Dear Parents and Carers, 

 

I hope you have had a good week. We have. I am so impressed with the projects the children have brought in. I love seeing their faces and how proud they are of them. Thank you for supporting them with this. 

 

Thank you for your understanding and support regarding the NEU strikes. Year 6 are in school on these days as they are very near the date of their national assessments. There is another NEU strike on Tuesday and only year 6 will be in then too. I am sorry for any inconvenience. 

 

You will be receiving information about your child’s attendance soon. This will be the percentages of attendance, authorised and unauthorised and how many minutes late they are in total. Please know that any time missed at school does make a big difference and we cannot authorise holidays or trips in term time. Our attendance is 93% as a school and should be 96% at the lowest. We do need to improve and I need your help to do this. Please ensure you do not take days off in term time. It is also really important your child is here on time and picked up on time. Thank you for your support with this. It is an area that is monitored by Hackney and Ofsted. 

 

We have nits in school and they just seem to keep coming back, especially in Year 1. Please can you check your child's hair this weekend and treat it if needed. Please can you check your child's hair on a regular basis so we can get rid of them. Thank you.

 

Some of our Year 6 girls attended a football tournament in Swansea. Liliana has written this about their trip -

Swansea festival of football

In the middle of April, four Year 6 Betty Layward girls took a train to Swansea to represent the district in a football tournament. We travelled with our team mates who come from different primary school across Hackney. We were all excited to represent Hackney in the Swansea festival of football.

 

We had a brilliant start, winning 3 out of 4 of the group stage matches and drawing one game 0-0. We were the top team in the group stage and moved into the quarter finals. So far, we had not conceded a single goal and we were playing brilliantly as a team. 

In the last minutes of the quarter final we scored from a penalty and won the match. Now in the semis, it was 0-0 on the final whistle and it was time for penalties. After a tense penalty shoot out, we beat Cardiff 4-2 to reach the final. We were all very excited and raring to go!

 

The final

We had made it this far when during the match a player from the opposition punched the ball from out of the box. The referee said continue play even though it was an obvious hand ball! In the final moments in our box there was a ‘ball to hand’ counted as a handball and the opposition got a penalty. They scored. This was the only goal we had conceded in the entire field of play and it lost us the final.

 

We were devastated and believed we should have won, but we made it to the finals, had a brilliant weekend away and we did Hackney proud!

 

Aside from the football we played laser tag and bowling and had a generally great trip! 

 

Liliana Bracken, year 6 Chilli

 

Well done to all the children that took part. You did really well. Thank you, Liliana, for writing about it.

 

I hope you received the flyer about the Coronation picnic. Weather permitting, we will have a picnic outside that day.

 

I really hope you all have a lovely long bank holiday weekend and we look forward to seeing Year 6 on Tuesday and everyone else on Wednesday.

 

Jessica

Headteacher