Life at St Bede's

Attendance

The Education Act states that parents have the primary responsibility for ensuring that children of a compulsory school age receive a suitable education.

Regular attendance at school is compulsory and necessary for a good education. The government set a minimum expectation of 90% attendance. Average attendance is 96%. 

At St Bede`s Primary School we ask parents and families to support in promoting good attendance in the following ways:

  • Ensuring that children attend school and arrive on time. Children arriving after 9:00 am will be marked as late.
  • If your child is ill, please contact the school on the first morning of absence via telephone on 01670 822389, or you can send an email to [email protected].  If you have access to the School Gateway, you could also send a text message. 
  • Avoid taking holidays during term time.  Before requesting a holiday, think about the lessons your child will miss, the difficulty they will have catching up and the effect it will have on how well they do at school.  If a family holiday falls during term time, a request holiday form should be filled in before the child goes away on holiday.  Absence for holidays will be recorded as unauthorized.  

School employs the services of an independent attendance officer who can offer support when required.


Timings of the School Day

  • The gates to the yard open for morning start at 8:45am and close promptly at 9am so that the children can begin their lesson time. 
  • Registers are closed at 9am prompt.
  • Please note that school cannot take responsibility for children arriving on site before 8:45am unless they are booked into the breakfast club.
  • The gates are opened for collection of children at 3:15pm and left open for 15 minutes to allow parents to stagger the collection.
  • Children in Years 5 & 6 are able to make their own way home with the written consent of their parents. All other children are to be collected.
  • We have wraparound care which we call B ‘n’ T club. This is open for childcare from 7:30am before school and until 5:30pm after school. Booking and payment is to be made in advance via the School Gateway, please ask the office staff for details.

Mental Wellbeing Strategies

All staff at St Bede’s are passionate about supporting the children's mental wellbeing, ensuring that the school vision is woven through all that we do. Love is the main driver and therefore from the moment a child joins us at St Bede’s we strive to support their whole being. During lessons, breaks and even when the children are at home staff aim to nurture and support the them.

Within the curriculum and during social times, we encourage the children to use St Bede’s Sparks. These are characters developed to encourage key skills for learning, resilience, perseverance, choice making, problem solving. As a way of supporting children to organise their emotions and thoughts we use meditation daily. This is carried out in a simple way that includes all members. 

From time to time children need more than these basic wellbeing interventions and so this is when staff liaise and aim to cater for children through the specific challenges they may face. Children have daily access to nurture time with key staff, here they are able to talk about their worries and they are offered words of encouragement. Should the challenges be unresolved we have a trained counsellor in school on a weekly basis and she can work with the children exploring issues further.

As part of supporting all children at St Bede’s we have carried out work on poverty proofing the school day. The aim of this work was to create an environment where no child feels different because of the income of their home. There can be very simple signs during the school day that highlights a child who has a less affluent home life and this can be catastrophic for the child’s mental wellbeing. This work continues and we are guided by our aim to support every child to feeling they fully belong in our community. We appreciate that outside of school society can appear unfair but in school we want to create a bubble so that learning can take place.