Parent Bulletin 28.03.2024
28th March 2024
This week's bulletin is available here.
Dear Parents and Carers,
This week there are multiple notices about uniform, so please do read through the below carefully and contact your child’s year team if you have any questions about this.
Wearing PE Kit to School: Poor Weather
In September we introduced a policy of requiring that Pupils arrive to school in PE kit on days when they have PE. They also remain in this kit for the remainder of the day. When weather is poor, we stated that pupils should bring their normal uniform to get changed into, which they would then do if they were taking part in activities in the rain, or on muddy pitches.
As we approach the summer term, most PE lessons will take part outside, on the field. If it rains, we are less likely to bring pupils inside as it is safe to carry on in the rain when the weather is warmer.
We would therefore like to take this opportunity to remind all parents that it is the responsibility of the pupils to bring their normal uniform on days where rain is forecast, to ensure PE lessons can carry on without disruption.
Please accept our thanks for your understanding and help in this matter. During next term, we will seek parent and pupil views on how well this kit/uniform policy has worked, to inform our decision making for September.
Changes to Total Clothing prices
We have been informed this week by Total Clothing that there will be a change to their pricing of uniform, stating that: “As the industry’s largest manufacturer and supplier of school uniform, we have put a huge amount of effort into cost control throughout our supply chain, to find ways of suppressing the inevitable increases we are seeing in operating costs such as energy prices and wages. We believe however, that this cannot be at the expense of service. Excellent service to schools and parents is something we aim never to compromise. 2023 was a very successful year for us in terms of service and we look forward to continuing this in 2024. We have manged to hold off changing our pricing until now and increases will now come into effect from 1st May. Whilst any increase is difficult, we are pleased with how we’ve been able to minimise the impacts we are all feeling in the current financial climate.”
Total Clothing also added that future plans to improve their uniform provision will include a new website as well as both in-store and early-bird offers to parents. When we have more information about this, it will be communicated home.
The cost of the increase is 4.5% and we realise this may be cause some difficulties for some of our families. If you do need financial assistance with the cost of uniform, please contact your child’s year team in the first instance.
Branded Uniform
As a reminder as well, it was also agreed that we would continue with the wearing of non-braded trousers, skirts and shorts for the rest of this academic year. Looking forward to September, we will continue with this rule of wearing non branded trousers, skirts and shorts, as long as the items adhere to our uniform policy. Examples of accepted uniform can be found here. If you are not sure an item of clothing is suitable, please contact your child’s year team for advice.
Update on Year 7 and 8 Dining Arrangements Trial
Thank you for all of the parental feedback on the dining arrangements trial following our previous communication on this matter. The school will now be placing more tables in the performance hall as of lunchtime today. If you would like to provide feedback on this update, please don't hesitate to use this form https://forms.office.com/e/HJqGGdFjka and a member of staff will get back to you following the Easter break.
I hope everyone has a lovely Easter and we’ll look forward to welcoming all pupils back to school on Tuesday 16th April.
Best wishes,
Lynn Mayes
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