January 2020

We are reminding all parents/carers that it is the school’s procedure to ask adults that are not known to the class teachers, PE Teachers or cover teachers for a collection password. This is to ensure that every child is collected safely at the end of the day. Please help us to ensure that home times can run as smoothly as possible by ensuring that the responsible adult collecting your child has the correct password.

Thank you for your support in this matter.

Whilst our attendance scores are continuing to improve, we are seeing a rise in late marks with children arriving after 9:00am.

We’d like to remind all of our parents/carers that the gates are open from 8:45am - 9:00am and that Breakfast Club is also available for early birds and parents that require morning child care from 8:00am.

Mr Wills and Ms Wale will be monitoring punctuality over the next few weeks and parents of children with persistent lateness will be referred to our attendance support officer and are at risk of being fined by the local authority.

We are holding a photography and art competition as part of AET's Remarkable Lives celebration and are asking all children to enter by painting or sketching a portrait or taking a photograph of a remarkable person that they know. This could be a family member, friend, local community leader or a remarkable person that has had an impact on individuals. The closing date for entries is Monday 24th February 2020.

Please help us to support reading by reading regularly at home with your child and providing feed back in their reading record. Diaries and reading books should be returned to school on a daily basis. We are holding a reading workshop for Key Stage 2 Parents on Tuesday February 4th from 9am.

You can find more information and support on the Lea Forest website:

Click the link for more information.

This week

It’s been yet another remarkable week at Lea Forest with so many activities and events taking place. We started the week by hosting a member of the AET English Team, Ruth Baker-Leask. Ruth has been working with our English curriculum team in school to ensure that our children at Lea Forest are getting the best possible deal. She spent the morning with Miss Evans, focusing on reading and then spent the afternoon with Miss Francois, discussing the new Mastery Flow Model of teaching we have adopted in Years 2 to Years 6. In the morning, we focused on reading areas in classrooms. Ruth visits hundreds of schools and commented that the reading areas in the classrooms at Lea Forest are the best she has seen. Staff have worked relentlessly to promote reading for pleasure throughout the school and we are proud of the culture we have created. During the afternoon, Miss Francois looked through lesson progression and progress in children’s books. Again, we are delighted with the standard of work being produced by our children.

On Tuesday, I attended a Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) conference with Mrs Morsley at another AET school in Hull. Mrs Morsley currently teachers Spanish to our Key Stage 2 classes. Following on from this conference, we will be looking at rolling out a MFL programme of work throughout the whole school, starting in Nursery. There will be more information about this as our MFL curriculum develops, including a launch day.

Miss Evans held a reading workshop for Key Stage 1 parents on Tuesday, but was really disappointed with the amount of parents and carers attending. These workshops are provided to support parents and carers, so please take full advantage of these opportunities. Miss Evans is working so hard across the school to promote reading and the importance of becoming a confident reader. Keep an eye out for further parent workshops and please make an effort to attend.

Tuesday was also a big day (and night) for our school choir. Miss Allcroft, Mr Haw and Mr Croxon accompanied our remarkable choir, attending the Young Voices concert - the largest of school choirs in the world, inspiring children to discover their love for music. This took place at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham. The children had a fabulous time and represented our school brilliantly. I would also like to say a huge thank you to our staff members for giving up so much of their evening on Tuesday. We had lots of tired children (and staff) on Wednesday morning, but it was all worth it.

Throughout the week we have had a number of visitors from other schools. Since becoming the number 1 school in Birmingham, there has been lots of interest in our curriculum with teachers and headteachers from far and wide wanting to see our remarkable school and curriculum. This makes us all so proud.

Attendance

Check out page 2 for this week’s update. I know that I sound like a broken record, but ATTENDANCE AT LEA FOREST NEEDS TO IMPROVE! Our current attendance figure for the year to date is 94.51%. This falls short of our 96% whole school target. If there is anything we can do to support with your child/children attending school, please contact either Ms Wale or Mr Wills. Continued persistent absences will be monitored and fines will be issued by Birmingham City Council. We will be working hard to improve our attendance figures with our attendance officer and would really urge you all to work with us. 94.51% is really not good enough for such a successful school. Just think what we could achieve with improved attendance too. I would like to say thank you to the parents/carers/families that ensure their child/children are in school every day.

Upcoming Events

Our PCAB will be holding a ‘Chill and Chat’ event in the next few weeks. Look out for further information on this.

Our amazing PCAB are also organising another Valentine’s Disco on Friday 14th February, which is also our last day of this half term. Children will be able to wear non-uniform on this day and will have the opportunity to buy goodies and party in our disco. There will be more information about this event sent out in the next few weeks.

We will be holding a Spanish Launch Day on Tuesday 25th February 2020 and children will be able to come to school dressed in traditional Spanish dress (or red and yellow). Mrs Morsely will be holding a whole school launch assembly on this day and there will be lots of fun activities (including cooking) planned.

World Book Day will be held on Tuesday 3rd March 2020. There will be more information sent our regarding events for this day, but we wanted to give you plenty of notice so you can get those costumes prepared.

WOW - What an achievement!

I start this week’s newsletter with some absolutely REMARKABLE news! Lea Forest Primary Academy has been ranked the BEST school in the whole of Birmingham (according to the Real Schools Guide 2020).

There are 363 state funded primary schools across Birmingham and we have been ranked in 1st position. There are 14,749 primary schools across the whole of England have been placed as 31st best across England!

We are all so proud of this achievement and feel this shows just how far we have come over the last few years. We have created an environment that seeks to find the remarkable in every single child and member of staff, as well as involving the wider community as much as we can. The two pictures (right) are taken directly from The Birmingham Mail (Birmingham Live).

Whilst we are thrilled with the 5 star rating overall, there is always room for improvement and this is where I am asking parents/carers to help. We are only rated a 1 star for attendance and this is clearly where we need to improve. I believe this can be built on with your support!

This week

It’s been a busy week as usual and we’ve had WOW days, book sales, clubs and other events taking place. To find out more about these events, please check page 2. You will also find out more about upcoming events in our ‘Important Dates’ section.

Attendance

Our attendance for the week was = 95.63%

Our attendance for the year to date stands at = 94.49%

We had 8 classes managed to beat our 96% target for attendance this week.

A HUGE congratulations to 4WH who managed to achieve 99.14% this week and were awarded with golden time. Let’s see which class can beat this next week. Can any class achieve 100%?

I hope that you all have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you all again next week!

Mr Clarke

Please help us to keep our children safe by not parking on the zig zag markings or by obstructing the pavement or our neighbours driveways. Birmingham City council’s parking patrol will be monitoring Hurstcroft Road, Eddish Road and Ridpool Road throughout January.

Please help us to support reading by reading regularly at home with your child and providing feed back in their reading record. Diaries and reading books should be returned to school on a daily basis.

You can find more information and support on the Lea Forest website: Click the link for more information.

Please ensure that payment is made promptly for Breakfast Club . If you require a booking form or would like to make a payment, please speak to the office staff.

We rely on your contributions to fund educational visits, WOW Day experiences and extra curricular activities that help to create memorable experiences for your children . Please continue to support us by ensuring that your contribution for trips and activities is sent promptly to the office or paid online via the parentpay app.

Our REMARAKBLE school councillors met with Miss Hadfield, Mr Croxon and Mr Jules to look at how we can reduce our buildings environmental impact and help to reduce, reuse and recycle more at Lea Forest.

We are asking all members of our community to join in our One Planet discussion and suggest ideas via the One Planet form on our website: Click the link to send in your idea,

Welcome Back!

I hope that you all had a great Christmas break and managed to spend some quality time together at home. I think that we were all ready for a well-deserved break after such a busy and successful long autumn term. It was lovely to end the term with our wonderful Christmas performances, Christmas Fair and staff Panto which celebrated the true greatness of Lea Forest. It was also great new to hear that for 2019, Lea Forest was rated the 3rd best school in Birmingham out of 363 schools across the city. I would like to wish each and every one of you a happy new year from all of the staff. We have huge aspirations for 2020 to build on the previous years REMARKABLE successes…

We were delighted this week to receive the ModeShift Bronze award for our work in the community. We will now be working hard on the standards to achieve the Silver award.

I would also like to say a HUGE well done to all of the children who have produced such creative and wonderful homework and retuned it to school. Our corridors are really starting to come alive with our new curriculum topics now.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday 14th January - EYFS Reading workshop at 9am

Wednesday 15th January - Year 3 WOW day

Thursday 16th January - Year 4 WOW day and special menu

Tuesday 21st January - KS1 Reading workshop at 9am

Term dates for the 2019—2020 academic year can be found here

Attendance

Regular attendance at school is vital to help children achieve and get the best possible start in life. Children who frequently miss school often fall behind. There is a strong link between good school attendance and achieving good results. When children are in school every day and on time they do not miss out on important parts of their lessons and are more able to maintain friendships with their peers.

At Lea Forest we want to work with parents to improve attendance, however where this does not happen, we continue work with Warwickshire Attendance Service, an outside agency, who support us with the legal process used to tackle poor attendance.

Currently we have 15 cases open with Warwickshire Attendance Service where intervention through school action has not led to an improvement in attendance. Where attendance does not improve following Attendance Service support, they will make a referral to Birmingham Education Legal Intervention team. This can result in a Penalty Notice and fine being issued or in the case of repeat offences direct referral for court action.

This year Lea Forest parents have already been issued with fines totalling over £700. School does not receive any of this money and we’d much rather work with families to ensure every child achieves school every day.

We awarded children with REMARKABLE attendance in today’s assembly. Thank you to those of you who continue to support us in this mission to improve attendance. It’s not an easy one, but we will crack it.

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend!

Mr Clarke

We will endeavour to keep school open, but in the event of a school closure, we will alert you via text, ClassDojo, Twitter, FaceBook and on the school website banner.

Closures will also be announced on Free Radio and BBC Radio WM.