Straight from the Head 5.9.25

Date: 5th Sep 2025 @ 1:54pm

It is our "Welcome (and Welcome Back)" blog for families as we start our 2025 - 26 academic year! 

To our new families, it is a warm welcome and to all families returning: welcome back! Looking at the school employment records, I am starting my 10th full year as Thurlbear Head and my 14^th year at the school. Time flies, indeed! From my home in Charmouth, I have clocked around 119,000 miles in work miles, which would get me around the world 4 ½ times. In all this time – and those miles travelled – my passion and drive to help Thurlbear pupils enjoy their school days and achieve as much as they can hasn’t diminished. I am blessed to work with a staff team that feel the same and, together, that can make a powerful force across our school and into our community.

On the side of our school is the 19th C Foundation Stone with the Bible inscription “Train up a child in the way he should go….” (we now use 'they' to embrace our whole school community) And we try to live up to this vision every day. I talk to our children about being ‘a Thurlbear family’ as I feel our lives in school in many ways follow the same patterns and pathways as our lives at home. Just like lots of families, we aren’t perfect, and we will get things wrong. We try not to make the same mistake twice and always aim to communicate as effectively as possible when things change or we spot an error. You’ll make mistakes, too, and that is fine! Forgetting events, who’s picking up or a lost lunch order; contacting us and talking will help us all. You can call on 01823 442277 or email office@thurlbearprimaryschool.co.uk and we endeavour to get back to you the same day. If you have a query, Mrs Carter is our brilliant ‘Office Team’. You might need to leave a message between approximately 1:25 – 2:15pm daily and after 2pm on Thursdays. 

 

Our Christian Values:

Thankfulness, Hope, Friendship, Wisdom and Trust (friendship is this half term!)

We focus on these values in many of our Collective Worships and our Church visitors from the Seven Sowers benefice – Holly Stevens and the team – also use these to keep us all united in thought and vision in our Church school. In each half term, we look at a new value and classes lead their own Key Stage worships with this theme at its heart. Holly also sends us updates of Benefice worships in our local churches, which we then pass on to our families. This allows us to stay at the heart of our church community.

Your children will be part of 4 church groups in our school:

St Thomas, St Mary, St Michael and St Peter.

We use these groups at events, such as Sports Day and for Interhouse competitions! Siblings join any older sibling in the same group. 

 

General Notices for the Year

When relevant, I will aim to collate the most important weekly information, updates, signposts and requests from teachers, office team and me, ensuring you don’t miss out on key information.

 

Social Media / Website / Parental Engagement tools:

1. We do have a Facebook page for both our school and our PTA (more on this later), and this is where I publish a link to the newsletter. Facebook is a wonderful tool for lots of people, but many of you will not use it. You will not miss any newsletters or updates if you do not use Facebook, as I paste information into both our website, FB and onto our Calss Dojo comms tool.
2. Every class will also use Class Dojo, where teachers and parent/carers can communicate securely about your own child, as well as post general class messages. Teachers will let you know more about this in their own half termly newsletters. I also put regular updates on Class Dojo, so it may be worthwhile having the app on a mobile device if that is something that appeals to you. These engagement tools are excellent, but they have limitations! PLEASE don’t expect immediate responses if you send messages using FaceBook, as I don’t monitor it during school hours and I don’t have access to it over the weekends. Email or phone the office is the route for an immediate response! Also, please bear in mind that teachers should separate professional and personal lives and, therefore, should not be replying to any messages you send during the evening. We also have teachers who are not working full-time, so won’t be accessing communications on their non-working days. Again, message the office if you have a concern or update for us. We always try and reply on the same day. Teachers will not have time during their school day to reply to direct messages, as they are teaching! If you have a message that needs relaying urgently, call us. 

UNIFORM:

Our uniform in the first few days has been exceptional! During the year, the main things that happen are:

1. Shoes fall to bits. Please just communicate with us if something goes wrong with school shoes. We understand it can take some time to replace them. If possible, keep them plain, black and without flashing lights, hidden toys or edible pieces (I made that bit up, but it wouldn’t surprise me). Shoes simply need to be sensible, safe and practical. Our pupils grow out of them so quickly, it might be good to create a swap-shop for shoes!
2. Hair accessories. Please ensure that headbands, scrunchies, alice bands, hair clip and bobbles are discrete and simple in colour! We aren’t trying to suck the fun out of hair care, but it simply keeps a consistency across the school and we can celebrate the uniqueness of our children through their living and learning in the school day (and they can express themselves through their hair on a Dress Down Friday!).
3. Pre-loved. The school has some used uniform that is in very good condition. Families can access and Mrs Linthorne, a parent, kindly oversees this for us. I am sure there will be information regarding this very soon.

PLEASE name everything. We have a lost property and it saddens me greatly to see so many items that get left in there. The Year 6 try and help me give it back out but the amount of clothes without names makes this almost impossible! Lots of you are teachers or work in schools. If you have any genius things that work for your settings, please let me know. I am always happy to learn from others!

LUNCHES:

All lunches can be booked through the School Grid system and Mrs Carter can help get you set up. Just as a reminder: if your child is in Foundation Stage, Year 1 or 2, they are entitled to the Universal Infant Free School meal (UIFSM) and, therefore, no payment is required. However, you still need to order a meal! Currently, we have nut, egg and sesame seed allergies in school, so please be very mindful of these restrictions when sending in your child’s lunch. These are not allowed in school. We would never discard your child’s food for containing these and would always communicate with you and see if we had an alternative to offer in school. Regarding egg content in lunches, we say:

NO mayonnaise NO egg sandwiches NO mini picnic eggs /scotch eggs. These measures are put in place for the protection of our pupils who will be at risk if these requests are ignored. We monitor lunchboxes as effectively as possible, but no system is perfect and we rely on families supporting us by following our rules.

 

TRAVEL AROUND OUR COMMUNITY:

Our rural position always poses challenges for our families. Just some things to consider:

1. We are a rural school and tractors / combines rightly need to use our roads around school; please be mindful of them at key times in the day.
2. The speed limit outside of our school is a ludicrous 60mph! There is an advisory 20mph during the start and end of the school day and we have flashing signs that should warn motorists.
3. If families could try and stick to our suggested route to and from school in a one-way system, it really does make it much better. We have a minibus service for families on the Staple Fitzpaine side of school. This is very welcome development, but please do be mindful that it travels the opposite direction to the suggested flow.

Please drive safely through the village, for the sake of the whole community. And please remember that we have a small number of families who walk to school. Please pass them slowly and with consideration.

 

THRIVE IN 2025

Our aim to further embed a thriving culture in '25 continues into this academic year. One key area is 'thrive outside' and we have ideas we are taking forwards as a school this term. We will be communicating these to families very soon. As you can see, below, one area of our outside space has been totally revigorated with the help of PTA funds. We now have this happy, sopcial space that our pupils have simply loved over the past 3 days. We plan to grow it further in the coming weeks and months. 

Throughout the year, the teachers will be monitoring the opportunities to thrive outside and OFF the site (such as Thurlbear Woods) as well as inviting experts in. Where these visits are planned, we will give families as much time as possible to plan for payments. Teachers will communicate via their own newsletters and Class Dojo. We will also be very mindful of costs of trips. As we have mentioned before, our location makes it very expensive for coaches, so this will be taken into consideration when we plan trips. We do NOT make a profit from trips! Every penny requested is for the event.

 

SAFEGUARDING 

• Safeguarding is not just child protection; it is every-day guarding-the-safety of our pupils. It’s why we walk around school, why we hang up bags rather than leave them on the floor and why we have Golden Rule no.7: Do Be Safe!
• Alongside this is our safe contact with you, our parents and carers. Please ensure that we have your most up to date information in school, including your mobile number, a work number, a home number if applicable and an email address. It is also necessary for us to have at least one other emergency contact should we not be able to reach you; someone local, ideally! Over the holidays, lots can change in your lives so, for example, if you move, let us know. If there are split families, we will always endeavor to get consistent communications to both parents, so please do work with us to achieve this.
• We have your consent for photos, photos on the website and on our social media, and to be displayed in school. I love to publish great things about our pupils and an image will not be accompanied by the child’s full name etc.
• Communication on pick-ups: one of our biggest issues can be when your pick-up plans change suddenly! We fully understand that things crop up, but please do communicate with us as soon as you can. We won’t let your child go with someone else if we haven’t been given the permission by the main carer / parent to the office team (please not notify us on class dojo, as it might not be read in time). In these instances, we contact the family and speak directly. Please do not be upset if we respectfully keep the child until we have verified; it is done with the very best of intentions!
• Allergies: in school, we operate a strict no-egg and no-nuts policy due to pupils with severe allergies, as mentioned above! A polite reminder that, if you have a child with asthma, you should ensure we have an up-to-date inhaler available in the classroom.
• Just as a general reminder, I (Mr Gillan) am the Designated Safeguarding Lead and Mrs Lucas and Mrs Burke is the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead. All TAs have had up to date safeguarding training and know what to do if they have any concerns regarding our children, concerns about staff and if they have concerns about my conduct. That might sound dramatic, but it is feel it important for families to know that everyone in school is accountable for their conduct and we are equitable in our professionalism.

 

GENERAL UPDATES FOR WEEK 1

After School Sports Clubs will begin MONDAY 8th (Gymnastics has already started!). I thank Mr Webb for stepping in to cover while Mr Gunstone is off. Huge thanks to Mrs Powell for volunteering to lead our very successful choir. It is going to be a VERY big year for the choir, so all great voices in Key Stage 2 are welcome to join! These clubs will change over the year and we talk to our VALUES Team about what their peers would love to see in teh lists for next half term. 

 

If any pupils would like to do tuition in drums or guitar, then we have 2 excellent tutors who visit school and we can put you in touch. 

We operate our own Breakfast and After School Club and contacting Mrs Carter is the best route for setting up an account and seeking support. I know she is very busy with this, today!

On Monday 8^th, I will publish a separate newsletter including all dates we have for this half term, including Celebration Worships, led by a different class weekly and you are invited to watch. All dates will be entered onto our website calendar. We will also be inviting parents to see their children receive a Worker of the Week award in the Friday Worship. Teachers will Dojo a message to inform you the day before. We cannot give you more advanced warning, as a pupil is building up a bank of excellent conduct or work examples during that week!