Tour of School
A message to any parents or families who are looking for primary school places for September 2021.
Our Lady of the Assumption did not have the opportunity to have an ‘Open Day’ for prospective parents/families who wanted to view our school due to COVID restrictions this year. This would have been a role which our Year 6 children usually relish. They really enjoy meeting families and having the chance to ‘show off’ about their school. So instead, our Head and Deputy boys and girls have taken the opportunity to give you a ‘virtual tour’ of Our Lady’s and introduce you to our Reception class and some of the activities they participate in during the year.
The videos can be found by opening the blue PARENTS tab on our home page. The videos can then be found on the image button entitled ‘Virtual Visit’ (In case you can’t find it… CLICK HERE!)
A reminder that the national deadline for all applications is 15th January 2021. All supplementary forms should be returned to school - this is also an essential part of your application!
Eloquent & Truthful
This second half term, the children have been tasked with developing the virtues of ‘truthfulness and eloquence’ from our Jesuit Values. I am forever proud of our children at Our Lady’s, but this week in particular has shown me real moments of pure joy in their hard work, their independence, their happily skipping into school and the care and respect they have given their teachers and others around school. They have shown ‘love in action’ in such difficult and uncertain times, and that has been more eloquent than words. They are a real credit to you all. I count each day we can be open and ready to serve our community as ‘a great day’ at the moment and the enthusiasm of the children is a blessing to all the staff who are really ‘giving their all’ to love and care for the children during these unprecedented times.
Parking Enforcement
I have been quite upset of late with a few parents’/families’ parking and lack of patience in their cars. As you know, it is a difficult area to park around school which is why Fr Jim kindly allows families to use church car park when dropping off and picking up at school. Even so, it has been alarming to see parents stopping on double yellow lines or even worse - on zig-zags! It has bothered me so much that I contacted Lancs Police Road Safety Team last weekend. As you will know, police officers arrived ‘en masse’ on Monday (I certainly wasn’t expecting so many!!!) However they were also concerned by some the issues they saw and will be returning to our area regularly to monitor the situation. A plea to you all therefore, to think ‘Safety First’ when collecting or dropping off your children.
SEND updates
For all parents information; Mrs Ormerod is our school SENDCo (as well as our Deputy Headteacher) and as part of her new role she will try to keep our website updated with useful information and links for parents which you may find useful/helpful in a variety of contexts. Mrs Ormerod intends to do this by posting regular information on the SEND area of our website. This can be found by clicking the blue PARENTS button on the home page and then on the SEND image button. (If you cannot find this CLICK HERE…)
First Holy Communion
Our First Holy Communion group for 2020 should hopefully be able to undertake their sacraments during Advent. 2 of the groups received their First Holy Communion on 17th and 24th October and our other 2 groups were postponed due to the current lockdown. Fr Jim has offered families the opportunity to undertake communion on 5th and 13th December when, hopefully, church should be able to re-open for public worship. We look forward to this wonderful event and pray for no further cancellations!
Finally…
We have been so fortunate at Our Lady’s that we have been able to maintain the full opening of school since September. It has been a blessing to have the children return and they have been so quick to settle down to new routines and rotas - they have been so resilient and their enthusiasm and positivity has both astounded and humbled me. They are relishing their learning - which is a delight, and makes all the hard work and diligence of our amazing teaching staff worthwhile. I know you would want to share my thanks for the love and compassion our staff have shown the children - their hard work and commitment to your children never ceases to both amaze me and fill me with pride. We can however, only carry on in this way if all families continue to take great care and every precaution during this ‘lockdown’ and our subsequent restrictions; by wearing masks, ensuring your children are only mixing with others in their family/support bubble, keeping good hygiene and maintaining the social distancing rules.
I am greatly saddened by people I see, or hear of who are not taking these rules seriously enough. Many of you will have, unfortunately, have seen the devastating and even fatal results of this first hand. I hope and pray that this current period of lockdown will have a dramatic effect on lowering numbers and rates of COVID cases. As we are all well aware - this will ONLY happen if EVERYONE works together and ENSURES THE SAFETY OF THEMSELVES & OTHERS. This means every single person playing their part to keep this virus at bay. (Read further Blackpool Council information HERE.) Our Lady of the Assumption is a wonderful community and I hope we can help each other to keep as safe as we possibly can.
My prayers for a safe weekend and in the week to come.
Miss Haggerty
