We have nearly reached the end of another wonderful term at Pelynt. The children continue to make us proud every day with their energy and enthusiasm for learning. We hope that you found your parent consultations informative and look forward to seeing lots of you at our class celebration assemblies this week and our Easter service at church on Thursday at 2.30pm, where we will also be saying goodbye to Emma Hickman, our Pre-School Manager.

Thank you so much to everyone who has completed the online parent/carer survey. This has been extremely helpful and over the coming weeks we will be acting on the information that this has provided to improve our school, as a staff team. We will also be looking at the pupil voice results. Thank you for supporting your child to complete those. There are many things to celebrate in the parent/carer survey, including some lovely comments that I will be passing on to staff, and some very useful queries and suggestions in the open questions. We have written to parents and carers with more detail.

Lots of people commented that they have enjoyed the Celebration Assemblies, and sharing their child’s books with them after these, and that the curriculum maps that come home every half term provide a better overview of what their child is learning. Several people commented on how much they have enjoyed the events that we have organised this year for families to attend, including harvest, the whole school Nativity, the Christmas celebration service in church, the Christmas fair and how moving the singing was at our St Piran’s service.

We have had a very positive response to our plan to start before and after school care. Next term I will be reviewing the financial requirements for this to be viable and looking at staffing. We will be in touch next term with more details.

We are aware that some cars are parking close to the school gates. We have a number of children who are dropped off by taxis, or whose parents have mobility issues, so need to get their children as close to the school grounds as possible to drop off, but we will review this with those drivers to see if we can come to a different arrangement.

Finally, after a half term of curriculum development, I will returning to class teaching on Thursday and Friday afternoons, in Class 2.

Just a reminder that school is closed for INSET on Friday 31st March. School opens again on Monday 17th April and Pre-School opens on Wednesday 19th April. We hope that you all have a lovely Easter holiday and fingers crossed for some sunshine!

Kind regards,

Abigail Rich
Head of School

St Piran's Day
Our week began with a wonderful celebration of St Piran’s Day at church. We were extremely proud of the children for performing a wide range of Cornwall themed songs from the funny, to the uplifting to the extremely moving, particularly the whole school rendition of ‘Cornwall my home’. A huge thank you to Reverend Allen for leading service and for the delicious saffron buns for the children afterwards!

School Council Inspirational British People Results
This week our School Council put forward the final names for voting for our new house names. The suggestions from children, staff, parents and carers were all inspirational British people. Every child in the school voted and we can announce that the new house names are:
Red: Marcus Rashford House
Yellow: Ellie Simmonds House
Green: David Attenborough House
Blue: Queen Elizabeth House

Parent/Carer and Pupil Voice Surveys
To help us to continue to improve our school, it is important that we take into account the views of our children and their families. To do this, we have emailed links to online surveys, which we would like all parents/carers and children at our school to complete by Friday 17th March. Thank you for helping us to make Pelynt even better!

Mrs Westacott
This week we said “see you soon” to our much-loved Mrs Westacott, who is returning to teaching after many years as a Teaching Assistant Pelynt School and Pre-School. She will be returning to us as a supply teacher, and we wish her the very best in her new role. 

New Governors
We are delighted to announce that, following our recruitment drive, we have two new governors joining our Governing Body, which is comprised of Pelynt, Polruan, Polperro, Duloe and Trenode Bridge Trust schools. We are really looking forward to welcoming Mrs Lynn Reeves and Mrs Rachel Rowe to our team.

Parent Consultation Bookings
Finally, if you haven’t done so already, please contact Mrs Thompson in the office to make an appointment to see your child’s teacher at our parent consultation evenings.

We hope that you have a lovely weekend, fingers crossed for some drier weather for our runners this afternoon!

Kind regards,
Ms Abigail Rich
Head of School

Spring Term 1 Week 6

We have had another fantastic week of learning and enrichment at Pelynt.  Pre-School, Class 1 and Class 2 had a fabulous morning of role-play, courtesy of the Pop Up Play Village. We were also joined by children from Polruan. A huge thank you to Mrs Marshall for organising this. On Thursday, 12 children in Class 3 were joined by children from Duloe, Polruan, Polperro and Trenode at the Sports Festival at Duloe Primary, where they took part in a fantastic afternoon of boxing, cross-fit, frisbee golf, table tennis, tag rugby and archery.  Class 3 have also been to Polperro today for their art lesson. They had a wonderful morning sketching harbour scenes, which they will be adding watercolour paint to later. 

We have lots of exciting events to come next half term:

World Book Day
On Thursday 2nd March we will be celebrating World Book Day! We are very aware that creating or buying a costume for World Book Day can put unnecessary time and financial pressure on parents and carers, particularly when it may only be worn once. We are also sensitive to the fact that not all children enjoy dressing up. We are therefore offering several different options for the day.

1. Dress up as a character from your favourite book. If your child has this book, please send it in with them on the day, so they can talk about what they like about it.

2. Make a book hat, with pictures of objects, places, characters, words etc from the story or non-fiction text. This can be worn with school uniform or home clothes.

3. Home clothes or school uniform only.

We would also like the children to have a go at one of the following.  We have emailed examples of these to inspire the children!
• Make a character from a story using vegetables and bring it to school on the day. Not one to make too far in advance!
• Make a book in a box.

We will also be holding a book swap. If you child has a book that they would like to donate to this, in exchange for another book, please bring this to school on the day. We would also love to invite any parents/carers/other relatives of children in our school to come in to read a favourite story or non-fiction book to the children in small groups on the day. If you are able to do this, please let Mrs Thompson know in the office secretary@pelyntprimary.co.uk.

St Piran’s Day
On Monday 6th March, we will be celebrating St Piran’s Day. We would like the children to wear black/white to school that day. 

Class 3 Staffing News
We will be making changes to Class 3 staffing next half term, which will start on Monday 27th February. To give further time to drive school improvement and provide support to children across the school, I will no longer be teaching on Thursdays and Fridays. Mrs Jo Morris has kindly agreed to switch schools with Mr Alex Knight from Brunel, who will teach the class full-time. He is an experienced teacher, with a wealth of skills and expertise to bring to our school. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs Morris for her work with Class 3 and wish her all the best in her new position at Brunel.

Finally, I hope that you all have a happy and healthy half-term holiday and see you at 8.40am on Monday 20th February!

Kind regards,

Ms Abigail Rich
Head of School

Governor Recruitment

We are currently seeking new governors to join our Governing Body and would be delighted if parents/carers at our school, or local residents would like to join us.

What is a school governor?
School governors have a varied and important role, in helping our school run effectively. They have 3 core functions:

· Planning the strategic direction of the school.
· Overseeing financial performance of the school and ensuring money is well spent.
· Holding the school leadership to account.

The governor role is strategic rather than operational. Governors don’t get involved with the day to day running of a school, instead supporting and challenging the school’s leadership team to drive school improvement. They champion the work the school does.

Our Governing Body
This year we have joined together with four other schools within the Bridge Trust (Polruan, Duloe, Trenode and Polperro) to form one collaborative Governing Body. We meet all together every term, sometimes in person and sometimes via Microsoft Teams. Our governors are parents and people in our local community and in their role they:

· Get to know the school, including visiting the school during school hours to gain a good understanding of the school’s strengths and areas of development, and completing monitoring documentation.
· Attend induction training and regular relevant training and development events.
· Attend meetings (full governing board meetings and meetings with the Head of School) and read documentation before the meetings. · Act in the best interests of all the pupils of the school.
· Behave in a professional manner, as set down in the governing board’s code of conduct, including acting in strict confidence.

Being a school governor is a commitment and a responsibility, but offers you the chance to see first-hand the impact you can make in improving education for children in our community.

Do I need to have certain qualifications?
No special qualifications are needed and the most important thing is to have a keen interest in the school and be prepared to play an active part in the governing body’s work.

How do I get involved?
Please make an appointment to meet with me, via the school office  secretary@pelyntprimary.co.uk.

If it’s something you might be interested in, we hope you’ll apply. We are really keen to have more local community voice within our school.

Kind regards,
Abigail Rich

Head of School

The Under the Sea Garden Renovation Project

We are incredibly lucky to have such varied and extensive outdoor areas for our children at Pelynt. One of these is our Under the Sea Garden, to the left of the playground. This is in need of some love, to turn it back into a magical outdoor learning space. FOPS have very kindly volunteered to clear this area on Saturday 4th February between 9.30am and 12pm, but they need your help! Once this has been cleared, we will be looking for volunteers for the next stage of painting and planting renovations. Please catch Rachel Rowe, or myself, at the school gate, or send an email to head@pelyntprimary.co.uk if you can help. A huge thank you to FOPS for organising this!

New high quality books

Part of our school development this year has included looking at the books that the children have the opportunity to be immersed in through our English lessons, library and Reading for Pleasure daily sessions. Through FOPS fundraising, and the generosity of our families, we are in the process of buying lots of wonderful new books. These have been carefully selected to include ‘old but gold’ classics and ‘new and bold’ contemporary authors, from an extensive range of genres. These will make a huge difference to the learning opportunities available to our children, so thank you!

Cornish Art

It is really important to us that the children in our school have a deep understanding of Cornwall, including inspirational people who have made Cornwall their home. We have been very lucky to secure some funding for a local artist, Sean Hewitt, to come into school to create art with groups of children in February. He will be teaching them about inspirational Cornish art and using this to create a collaborative piece with them, to display and treasure in our school entrance.

Class Celebration Assemblies

We would like to invite our families to our Class Celebration Assemblies at the end of this half term. These will follow the same format as last time, with a whole class celebration of learning in the hall (in the classroom for Class 1) then time together with your child to enjoy their books more closely. Please come to the school office to be signed in.

Class 1: Monday 6th February 2.30-3.15pm

Class 2: Tuesday 7th February 2.30-3.15pm

Class 3: Wednesday 8th February 9-9.45am

Class 4: Thursday 9th February 2.30-3.15pm


Kind regards,

Ms Abigail Rich

Head of School

Merry Christmas!

It has been a magical end to the Autumn Term at Pelynt. We started our Christmas celebrations with our Christmas Fayre, organised by our wonderful children, staff and FOPS. The children made all sorts of delicious treats, Christmas crafts to sell/make and games for families to play. A huge thank you to FOPS for all their hard work with the refreshments, a raffle with some of the best prizes that we have ever seen, a tombola and for organising a wonderful range of stalls run by local crafts people and businesses. A phenomenal £900 was raised!

This week started with a very icy Monday. I’m so grateful to all staff for braving the weather to get to school, so that we could open for any children able to get to us. We then had two fantastic performances of our whole school, Strictly Come Dancing themed Nativity, ‘Lights, Camel, Action.’ We’re so proud of all of the children for their singing and acting energy. A special well done to James, for his particularly enthusiastic delivery and for stepping in at the last minute to say additional lines when someone was away. Tess and Claudia need to watch out! Thank you to our families for helping with costumes and for being a fabulous audience.

On Wednesday, the children had a delicious Christmas dinner. The atmosphere of everyone enjoying their lunch together was wonderful. A big thank you to our cook Jackie and all Pelynt staff for their hard work serving the lunch.

On Thursday the children had their Christmas parties, followed by a very special visit from Father Christmas, who was very impressed with the impeccable manners of our children. In our final Celebration Assembly, Green Team reached a fantastic 1198 house points! We also announced the winners for our Christmas jumper artwork and our 100% attendance raffle. It was great to see so many children receive a certificate for being here every day of the term. Congratulations to George for winning the raffle prize!

Our week finished at church with a Christmas celebration of readings, carols and some favourite Christmas songs by candlelight. Thank you to Reverend Allen for making this so special and Mrs Allen for organising our music.

The first term of a new school year is always a busy one, with new initiatives and some new staff this year, including me! I am so proud of the team that we have at Pelynt, who work so hard and always with a smile on their faces, to provide the very best care for our children.

We know that this time of year can be difficult for some families for many reasons, with many of you feeling the financial strain. Mrs Thompson has sent home the codes from Cornwall Council for our families who are entitled to extra support financially this winter. If you are struggling, please do get in touch with us.

From everyone at Pelynt, we hope that you have a happy and healthy Christmas and will see you again on Tuesday 3rd January 2023 for an exciting new term of learning opportunities!

Ms Abigail Rich
Head of School