William Barcroft Junior School
'Success and happiness for all'
'Pupils are very happy to attend this nurturing and inclusive school'
'The school has high ambition for pupils' achievement'
'Pupils know they have a strong voice'
'The school's pastoral care is exemplary'
Ofsted report - June 2025
https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/21/143884
Message from the Principal:
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this week’s newsletter.
Can I start with a huge thank you for supporting us on World Mental Health Day today –
the children look fabulous in their yellow outfits and we have raised lots of money with
the purchase of biscuits. We will let you know the total as soon as all donations have been counted.
We’ve had a lovely fortnight in school, with Diwali workshops this week (a particular highlight seems to have been the food tasting!),
our Harvest Festival, visits from the police about keep safe at Halloween and on dark nights, and more basketball competitions with other schools.
We also had an assembly from Horizon Youth Zone staff, who shared some really exciting opportunities with the children based at their new centre in Grimsby.
Please see the details below.
Next week we look forward to our Careers Day on Friday. We have lots of visitors lined up to come and speak to the children about different career choices. This is an important part of our ambition value and we would love you to chat to the children about this at home too. Just a reminder that next week is our final week before the break, and that this is the first year of our 2-week October half term. We will therefore return on Monday 3rd November.
That’s all for this week.
Please enjoy looking at the newsletter and have a lovely weekend everyone.
S Sargent
Principal
If your child is absent, please contact the school office via telephone rather than the enquires email so that we can log your child's absence before the registers close.
This week's lower school attendance winners are:
1st place - Daisies
2nd place - Bluebells
3rd place - Daffodils
This week's upper school attendance winners are:
1st place - Snowdrops
2nd place - Sunflowers
3rd place - Lillies
Holidays During Term Time
While we understand the temptation of lower prices and family availability, we kindly remind parents and carers that holidays should be taken during the 13 weeks of school holidays available each year. Principals are only permitted to authorise leave during exceptional circumstances, and in line with national policy, unauthorised term-time holidays may result in a fixed penalty notice being issued.
Autumn 1
Tuesday 14th October - NELPCF SEND coffee morning
Thursday 16th October - PC Mickleburgh Halloween safety assembly
Friday 17th October - Careers Day
Break up for half term - Friday 17th October
Return to school - Monday 3rd November
Autumn 2
wb: Monday 3rd November - Y6 Bikeability
Tuesday 4th November - Theatre production
Wednesday 5th November - Parents evening
Tuesday 11th December - Y3 Learning showcase
Friday 12th December - Y5 Learning showcase
Tuesday 16th December - Y4 Learning showcase
Wednesday 17th December - Y6 Learning showcase
Friday 19th December - Community sing 12.45pm
Break up for Christmas for ALL pupils - Friday 19th December at 1.05pm
Term dates
Please check the website for 2025 - 2026 term dates.
Year 4 Swimming
As part of the PE curriculum, our year 4 students will take part in swimming lessons at Havelock on the following dates:
Monday 3rd November - All children to attend swimming.
Group 1 dates - Monday 10th/ 17th/24th November and Monday 1st/8th of December.
Group 2 dates - Thursday 13th/20th/27th November and Thursday 4th/11th December.
More information will be given closer to the time and a letter will be sent to all year 4 parents.
General Information
Please do not ride bikes and scooters on the school grounds, this is for children and adults. This is for the safety of our children, thank you.
Please note, electric scooters are not allowed on the school site due to health and safety regulations and not having the facilities to store them in school.
Please do not bring pets onto the school site due to health and safety regulations. This includes picking up from after school clubs.
PE Kits
PE kit MUST be brought to school on your child's PE days,
Year 3 and 4 will have PE Tuesday and Thursday
Year 5 and Year 6 will have PE Monday and Wednesday
PE kit should be worn for every PE lesson to ensure children are successful and safe during their session. Please ensure your child is wearing the school PE top with the WBJS logo, black or blue joggers/shorts and comfortable trainers.
WBJS Newsround
Take a look at all the fantastic learning that has been taking place this week!
This week we had a Diwali celebration for the upcoming Hindu festival. We were joined by the fantastic Mrs Singh who told us all about Hindusim and how Hindus celebrate Diwali. We learnt that Diwali is the festival of llight and this tradition stemmed from the story of Rama and Sita. As a part of our celebrations, we got to see and hold Hindu artefacts, dress up ready for a Diwali party, retell the story of Rama and Sita, learn a traditional dance and try some delicious curry and bread. Later on in class, we designed our own henna tattoos, Rangoli patterns and even made Rama and Sita shadow puppets. Are you celebrating Diwali? If so, how are you celebrating? We'd love to hear!
This was our first Harvest Festival at WBJA and what a success it was! The parents, students and staff donated a huge variety of foods to our local food bank - We Are One foundation. Kay from the foundation took time out of her day to come and visit the children at school and talk to them about the great work that they do in the community and join in with the celebration. A huge thank you to everyone who donated to our festival and all the food has been collected and taken to the local food bank to help others in the community.
In school, we celebrate our reading success and the children with a significant reading milestone. We identify those children with 'Reading Certificates' for our rewards:
Bronze award - 150 reads
Silver award - 200 reads
Gold award - 250 reads
Diamond award - 300+ reads
These children are celebrated in the 'Star of the Week' assembly with a personalised certificate and given a corresponding badge to wear with pride!
We are currently participating in the first battle of the bands competition this academic year against our very own family of schools within Harbour Learning Trust. The children will be battling it out against Hartsholme, St Giles, Woodlands, Great Coates and Healing. Children can earn points for answering questions correctly within studio, sound check and garage games.
If your child requires a Times Tables Rockstar login please ask their class teacher or Mr Ferrier!
Keep your eyes peeled for updates and progress!
This week James Bakes, who is a Youth Work Team Leader at Horizon Youth Zone visited our school. James delivered an assembly to the whole school to talk about the new state-of-the-art Youth Zone, located in the heart of Grimsby. The children were really excited about the opportunities ‘on the Horizon’.
Please speak to your children about the opportunities available and we will send out further information once we receive it.
Laura Johnson from Havelock Academy has been into school this week to present one of our pupils with a sports prize. He managed to achieve 1st place in their triathlon competition when visiting the school for an open evening earlier this year. He is very happy and proud that he has won a Hawks bag and t-shirt.
Many thanks to Havelock for coming to visit us with this very special treat.
Follow this link to visit the safeguarding section of our website, and for a copy of our Safeguarding and Child Protection policy. https://wba.harbourlearningtrust.com/our-academy/safeguarding/
On Friday 10th October 2025 we supported World Mental Health day by wearing yellow for the day. We talked to the children about how we can keep our minds healthy and how we can promote this amongst our school and community.
Last week PC Mickleborough and Alison Sapcote from the road safety came into school to deliver an assembly to the children on the importance of behaviour in the community, road safety and the upcoming dark nights.
WBJS work closely with outside agencies to ensure the safety of our children. Thank you to the team for visiting our school and also for the bike lights for those children that cycle to and from school.
Change the life of a local child, be a foster carer. Enquire today Fostering in North East Lincolnshire | NELC
As a foster friendly school, we want to raise awareness of the need for local foster carers to come forward in the area. If you think you can make a positive difference to a child’s life, enquire today. Fostering in North East Lincolnshire | NELC https://youtu.be/sNXx6dycp3Y
With the Online Safety Act now in force it's no surprise to see a lot of focus and scrutiny on tech companies, their features and safety settings being so prominent in the media, particularly safety settings failures. However, that shouldn't detract from the fact that safety settings are important; they're not perfect and never will be, but they are there for a reason. Take a look at the links below for support:
Discord app settings - HERE.
TikTok parental controls - HERE.
Snapchat parental controls - HERE.
Instagram parental controls - HERE.
Pinterest privacy and safety settings - HERE.
FaceTime privacy and safety settings - HERE.
WhatsApp privacy guide - HERE.
This is a fantastic guide from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), it goes into lots of detail and I'm sure parents will find it interesting and useful. The guide goes into areas such as:
How social media platforms and algorithms operate.
The various types of harms that children may experience.
Practical advice and guidance.
Supporting resources.
You can download the guide HERE.
For all SEND enquiries please contact Mrs Asher our school SENDCO.
Dinner Menus
W/C 13th October
W/C 3rd November
Please check out the following links to our X (Twitter) accounts and see what each class have been up to this week in real-time!
