School Report and Improvement Plan

Our Standards and Quality Report and School Improvement Plan have been published on the website this week. A quick read summary for families is available here: Balmerino-Summary-for-Families.pdf

The full documents are available here: School Improvement Plan and Standards and Quality Report | Balmerino Primary School

Your child will bring home a paper copy of the quick read summary today and I have sent a MS Form to gather your thoughts and ideas for parental involvement.

Dates to Remember

Thursday 9^th – P1-7 Flu Vaccines – your child will only receive the inoculation if you have returned the NHS permission form.

 Friday 10^th – Last Day of Term – School Uniform as usual please

 Monday 13^th October – Friday 24^th October – School and Nursery closed for October Holiday

Monday 27^th – First Day of Term 2

Friday 31^st – All children invited to come to school in a Halloween costume – no masks or weapons please! We will hold our usual Pumpkin Carving Competition – bring your Pumpkin to school at 9am. Please contribute £1.50 per child to the cost of the day if you can.

Message from Active Schools

Byre Theatre Panto

Apologies that when I sent the dates for the year out I omitted to include the Byre Theatre Panto Trip:

Wednesday 17th – Whole School going to the Byre Theatre for pantomime – leaving just after 9am – more info will follow nearer the time.

The page on the website is now up to date: Calendar 2025-26 | Balmerino Primary School

Food in School

Just a reminder to send your child with a snack for playtime each day to keep them going until lunchtime. Please send them with something they can easily eat in the playground and within the 15min break. It is a parent choice what snack to send but we do ask that children do not eat sweets at school (ie something made purely of sugar and flavourings – haribo, moam etc). More information is available here: A-Z for parents

The children do not take snacks outside at lunchtime – they eat their lunch inside and then go out to play.

If any parents has concerns or questions about food in school – please feel free to contact me at lucy.jess@fife.gov.uk or through the school office.

Dalguise Trip

P6/7 parents – if you have not signed up or paid yet, I sent you an email yesterday. Please act upon this email by Sunday evening at the latest as I will be confirming numbers of Monday and the deposit is due. If your child is swithering about if to go or if you need help with payment, please email us and we can help.

Drug Awareness Workshops for P7 Parents

Later in the year, our P7s will do a workshop delivered by Barnado’s. The charity now offer workshops to P7 parents as well. Click here to find out more

Reading Challenge – £500 for 500 Books 

Please support our challenge by supporting your child to record their reading here:  Reading record

And collect sponsors here: Sponsor Form

We already have £30 pledged and 35 books recorded. All funds raised will be used to enhancing learning experiences and reduce the cost of the school day impacting positively on all children.

Message from Kingsbarns Primary re Cambo Cup

Reading Challenge

The reading challenge Sponsor Form is now live. Please click here to access the form and share the code with friends and family members who might support this. The children will all bring home a QR code poster on Monday.

Please support your child to log their reading/listening here – we are aiming to read 500 books as a team by Christmas.

Upcoming Dates

Thursday 11^th – Harvest Day – no uniform required, your child can wear harvest colours (red, orange, brown, yellow, green). Please send a contribution of £1.50 if you can to help cover the cost of the day. All children will have opportunities to cook with the produce grown in our school garden. Please make sure any allergies info is up to date as they will be tasting.

Friday 12^th – P1-7 Targets shared with parents

Friday 19^th – Tempest Photographer in school to take individual and sibling photos. All children will be included unless you have stated ‘No’ to photos on their General Permissions or unless you opt them out by telling the school office. If you have a pre-Nursery child you would like included in a family photo, please bring them into school at 8.30. If you would like a different group shot taken (e.g. a cousin’s group) please contact the office to make an arrangement.

Christmas Fair

As you know from the dates sent home last week, we are holding a Christmas Fair this year to develop and extend Enterprise and Craft stall. We are inviting parents and members of the public to buy a table to run their own stall at the fair – £5 per table plus a contribution to the raffle. Please email balmerinops.enquiries@fife.gov.uk if you would like to book a stall. at the fair on 8th December.

Enforcement of pavement parking ban, parking at dropped kerbs and double parking – message from Fife Council

Enforcement of this new legislation will start on Monday 1 September 2025 and Parking Attendants will issue Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) from that date.  The PCN level is £100, which is discounted to £50 if paid within 14 days.  Click here for more information

Photograph Policy

This has been updated slightly, following the recent consultation. Please click here to read it and so that you know what ticking Yes or No means on the General Permissions Form.

School Safety

All visitors to the school should ring the buzzer by the front door and speak to office staff in the first instance. Please don’t enter the school by any other door and please understand that children know they should not open the door to a visitor even if they know them. Nursery parents can drop off and collect from the Nursery gate but all P1-7 must be signed out and back in at the school office if you are dropping off late or collecting early. Please don’t go into the playground and approach your child – if you need to see them during the school day, come to the office in the first instance. If you come to collect your child from Nursery or from the school office, please be prepared for the fact that staff might ask you for ID if you are not someone they know. If you are collecting your child early for any reason, please call ahead to let us know. This is particularly important if some one is collecting your child for you, so we know that we are following your wishes.

Class and Year Group Photos

Thank you to everyone who completed our survey on class and year group photos. The majority consensus was that we will stop the tradition of submitting photos to the local press and instead we will gift a free, colour printed and laminated photo to each P1 and P7 family in term 1 as well sharing photos of all classes and year groups on the password protected class pages in term 1. This will allow you to discuss your child’s classmates with them. In term 4, we will have a professional photographer in to take photos of all classes and year groups – no obligation to buy. More information will follow.

Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood

All P1-7 parents should familiarise themselves with the teaching of this important curricular area which is ongoing through the school year. Please click here to find out out more. And here to view the learning and resources your child will be using. Any concerns or questions can be directed to me at lucy.jess@fife.gov.uk

School Improvement Planning

We are currently working on our school improvement plan and it will be ready to share with parents very soon along with last years’ Standards and Quality Report.

The Nursery team are going to be working with Fife Council’s Inclusive Practice Team to enhance their understanding of universal strategies to support all learning. This will enhance our provision of ways to make children feel accepted and supported and it will impact positively on all children. The Inclusive Practice Team will support our by providing training and sometimes will work directly with children in order to free a staff member up to attend training.

In P1-7, we are focussing on reviewing our School Values and Relationships and Behaviour Policy and Anti-Bullying Policy. This term, we are going to take a close focus onto our value of Respect. We have started to discuss Respect this week and are focussing on:

Respect for Self

Respect for Others

Respect for the Environment

Respect for Property

Respect for Safety

It would be good to talk to your child about this at home.

Click here to find what Active Schools are offering: https://sway.cloud.microsoft/QYn3DMyFYCw5CrZy?ref=Link

Activities at the Rio

tote bag poster 31st july

Fun at the rio poster 29th july

WEDNESDAY 16TH JULY POPPY BUBBLES POSTER

animal man 9th july poster

LETS DO LUNCH 17 JULY POSTER

Café Inc. Returns!

Summer Fair and End of Year Event

The arrangements for this came home in an email earlier in the week. All are welcome! The games at the fair will be free. The stalls selling items and the Tombola will be paid. You child can bring some spending money if you’d like them too but there will be lots to do for free as well. Coins rather than notes would be appreciated.

Thursday 4th July

This is the last day of school.  The new term starts on 18th August for staff and 20th August for pupils.

Playing Out in the Village

A member of the public has made me aware that she has seen children/young people playing in a dangerous manner in the hall grounds, breaking up stones and rocks and causing damage. We have also had an issue that some of the newly installed handrails have come loose from the ground the day after their were safety tested and found to be sound. The contractor feels is is likely that they had been kicked or hit repeatedly with some force – they would not have come loose because of a primary aged child swinging in them.

I am making the Community police team aware of this damage on school property. Please can I ask that if you live near the school you keep an eye out and report/address any anti-social behaviour you may see. If you allow your child to play out unsupervised, I think it might be worth having a chat with them about this to make sure they are not seeing older children/teenagers behaving in a way that worries them.  Many thanks

Community News

gauldry gala poster 1

Free cafe inc 2025

Free Family Activities St. Andrews – Summer 2025

Archeology workshops

The Wardlaw Museum invites you to their  upcoming free family activity day ‘Future Makers’ being held at the Wardlaw Museum on Saturday 12^th July 12pm – 4pm: Future Makers Family Day. I’m also pleased to invite families to our free summer holiday workshops, running alongside our current exhibition, Rewrite the Future. These interactive sessions are a great way for children to get creative, explore new ideas, and have fun during the holidays! Sessions run on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 4 weeks throughout the summer holidays.

2-2.45pm Ages 3-7 years

3-4pm 8-12 years

• Week 1: Hack the Future       15^th & 17^th July
• Week 2: Build the Future        22^nd & 24^th July
• Week 3: Animate the Future Tuesday   29^th & 31^st July
• Week 4: Travel to the Future     5^th & 7^th August

All sessions are free, but booking is essential due to the limited capacity available for each session.

Bookings can be made on the University website:
Exhibition-related | Events

A parent l has asked me to share these:

Blue and White french lesson Flyer

Latin and Lore-4

In the summer months, we recommend you check your child regularly for ticks as occasionally, a child can pick one up.  If your child should have a tick which we notice at school, we would contact you to come and remove it or seek treatment.

Next Week

Monday – no woods for P1/2/3

Tuesday – P7s going on Mountain Biking, P1-6 will be going to the woods in the afternoon. Please bring woods clothes.

Wednesday – P4/5 are doing PE today as they missed yesterday

Thursday – P1-7 woods day. No need for uniform come dressed for the woods. Your child will need a packed lunch – please send them with one or order cold.

Playground Update

We had a really positive assembly today with the children doing great collaborative work to discuss what works and what could be better in the playground. Everyone is really well aware of the playground charter and the need to play in a way that is fun but doesn’t get rough. The children agree that tig can cause problems if people fall out over who is ‘it’. We are going to buy some tag rugby belts as a way to make it more clear. The children don’t have to use these for tig but they will be available if they want. The children have also suggested that balls games should be on the grass pitch only and that there should be days for different groups. E.g. a girls day, a boys day, a competitive day and a non-competitive day. We love this as a way to let children play with like minded peers and promote sport for everyone so we are going to begin to put that in place. Finally, the children have asked that we have a no judgement playground e.g. no one is made to feel bad by other children if they miss a goal. Everyone has agreed to this and we will continue to promote our playground charter with an emphasis on King and Gentle. I have reminded the children that Mrs Cargill and Mr Brown are in charge in the playground – they will make decisions to keep children safe and having fun. Both of them are in the playground each day except for a Tuesday when it is only Mrs Cargill. This staffing change happened while I was off. Until the end of term, I will provide cover so that there are two adults in the playground each day and from August 2025, Mrs Cargill and Mr Brown will both be working full time.

Job opportunities

There are two Pupil Support Assistant Jobs at Wormit PS currently being advertised. Please share this link with anyone who is interested: Search Jobs – Fife Council Jobs and Careers Careers

Community News

Click here to find out about the Rotary Sandcastle Competition

Click here to find out about the Gauldry Charity Afternoon Tea

Click here to find out about the Future Makers Family Day

Newport Festival Information

Girl Guiding