start this week with our Stations of the Cross, performed by our Y5 students, photos for you above. All of our Key Stage 2 classes and Y5 parents have walked the Stations of the Cross around the school site with the narrators and actors from Year 5 who have helped us to create a new prayerful experience for our pupils.

Thank you to the Year 5 team for making this change for us and for establishing a lovely new tradition for St Cecilia's.

We have our class raffles this week, all proceeds go to our Lenten charity, CAFOD. The Y4 Mission week has already raised £375 with their popcorn sale and bunny hop, thanks for your support!

Admissions

Primary school places will be notified to parents on April 16th, just after the school holidays. Good luck to all our parents who have applied for their child's admission this September. We will be in touch with successful applicants once we have admission news from all the local boroughs and Surrey County Council.

End of term

Term ends on Thursday at Midday for Years R - 6 (Wednesday for Nursery.) I am sure that we are all ready for some sunnier weather and a break from school routines. An end of term data report for core subjects will be sent home for Years 1-6 on Thursday.

We reopen on Monday 15th April for the Summer term.

From all the staff, best wishes for a Happy and Holy Easter.

Vince Burke

Headteacher

Our Artmark Silver plaque has arrived from the Arts Council England. We have already started our journey towards ArtsMark Gold award, thanks to Mrs Scripps who leads our work in this area.

ArtsMark helps us to focus on creativity and the arts in our curriculum through visits and visitors and through different approaches in our teaching and learning.

Our new installation is nearly complete with good strong gates and fencing to protect the children at play and to provide a much higher level of security.

After Easter, we look forward to our two entrance gates, yellow and blue, being in full operation.

If you are coming to the school during the day or for meetings in the hall or office please use the yellow gate. You will need to "buzz in" on the keypad and speak to the office team.

Double gates to prevent tailgating

When entering via the Yellow gates you will pass through a second gate near the offices. You will need to "buzz" again, staff will then check on the cameras that you have not permitted another person into the double gate area who has not been announced. It is vital that all persons entering the school are authorised. If someone follows you into the double gate area please ask them to speak to the office team as well. This could be another school visitor, a postal delivery or food delivery for example. The second gate will open once we are sure we know who we are letting on to our site.

You will notice a new gate near the offices, this is to guide all our visitors into the office area during the school day. It prevents visitors from walking around the school site without permission.

Increased safety

The new fencing enables our younger pupils to play without the risk of strangers walking through the playground. We will be upgrading more of our fences and gates as we continue to upgrade our site.

Thank you for your donations to the Governors' Fund

Thanks for all your patience with the building works. We are grateful to parents for an £18,000 contribution to the cost which has been made from the Governors' Fund, as required by Government. Thank you all for your monthly payments which have helped us to meet this cost, we are very grateful for your generosity and continued support.

Thanks also go to the

• Diocesan Education Service for their understanding of our need for enhanced security and the allocation of funds
• Synergy - our Property Consultants for the design of the project
• Mr Fowler who has managed the project for the school

In our Big Assembly last Friday the children learnt about Fairtrade and how buying Fairtrade products is good for many of the farmers in the poorest regions of the world.

We discovered that all of Sainsbury's bananas are Fairtrade, for example. Also Starbucks sells Fairtrade coffee. We will continue to work on recognising inequalities in the world's communities through our eco-committee, chaplaincy team and our wider curriculum.

We also discussed how we can all have different emotions at different times. We thought about how important it is to recognise and name our emotions. For our younger pupils we discussed this through a video from Sesame Street, for KS2 we used a video from Rocket Kids. I have included them for you below, we thought that these might be useful for you at home. Don't forget as a school that we use BOUNCEBACK and the Zones of Regulation, more details on those on our website.

Our Eco group are doing great work around the school. Mr Fowler has been showing the children how to read a meter, we will be monitoring our energy use this year. This week they have been busy building a temporary greenhouse. Before we commit to a permanent one, we thought we would try growing our fruit and vegetables in the greenhouse shown above. We have been considering "from plot to plate" as part of our eco committee work and will be sharing lots of grow bags and plants with classes over the coming weeks. We look forward to sharing news of our early harvest with you in July! If any parent has knowledge of espalier trees can you please get in touch, we are thinking of planting more fruit trees around the school.

Our Chair of Governors, past pupil of the school and expert chess player, Mr John Austin, recently came along to challenge Mrs Kane's Chess Club. In an afternoon of great fun, Mr Austin dashed from board to board, playing a game with each player at the same time.

We're very grateful to have such committed governors who bring their own skills and talents to the work of the school.

Thanks to the PTA for a lovely morning of Easter focussed activity and a stage play for our youngest students in EYFS. The weather was kind that morning and a good crowd supported the event. The children look great in their Easter hats!

You have access to your child's full attendance record in the Arbor App and Parent Portal via the website.

You can also access reports that have been sent out since last September when we joined Arbor.

You can tap on the Arbor logo to gain access to the Parent Portal, the Parent App is also available for mobile phones.

Please don't forget that we are now filtering our email to help us to identify and manage them more easily.

Absences

Please send all absence emails to absence@stcecilias.school

ECAs

If you have a query about our Extra Curricular Activities please email eca@stcecilias.school

London Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9DL

Contact us:

General queries - office@stcecilias.school

Report an absence - absence@stcecilias.school

Anything finance - finance@stcecilias.school

Extra Curricular Activity booking - eca@stcecilias.school

Childcare - childcare@stcecilias.school

Special educational needs - send@stcecilias.school

Admissions - admissions@stcecilias.school

Website www.stcecilias.school

Phone: 020 8337 4566

The Ladega Family are putting on a Charity Football match at Sutton United FC for a local resident and student, Scarlett, who needs support with her illness.

Jaden Ladega who was a student at St Cecilia’s and is now an actor on Eastenders, is good friends with Scarlett and he has agreed to arrange a ‘celebrity’ team to play against Scarlett’s Dad and his friends to raise money for her.

When: Saturday 4th May 2024

Where: Sutton United Football Club, Gander Green Lane, Sutton, SM1 2EY.

Kick off 3pm

TICKETS are LIVE !

FC Scarlett vs Celebrity FC | Sutton United Tickets (ktckts.com)

In September 2020, 11 year old Scarlett's life changed. She complained to her parents that her legs hurt. Her legs collapsed and she lost the use of them from the waist down.
It turned out she had a rare cavanoma that ruptured in her spinal chord which caused her to lose the use of her legs.
Since 2020 Scarlett has been so brave and working really hard on her strength but she is still in a wheelchair. Her family who are from Sutton have even upped and moved home so they are closer to a rehabilitation centre for her. As you can imagine all the rehabilitation and treatment costs a lot. As support we would like to put on a charity football game to raise money for Scarlett to continue her treatment.

As she is from Sutton it made sense to have the event at Sutton United FC.

She has presented to other hospitals about her condition because it is so rare and also been on BBC several times again spreading awareness but also promoting heratios garden and the rehabilitation centre. Check out her journey on Insta: @scarlettsjourney2020

Please see a few articles about Scarlett on TV.

Christmas wish comes true for Chichester girl, 12, left paralysed by sudden spinal cord rupture | ITV News Meridian

Scarlett's Story | Spinal Research (spinal-research.org)

BBC One - Lifeline, Horatio's Garden, Alan Titchmarsh's Lifeline Appeal for Horatio's Garden

March

Weds 27th - End of term for Nursery

Weds 27th - Puberty talks for Y5 students

Thurs 28th - School closes at Midday for Year R to 6, no after school childcare

Fri 29th - Good Friday, school closed.

April

Mon 15th - Return to school

Tues 16th - National Offer Day for Reception Admissions

Mon 22nd - ECAs start

Sat 27th - Y6 Netball Rally

Mon 29th - Y3 Mission Week

May

Weds 1st - Met Neighbourhood Police team visiting Y5 (at the gates to see parents too)

Thurs 2nd - Crowing of Our Lady's Statue (Flowers welcomed, donated to the hospice afterwards)

Mon 6th Bank Holiday - School Closed

Tues 7th - Y4 Dance Workshop with I-Can-Dance

Thurs 9th - Ascension Day Mass Y3-6 with Fr Rob

Mon 13th - Y6 SATs week and assessment week for Years 1-5

Mon 13th - Additional swim lessons for Y5 non swimmers begin

Mon 20th - St Angela Class Assembly

Mon 27th - Fri 31 May - Spring Half Term holiday

June

Mon 3rd - School Closed Training Day

Tues 4th - Y4 Multiplication Check Week

Thurs 6th - Y1 visit to the Lookout, Bracknell

Thurs 13th June - Y1 to Y6 Sports Day at the David Weir Centre - Children go straight there for 0835.

Sat 15th - Sutton Catholic Schools Alliance Athletics event

Mon 13th - Y3 Swimming begins

Thurs 20th - Egyptian Workshop

Fri 21st - Borough Sports at David Weir Centre for selected athletes

Fri 21st - Annual Academic Reports published via Arbor to all classes

Weds 26th - First Holy Communion Going Forth Mass with Father Rob

July

Mon 1st - Y6 Adventure to Dorset

Mon 1st - ECAs end this week

Fri 5th - Y3 visit to the British Museum

Mon 8th - 0900 Y4 St Catherine Assembly

Tues 9th and Thurs 11th - Y6 Performance for their parents.

Thurs 18th - Final day of term for Nursery

Friday 19th - Final day of term for Years R to 6, school closes at Midday. No after school childcare.

You can find our term dates for this year and next on our website, link for you below.