Dear Parent/Carers,

Free School Meal Vouchers

If your child is entitled to Free School Meals, you may well have received food vouchers during the March national lockdown and school closure. Last week, we notified you that at that moment, there was not a voucher system available and so the catering team at school were going to provide weekly food parcels for children who are entitled to free school meals and are not attending school. The first set of parcels were ready to be collected from Wednesday 13^th January and many of these parcels have already been collected.

Yesterday, we received confirmation from the Government that they will be operating the national Free School Meal voucher system again through the Edenred website provider. This scheme will open for schools to place orders during the week commencing 18^th January. Schools will be given access in a staged approach to manage the demand on the system.  As many of you will be aware, the vouchers will be being sent to an email address and so in order for us to be ready to place our orders when our slot becomes available, please could those families with children entitled to Free School Meals reply to this email and confirm that they are happy for the vouchers to be sent to that address by Friday 15^th January at 1pm. If you would prefer to collect a paper copy of the vouchers from the school office, please reply to this email and inform the office. When we order paper copies, these will only be available to use at Tesco.

Each child entitled to Free School Meals will receive a £60 voucher (equivalent to £15 each week between 18^th January and 12^th February) for you to spend in stores. The Government are currently only providing free school meals vouchers during term time. If you have more than one child from our school in your household entitled to Free School Meals, then you will receive a separate £60 voucher for each. If you have children at a different school and they have chosen to distribute vouchers also, you will receive separate vouchers to use. You do not need to spend this voucher in one go, it will act similar to a gift card.  

When you receive the voucher, please follow the instructions to select the store you wish to use it within, complete a few security checks and this will then generate a code for you. For some stores, you can only use the vouchers in store, so please check how you wish to use the voucher (in store or online) before you select the store.

As many schools will be using this system, it may take time for you to receive the voucher(s), however once received you will have until 10^th February to redeem these vouchers. Once redeemed, depending on which supermarket you have selected, you can have up to 12 months to use the voucher. Please check this on the website to ensure you do not miss out. Please note that the supermarket vouchers cannot be used to purchase age restricted products, such as cigarettes and alcohol.

Please note that if your child (who is entitled to free school meals) is attending school full time, they will receive their meals through the catering service in school and so you will not receive a voucher. If your child is attending on a part time basis and you have notified us of this (for example will only be attending school for 2 days a week), you will be sent a voucher and will need to provide a meal from home on the days when they will be attending school.

Once our access to Edenred has been provided and the vouchers ordered, we will send out more information to support you with redeeming these vouchers.

Please ensure you have notified the office by Friday 15^th January 2021 by 1pm to confirm your email address or inform us if you wish to collect a paper copy from the office.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Jordan

Assistant Head Teacher

Dear Parents and Carers,

Home Learning Support

There are multiple resources available to support you in your home learning, with more being released all the time.  This letter will signpost you to some of them, and we will share more as we become aware of them.

BBC Bitesize

The BBC is ensuring all children can access curriculum-based learning, even if they don’t have access to the internet.  Starting on Monday 11 January, each weekday CBBC will have a three-hour block of primary school programming from 9am, including BBC Live Lessons and BBC Bitesize Daily, as well as other educational programming such as Our School, Celebrity Supply Teacher, Horrible Histories, Art Ninja and Operation Ouch. Daily primary will also air every day on BBC Red Button, as well as episodes being available on demand on BBC iPlayer.

BBC Bitesize online is also available, and has an expanded offer of structured lessons in Maths and English for all year groups.  ‘This Term’s Topics’ also covers other curriculum subjects.  Visit BBC Bitesize and click on the year group and subject to find all content.

Increasing data allowances for disadvantaged pupils

We are able to request an increase in the amount of mobile data received for pupils who:

·         do not have fixed broadband at home

·         cannot afford additional data for their devices

·         are remote learning rather than coming into school

·         are on Three, SMARTY, Virgin Mobile, EE, Tesco Mobile, Sky Mobile or O2.

Please contact Miss Barnes if this applies to you.  There may also be the possibility of ordering 4G wireless routers for pupils in KS2 who do not have access to the internet at home, and we will be investigating this further.  Again, please let us know with regards to technology issues you may be having, and we will do our best to assist you.

Into Film

Into Film is an organisation that supports schools in learning linked to cinema.  They are keeping an up-to-date list of films that are available for you to stream at home, along with questions and discussion points you could use together. 

This is at  https://www.intofilm.org/news-and-views/articles/feature-home-learning-streaming

Thank you for all of your help and support with home learning; we will continue to adapt and tweak our provision to best suit the children’s needs.

Miss K. Barnes

Remote Learning Lead

Dear Parents/Carers,

Free School Meals

If your child is entitled to Free School Meals, you may well have received a weekly food voucher during the March national lockdown and school closure.  At the moment, there is not a voucher system available and so the catering team at school are going to provide weekly food parcels for children who are entitled to free school meals and are not attending school.

The food parcels can be collected from the Infant and Junior site on a Wednesday with the first one being available on Wednesday 13^th January.  All children who are not attending school have had a food parcel ordered for next week but after this, when you collect your parcel, you will need to confirm that you want one ordering for the following week to avoid food being wasted.  Please be aware that there are some perishable items such as fresh fruit/vegetables, yoghurts, cheese and bread and so the food parcels do need to be collected within a day or so of being prepared.  The catering staff have to order the food parcels for the next week on a Friday and so if you have not informed us by Thursday at 4pm each week that you require a food parcel, we will be unable to provide this to you for that week.

Thank you for your ongoing support and please contact us if you have any queries.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Chamberlain                  Mrs Gray

Head Teacher                      Deputy Head Teacher

Dear Parents/Carers,

Preparation for Teaching and Learning

Thank you for your tremendous support at very short notice to help us set up pods for children in school and for switching to remote learning overnight.  As with all things that are new, there will be some challenges along the way but rest assured all of the staff are on hand to support as much as possible.

The teachers were really pleased with the response they had on Dojo and Teams on Wednesday and worked hard to respond to as many queries as possible about the set-up of remote learning and the best ways to access things.  If you have a child in more than one year group, whilst Dojo and Teams will still both be used, depending of the age of the child, some ways of presenting information may be different for different subjects.  We will continue to adapt as we go along based on feedback from parents.

As you will appreciate, a huge amount of time and effort is going in to producing daily learning in core subjects through the preparation of presentations, videos and activities that can be accessed at home as well as for those children who are attending school.  In addition, learning for one or more subjects in the afternoon is being prepared to ensure we are meeting the Government expectation of three hours, on average, of learning for primary aged children.  Staff are also working hard to mark and feedback on the work that is being returned so the children know that their efforts are being valued.

When school is operating as normal, each week teachers receive approximately two and a half hours of planning, preparation and assessment (PPA) time to ensure that learning across classes within the year groups is consistent and of high quality.  Although we are now offering a remote learning provision for most of our pupils, this dedicated time for the staff to meet (virtually) and plan the learning is really important.  For this reason, on a Friday afternoon from 1pm, staff will have their PPA time and so will not reply to messages or feedback on work.  We hope that by allocating Friday afternoon for this, that there will be fewer queries that may occur as the vast majority of the week’s work will have been completed.  There will also be some days when your child’s class teacher is teaching a pod of children in school so again there may be more of a delay responding to messages and approving work on this day.  The teachers will message on the days they are teaching so you are aware of this.

We are all adapting to new ways of working and doing so within our existing family and work commitments.  For this reason, lots of the teaching is pre-recorded so you can access it at a time that suits your family life.  With this in mind, teachers will respond regularly during the school day to messages and work returned.  After school hours, whilst the staff may reply in their own time, this cannot be guaranteed.  However, if you send a message in the evening it will be responded to at the start of the next school day.

Once we get to the end of this week, staff, parents and children will be remote learning experts! Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Chamberlain                    Mrs Gray

Head Teacher                        Deputy Head Teacher

Here to Help!

January 7, 2021

Dear Parents and Carers,

Happy New Year! I hope you have had a restful break and you and your children are settling into home learning.

Ms Glover and I wanted to remind you that you are not alone. We are all in this together, albeit at a distance, but we are still here. Please do contact us at school if you or your children are struggling at all. We can call you weekly to check-in, refer you to outside agencies for things like clothing or food parcels, make referrals to organisations like Young Carers, Women’s Aid, and bereavement charities, the list goes on, please just know that we are here.

I have attached the latest newsletter from the Solihull Parenting Team, which has some great links at the bottom.

Tweet 28 – Support in Challenging Times (PDF)

Remember you are doing your best and make sure to take some time to care for yourself. I find mindfulness, box breathing, and fresh air all good for the soul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzNMABRELPg

Kind regards

J Watkins

Family Support Worker

Olton Primary School