Dear Families,

Free School Meals
Did you know that if your child is entitled to free school meals, the school receives funding from the Government.  This funding is spent on support for your child. Even if your child has packed lunches, you can still apply and the school will still receive this extra funding.  See below for more information.  You can find out more by clicking Staffordshire County Council

Who can get free school meals?

The general low income entitlement criteria is -

• Income Support

• Income Based Job Seekers Allowance. Please note the ‘new style’ job seekers allowance is not a qualifying benefit, as this is based upon payment of National Insurance contributions and not the household income

• Income Related Employment and Support Allowance. Please note the ‘new style’ employment and support allowance is not a qualifying benefit, as this is based upon payment of National Insurance contributions and not the household income

• eligible for Child Tax Credit but not Working Tax Credit and the household income (as used by HMRC to assess tax credits) is not more that £16,190. Please note: anyone eligible for Working Tax Credit, or if you have a partner and they receive it, regardless of Income, you will not qualify

• The Guarantee element of State Pension Credit

• Support under part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999

• In receipt of the 4 week run on of working tax credit (this is where someone becomes unemployed or reduces their hours and so is no longer entitled to working tax credit but will continue to receive it for a further 4 weeks and is entitled to free meals during that time)

• Universal credit (provided you have an annual net earned household income of no more than £7,400 as assessed by earnings from up to three of your most recent assessment periods). Your net earned income is your household income after taxes and deductions and does not include income from Universal Credit or any other benefits you may receive.

To make an application under any of these criteria please use our online application form

National Teaching Assistant Day
Today we celebrated all of our wonderful teaching assistants.  Without their invaluable support in the classroom, the children wouldn’t have another adult to support them with their learning.  As a way of saying thank you, we treated our TAs to a special breakfast. 

Learning in the classrooms
This week I have been around to all of the classrooms and seen some amazing learning going on.  Year 6 has been learning about personification and produced some very thoughtful sentences. Year 5 were very knowledgeable about the dangers of electricity.  Year 4 has amazed me with their spelling results.  So many of the children are getting full marks and remembering spellings from previous weeks, which is great!  Years 3, 2 and 1 have been working their socks off with their maths work.  And early years children have been amazing with their activities especially Reception children who weren’t too sure about having a spider or a shark for a pet!

I showed some new families around yesterday who were very impressed with what they saw. 

Small & Tall
On Friday 25th October, Small & Tall is closed after school due to staff training.  We are open in the morning.

Water Beads and young children
If you have young children, please take a moment to read this safety alert regarding water beads. 

Attendance
At Friarswood we are very lucky to have super overall attendance.  As you will be aware, the Government is raising awareness about attendance in schools across the country and has put new guidelines in place.  Here are the links to our Attendance policy and the DfE information.  One of the updates refers to penalty notices to families who have been on holiday but haven’t informed the school of this.  Due to this, please can we ask that you do let us know if you’re on holiday as we now have to do home visits if a child is off school for more than 2 days. If your child or someone talks to us about you being on holiday (and we‘re not aware of this)  we still have to refer this to the authority.  Again, I would just like to say that Friarswood has the best attendance across all of the Co-op Academies Trust.  Thank you for your support with this.

Have a lovely weekend

Take care and stay safe.

Mrs Wilmer