Rossett News Update - 18 September 2020
Open Day 2020 - Saturday 3 October
Rossett School Open Day is going 'virtual' this year with exciting events and activities planned throughout the morning of Saturday 3rd October 2020. A range of presentations and live classroom events will take place and you will have the opportunity to put questions to current Year 7 students at the school. You will also be guided through a tour of the school site and see an introduction from the Headteacher, Ms Woodcock. Please click here to register for this year's virtual event.
New experiences for Year 7 Students
We are delighted that our new Year 7 students are settling into Rossett School and are enjoying making new friends and experiencing new subjects. Lauren Binns, who has joined us from Holy Trinity School in Barnsley, has written an account of her first few weeks at Rossett:
"I was feeling a little scared and very nervous on my first day at Rossett School but I sat next to another girl in my Form and made friends instantly! Everyone has been lovely which has helped me settle in and I really like Mrs Martin, my Form Tutor. My favourite subjects so far are History and Science and I have particularly enjoyed doing an experiment with salt and looking how it dissolved in cold, warm or hot water. I also enjoyed doing Binary Maths with Mr Dyke and I love that Year 7 students have their own dedicated Junior Block. At the end of my second week I feel very comfortable and settled and I am looking forward to all of the new things I am going to learn".
Year Team Contact Information
As you are aware, each year group has an allocated Student Support Officer and Director of Learning who should be your first point of contact with any queries.
Year Group |
Director of Learning |
Ext |
Student Support Officer |
Ext |
7 | Mrs Grabham |
332 |
Mrs Reynolds | 248 |
8 | Miss Mooney |
312 |
Ms Mills | 369 |
9 | Mrs Young |
202 |
Mrs Banyard | 365 |
10 | Mrs Grimshaw |
371 |
Mrs Saunders | 228 |
11 |
Mr Bainbridge (Academic Interventions Coord) |
252 250 |
Mrs Russell | 264 |
Head of Sixth Form | Dr Reed |
225 |
Miss Higgins | 361 |
Assistant Head of Sixth Form |
Mr Keyworth |
242 |
Sixth Form Attendance Mrs Chaplin |
260 |
Sixth Form Bursary Fund
The 16-19 Bursary Fund is designed to help support young people who face the greatest financial barriers to participation in education or training. The deadline for applications has been extended to Monday 28 September and if you would like further information and application forms click here.
Face Coverings and Badges
Further to our advice in last week's newsletter that all students are requested to wear face coverings on all school transport routes, we remind you that if your child loses their face mask through the day a replacement can be purchased from the General Office. The masks cost £1 and this will be deducted from your child's lunch account.
In addition, you will be aware that all students in Year 7-11 are required to wear a coloured badge which informs staff which year group they are in so that year group bubbles can be safely maintained. If your child loses this badge replacements can be obtained from their Year Office at a cost of 20p which, again, will be deducted from your child's lunch account.
Class Charts
All parents will have received information this week about our new online communication system, Class Charts. This new App enables parents to keep track of their child’s behaviour, access their weekly timetable, view assigned homework tasks, and view announcements from Rossett School. In addition, if you have more than one child, you can access Class Charts information about your children from a single, centralised parent account. Class Charts for parents can be accessed via the website here, or through the iOS and Android app.
Uniform reminder
At Rossett School we believe that all students should attend school smartly dressed in a distinctive way and we expect all our students to wear the uniform specified properly as this communicates a sense of pride in our school community. We would like to remind you that students must wear the correct uniform at all times as specified here on our school website. As a further reminder any form of 'trainers' are not acceptable footwear unless students have a PE lesson that day.
We would also remind you that your child should wear the specified Rossett School PE kit of plain black training pants and Rossett School PE Hoodie.
Mental Health and Wellbeing
We have taken great care to consider the wellbeing of our returning students and have made this a focus of our reopening plans. In PSHE, all students had the opportunity to reflect on their time at home, how to build resilience and how to manage any worries they have about returning to school. The pastoral teams also continue to provide a high level of support for our students, enhanced by additional training they have received. The following links may be helpful in signposting your child to further support should they need it.
The Go-To – www.thegoto.org.uk – is a portal or ‘single point of information’ for the wide range of mental health support services available to help children and young people in the county address their social and emotional health needs.
Overdrawn Catering Accounts
As we have now moved to a cashless system for topping up catering accounts we have become aware that there may be a time delay, of up to 24 hours, between funds being added to your account and showing on our system. Therefore we’d be grateful if catering accounts could be topped up in a timely manner.
In the event that an account goes overdrawn we will lend two meals and issue a verbal reminder at each instance at the till. If the account remains overdrawn then we will provide a basic sandwich on the third occasion and remind the student again. After this point if the account continues to be overdrawn we will ask that the students to speak to their SSO regarding this matter.
In the event that the account has been topped up but it isn’t showing on the system the student should inform the catering team that this is the case and one further lend may be issued.
We will endeavour to issue reminder emails to parents regarding overdrawn catering accounts to assist with this process.
Please contact the School Finance office if you do not have a link for our online payments system, SCOPAY online or in the event of any difficulties please contact the school finance office at finance@rossettschool.co.uk .
Instrumental Tuition
We have been very proud this week to see the restart of our instrumental tuition service. Some students have been able to restart one to one instrumental tuition after a long period of remote learning during lockdown. If your child plays a musical instrument and would like to have lessons in school or is a beginner starting for the first time, please fill out an application using the forms below.
We are able to offer lessons in school on piano, brass instruments, saxophone, clarinet, strings, drums and guitar. Please note that flute and voice lessons are not currently available in school at this point in time.
If you have any specific questions about instrumental tuition, please feel free to contact our Head of Music Mr Durbin via email. rdurbin@rossettschool.co.uk
Instrumental Lessons - Online Application https://rossett.school/musicform
Guitar Lessons - Online Application https://kaffessamusic.wufoo.com/forms/m1pa8ncn11l0ht8/
PTA News
Welcome once again to everyone, this school term is a little different to normal, events where you can meet other parents and chat will potentially be extremely limited. As these events are key to the work of the PTA and are also of great benefit to everyone who attends, the PTA have created a ‘Rossett School PTA’ group on Facebook to allow everyone to chat and get to know each other. It’s a closed group and we will restrict access as we would to PTA membership.
Please feel free to request access - https://bit.ly/PTA-Chat - All Parents, Carers, Staff are welcome to join!
H Woodock
Headteacher