Following government guidance (below), Shawbury Stars will continue to be open from Monday 8th March 2021. Following this guidance:

• Shawbury Stars is only to be used for working parents who have no other alternative childcare. For the time being it is not a social club.
• Children will continue to remain on class tables whilst in the hall, so not to mix bubbles.

DFE Guidance:

You should advise parents that where they are accessing this provision for their
children, that they must only be using this, where:

• the use of the provision is reasonably necessary to support them to work,
seek work, undertake education or training, attend a medical appointment or
address a medical need or attend a support group

Where parents are using external childcare providers or out of school extra-curricular activities for their children, you should also:

• advise them to limit their use of multiple out-of-school settings providers, and
to only use one out-of-school setting in addition to school as far as possible.
• encourage them to check providers have put in place their own protective
measures
• send them the link to the https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-parents-and-carers-of-children-attending-out-of-school-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak/guidance-for-parents-and-carers-of-children-attending-out-of-school-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak

Thank you for following the DFE Guidance. All bookings to continue to be made via the Stars email address – stars@shawburystmarys.co.uk

As you are aware we are changing our sQuid payment system over to Arbor.

This change will not happen until after we return from the Easter holidays. Please keep paying for your child’s school lunches and stars care on sQuid until then.  Any debit or credit remaining on your sQuid account will be transferred over to the new system over the Easter holidays.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me their preferred email address for the new system.  Myself and Mrs Flood are busy setting up the new system and you should receive an email within the next 2-3 weeks explaining how you sign into the new system.

Thanks

Tracy Roberts

After the Easter holidays we will be using a new system for our lunch and trips cashless payments.

We will be finishing with sQuid and moving to Arbor.  The office staff will be setting up the new Arbor payment system and you will be receiving an email in the next few weeks informing you of how to log on and make payments for lunches, trips, nursery and stars.

To enable us to do this we need to know your preferred email address.  Could you please email back, or send a text message with your child’s name and preferred email address back to the office asap, but by 26th February please.

We would also like everyone to check their sQuid account and pay off any arrears owing.  Any credit or debits left on sQuid at Easter will be transferred across to the Arbor payment system.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Tracy Roberts

We would like to wish all our St Mary’s community a safe half term. We hope that after half term we receive some positive news about school re-opening and that we are able to see each other again.

Take care and look after yourselves, your family and the community.

Mr Verling and all the staff at St Mary’s

Congratulations to all our Head Teacher Award winners.

All children in school:

All home learners:

All parents and carers:

All St Mary’s staff:

Well done everyone!

Mr Verling

The main Department for Education document has been updated with the following:

‘In the week commencing 22 February, the Government will publish a plan for taking the country out of lockdown. Our aim will be to set out a gradual and phased approach towards easing the restrictions in a sustainable way, guided by the principles we have observed throughout the pandemic, beginning with the most important principle of all: that re-opening schools must be our national priority. We have committed to providing schools, parents and young people with a minimum of two weeks’ notice for this return to on-site provision. Additional pupils and students will therefore return to on-site education on 8 March 2021 at the earliest.’

As a school, we are hoping that we re-open fully on 8th March, in the meantime we will keep you updated as soon as we hear more ourselves.

Mr Verling

If your child is in school next week, please read below information about Track and Trace over February half term.

This is only relevant for children who are in school.

Track and trace 28012021

I recently contacted you about Blue Peter & we’d like to inform you, we’ve also made an exciting revamp to the CBBC YouTube Channel.

We think your pupils and parents may be interested in this for entertainment at half term and outside of home-schooling hours now we’re in lockdown.

We are uploading videos to it daily that are suitable for 5-11 year olds. We have all the top CBBC brands on here, with a wide range of genres from factual shows, news, dramas, comedy to entertainment. Programmes like Horrible Histories, Blue Peter, Newsround, The Next Step, Saturday Mash-Up, Operation Ouch, the Playlist, the Dumping Ground, Heirs of the Night and Jamie Johnson. We are also welcoming back Dani Harmer in the brilliant new programme My Mum Tracy Beaker.

 If you think your pupils would be interested in this, please do send this out to your parents and ask them to subscribe to www.youtube.com/cbbc – (it’s obviously completely free to subscribe!) and don’t forget to watch the CBBC live daily and on the BBC iPlayer.

 Thanks so much for your time,

The CBBC team