School meals are tasty, nutritious, sustainable and delicious
Our school meals are cooked on site and freshly prepared using high quality ingredients.
Why not encourage your child to try the meat free option to help save our planet 🌎
To find out more, visit: https://bit.ly/41SqJ8t
Free school meals - are you entitled?
In January 2024, 8,435 pupils entitled to a free school meal missed out on a free hot, nutritious lunch.
Children are in school for 190 days every year, so think of the savings you could make by making sure they are signed up.
Contact the school office to find out if you’re entitled to free school meals or apply online by visiting: https://bit.ly/41SqJ8t
Our weekly message: Friday 10 January 2025
A belated happy and healthy new year to you all.
What a tricky start to the new term! Despite this, children came back to school on Tuesday cool, calm and collected, all ready for lots more learning! Thank you again for your understanding and support when we had to make the difficult decision to close on Monday.
New year, new contact details?
Let’s start with a short request: If you’ve got any new contact details for you or other contacts, please remember to let us know. We need up-to-date details for the people on our lists in case of emergencies. (The people on our lists are the ones you gave us when your child started school – in most cases, we should have details for three different people.)
Attendance matters
Our school attendance in the Autumn term was 95.3% – much higher than for the same term last year (93.8%). Brilliant!
Compared to other Leeds schools, it puts us around the middle place (116th place out of 223 schools. Compared to other schools nationally, we’re around the mid-point (decile 5: in the 40%-50% band).
Thank you for continuing to make sure your child gets to school as much as possible. (And a big thank you and well done to Year 5 pupils and parents for their attendance in particular: 97.5!)
As always, if you’re unsure, please check the NHS app: Is my child too ill for school?
Talking of attendance…
Don’t forget our Spring Attendance Competition!
All pupils with attendance of 97% or higher this half-term will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Love to Shop voucher!
So… for the full Spring 1 half-term, Tuesday 07 January to Friday 14 February (six weeks), if your child comes to school 97% or more, their name will be entered into a prize draw. We’ll select one lucky winner on the last day of the half-term (Friday 14 February).
Money matters
This time of year can be difficult for many families dealing with additional costs and pressure on their household budgets. The Money Information Centre offers access to free, confidential, and impartial help and advice on a range of money-related matters, with a range of useful information about employment support, energy, fuel and food support and the healthy holidays programme.
Watch Us While We Work: you said, we listened
Our Watch Us While We Work and Topic Review sessions are really popular – lots of you attend these. However, some parents have told us being able to visit just one class is frustrating. We’ve listened.
The next Watch Us While We Work session is coming up – it’s first thing on Thursday 23 January.
This time, we’ve asked teachers to plan for two parts within the half hour session. This means after the first 10-15 minutes or so, you’ll get a chance to switch classrooms without disrupting the learning going on.
We realise this doesn’t help if you’d prefer to visit three classes or more because you’ve more children, but we think these 10-15 minutes parts are as short as they can be while making sure you still get the most out of them.
Enjoy your weekend – stay warm!
Weather update for Wednesday 08 January
Just like today, we aim to open as normal tomorrow.
Registers will be open for longer. Your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.
This is to make sure you can get to school safely despite the freezing weather.
Weather update (Tuesday 07 January)
We’re open today (Tuesday 07 January).
Registers are open for longer so your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.
Please travel safely.
Snowy weather: update for Tuesday
We’re happy to confirm school will be open tomorrow as normal (assuming there’s not a drastic change in the weather conditions!).
When we’re faced with the question of whether to open or close, we have to factor in travel conditions for families and for staff (some of whom live quite far away); the availability of site staff to clear paths and make them safe; the condition of the rooms (and whether there have been leaks caused by snow, as was the case today, but thankfully only minor ones)…
Thank you for your understanding today.
This half-term's Christian value is...
…honesty.
At St James’ CE Primary School, we learn about Christian values that help us to become well-rounded citizens in society. Each half-term, we have a new Christian value that will be embedded into our collective worship and our reflection areas.
What is honesty? Honesty is being trustworthy and truthful in our friendships, our relationships, our school and our community. We understand that we need to be honest and truthful with others when working together as a team. There are challenges for us:
- How can we be honest in our daily lives?
- How can we encourage people to be honest?
- What can we do to fix it if we forget to be honest?
‘Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.’ (1 John 13:18)
In the Bible, we hear about Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), the tax collector, who was dishonest and stole money from others. Jesus went to visit him and he realised he had made a mistake. He saw the error of his ways. He had a total change of heart and got rid of his dishonest ways to follow Jesus.
Help at home!
Talk with your family about the consequences of not being honest or write a story or draw a picture to show what happens when people are dishonest. Bring it in to add to your class reflection areas.
Snowy weather: school is closed
School is closed today.
The weather situation hasn’t improved enough overnight so we’ve taken the decision to close school today.
This is due to current unsafe travel conditions and the safety of roads and paths.
We also need to assess the situation at school due to a number of leaks.
We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
Snowy weather
The weather conditions at the moment mean that any sort of travel is tricky. However, the forecast is an improving one. As it stands right now, please expect that that school will be open tomorrow. We’ll keep the registers open for longer so you can travel safely.
We’ll keep you updated online if there’s any further updates.
Finally… Happy new year! We hope you enjoyed a lovely break.
Spring 2025 Attendance Competition
St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to be – and maybe even a lucky one, too!
From Monday, we’re excited to launch our Spring 2025 attendance competition… All pupils with attendance of 97% or higher will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Love to Shop voucher!
So… for the full Spring 1 half-term, Monday 06 January to Friday 14 February (six weeks), if your child comes to school 97% or more, their name will be entered into a prize draw. We’ll select one lucky winner on the last day of the half-term (Friday 14 February).
Remember, arriving late for school counts as an unauthorised absence. This affects a child’s overall attendance figure, and that might mean they lose out.
In the Autumn term , 40 pupils had 100% attendance and 87 pupils had 97% or more attendance – well done to the children and their families!