St. John Paul II Primary School & Nursery Class, Viewpark

Many thanks to everyone who managed to come along to school today to collect packs. During that period, the Deputy First Minister made some announcements in the Scottish Parliament.  The information within your packs remains unchanged, but please see the update below from North Lanarkshire Council.  You can come along tomorrow between 9am and 12noon if you still have a pack to collect.

“Today’s announcement from the Scottish Government outlines the plan to reopen all schools on a full time basis from August.

We are currently considering the practicalities and implications of this announcement and will await further clarification and guidance from government, particularly in relation to public health and scientific advice.

Our priority is the safety of our pupils and staff across our network of primary, secondary and ASN schools, as well as our early learning and childcare settings.

We understand that you will have questions, and as this news was only announced today, we will make further information available on how this impacts on our schools and facilities in the coming days.

We are preparing for pupils to return full-time to school on 12 August and we will be working closely with our schools and partners, including our early years and childcare provision to establish our plans, which we will communicate as soon as we are in a position to.”  (North Lanarkshire Council, 23rd June 2020, 5:07pm)

DOWNLOAD OUR JUNE NEWSLETTER BY CLICKING ON THE LINK BELOW.

In our Newsletter, we clearly say that we WILL be expecting the children to wear full school uniform in August.  Please note…

• Ties are considered optional.  If your child is able to wear one, they should wear one.  It is your choice.
• Short sleeved shirts would be preferable.  When we have such regular hand washing, the children can end up with soaked sleeves if they are long!  However – this is a parental choice.

June 2020 Newsletter

Please take a look at previous posts for links to the NLC website and Frequently Asked Questions!

Come and join Mr Thomas, all staff and your friends from St. John Paul II for our final assembly of the school year. This has been a wonderful year, despite everything we have experienced recently and we should all come together to say a final farewell to everyone.

Just pop over to the Assemblies Channel on Teams and join the meeting, ready to start at 12:15pm.

The following information has been taken from North Lanarkshire Council’s website.

Schools update Tuesday 23 June 2020

We are currently assessing the impact of the Scottish Government’s announcement that schools are to reopen full time from August.

As this was only announced today, we will make further information available on how this impacts on North Lanarkshire schools as soon as we can and we will ensure that pupils, parents and staff are kept updated.

We are preparing for pupils to return full-time to school on 12 August.

We have prepared packs of information for all parents/carers. This include class arrangements for next year, and report cards. These will be available to collect from the school from 12noon tomorrow. Please ensure you respect all social distancing rules when coming to collect them.This also includes our new P1 children joining us in August. Please share this information with those who may need it.

There has been a slight delay with the suppliers, meaning these won’t be ready by Wednesday. They will likely be in by the end of the week. As soon as we have them, we will arrange a time for our P7s to come up to the school to collect them from their P7 teachers! Apologies!

What a lovely Mass to celebrate our amazing P7 pupils and to give thanks for our school year together. Thanks to Fr Jim for celebrating this online for us. Lovely to feel together while so far apart. The Mass has been recorded, and will be available online for a few weeks in case you weren’t able to join us live.

St Gabriel’s Webcam link

P1 Transition -Meet the Teacher

Please remember for those children who did not have a visit to school last week you have the opportunity to meet your teacher tomorrow Monday 22nd June between 10am and 11am and Tuesday 23rd June between 1pm and 2pm.
Please come on either of those days at a time which suits you.

Your teacher will be outside waiting to meet you. We can only invite one adult with each child to ensure social distancing. If the weather is not in our favour we will be under cover or, if safe to do so, may use the dining hall. Please follow the directions of our staff.

We look forward to seeing you this week and thank you for your patience and understanding during this time.

Tomorrow we are taking part in Active Schools #NLSportsDay. Here is all the information you need. Please share your pics and videos with us!

Keyworkers – follow this link for information about hubs over the summer.

Summer Hubs for Keyworkers

We have received information from North Lanarkshire Council this afternoon, which gives more of an idea of what things will look like in August when schools reopen and children arrive back.  We are very much looking forward to our school re-opening and we are working hard, in partnership with North Lanarkshire, to prepare for this.

Throughout the Summer Holiday, there will be further information regarding our re-opening in August.  We are aware that there will be some anxiety around days children are attending, how this fits with work schedules and what health and safety will look like.

Mr Thomas has been working (along with the Senior Leadership Team) with staff from NLC to prepare a recovery plan.  There will be a lot of detail circulated about this in the coming weeks.  This information will be given out at appropriate times so as not to overload our Parents/Carers and to ensure that everyone has the right information at the right time.  In the meantime, please follow the link below to the NLC Website to see a letter from Derek Brown, Executive Director of Education & Families.  This give the current position, as agreed by the Council and lets you know what August will look like.

Further information about the exact days your child will be attending school will be given out next week.  It will be an impossible task to accommodate all requests and all circumstances.  We have over 260 families and a roll of over 400.  Please be patient.  We ask for your support and co-operation.  We promise to work with you to support you and your family in return.

Please note, that we will ensure siblings who attend St. John Paul II attend school on the same days.  From there, we will look at working groups for Literacy, so that we can maximise Learning & Teaching time.  It will not be possible to ensure children are allocated days with best friends.

The official return date for children will be Wednesday 12th August 2020.  Tuesday 11th will be an INSET DAY for staff only.

Click here for the North Lanarkshire – Schools Plan Update

North Lanarkshire have issued a Frequently Asked Questions sheet – which you may find useful.  This is a live document and will be updated on a regular basis.  Download it below…

Click here for Update Education FAQs