Head Teacher’s Letter June 2016.

Dear Parents/ Carers,

It seems hard to believe that we are heading into the last week of term.  After a very full and rewarding first year at Springburn Academy I am looking forward to my first school awards ceremony on Tuesday evening (and my second on Wednesday).  I have valued and appreciated the support that you as parents and carers have given me in my first year here and  I look forward to working in partnership in the years ahead.  The first Parent Council meeting in 2016/7 will be on Tuesday 23^rd August 2016 and I welcome any new and interested members to attend, we meet at 6.30pm in my office.

Parent Council News

Springburn Academy Parent Council had their AGM on 7^th June 2016 where Eddie Romeo stood down as chair of the council after many years and Richard Porter was elected as new chair.  May I take this opportunity to thank Eddie for his excellent service and congratulate Richard in his new appointment. 

Helen Carrol from the Fuel Zone came along to speak to parents about the food on offer at breakfast, interval and lunch times in the Fuel Zone.  For £1.70 your child can have a main course, dessert of fruit or jelly and a juice or water. Helen explained that the cashless system used in the school allows pupils the opportunity to spread their meals across the day e.g., a roll at interval and sandwich and juice at lunch.  All pupils use a card (or more often their card number) to buy their food.  Any free meal entitlement is added to the card for the child to use daily.  Forms for free meals (clothing grants and Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA)) can be collected at the school office or downloaded from www.glasgow.gov.uk.

In a recent Health and Wellbeing survey our pupils came out well in their responsible attitudes towards risk taking behaviours but not so well in their healthy food/ drink consumption.  Much fewer of our pupils ate their 5-a-day fruit and veg than the city average and many more ate their lunch from a van and drank fizzy sugary drinks at lunch.  Many reports including Scottish Government ones warn us of the negative impact sugar in our diet can have on us and in particular on our children.  To try to support our children make the correct choices the school, with the parent council’s full support, will be banning sugary fizzy and energy drinks. Pupils will have these drinks replaced with water if they bring them into the school grounds.  I am pleased that the parent body support us in this decision as children’s concentration and behaviour can be impacted by drinking these types of drink during the day.  Water is freely available in school and juice is available from the Fuel Zone.

Fire Alarms

As you are aware we have had a few malicious fire alarms at the school this session and I am glad to say that we have managed to apprehend and discipline those responsible.  However we have been served with two notices from the Fire Service who no longer send the appropriate amount of fire fighters or engines to an initial call out to Springburn Academy due to the number of malicious alarms.  This is obviously a concern for us and to rectify this situation and reduce the number of malicious alarms pupils are not allowed to bring aerosol deodorants or hairspray to school as of August 2016, as the smoke detectors can accidentally be triggered by an aerosol.  Deodorants should be of a roll-on variety.  I’m sure you will agree that the school needs to do all it can to have the fire service return the appropriate level of service for the school.

Celebrating Success

In the recent city-wide athletics competition we have been very successful in achieving Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in almost every race on offer.  Well done to our S1/2 runners!! Check out our twitter pages below for pictures of our stars.

On Tuesday this week 25 S1 pupils graduated from the Children’s University at Strathclyde’s Barony Hall.  The Children’s University is an organisation that encourages life-long learning in young people and enables them to make connections between weekend activities e.g., museum visit, and their learning.  The S1 pupils involved this year have recorded all of their activities outside school and built up credits to finally graduate on Tuesday.  I am looking forward to seeing how many of our new S1 pupils we can encourage to become involved next session.

Dates to note

School closes at 1pm on Friday 24^th June, we are closed to pupils on Thursday 23^rd due to the referendum and pupils not involved in the junior awards on Wednesday afternoon will finish school at 12 noon.

SQA results will be posted, emailed, texted at 8am on Tuesday 9^th August.

Pupils return to school on Monday 15^th August at 8.50am.

I wish you all a happy and fun packed holiday.

Regards,