Dear Parents/Guardians,
Thanks to all the Junior Infant parents who attended a meeting on Monday evening last. It was nice to discuss the year ahead and to show new parents around the school building!
Please check your child's hair for headlice as they have begun to crawl back inside our school! We ask parents to make sure that long hair is tied up for the school day to avoid any risks! For information on how to treat hair lice please click here for the info sheet here:
Book Money: We ask all parents to ensure book bills and insurance monies are paid today using the Aladdin link.
Over the past few weeks we have had some parent enquiries about NEPS assessments. NEPS is the National Educational Psychological Service and NEPS psychologists work with schools and are concerned with learning, behaviour, social and emotional development. Each psychologist is assigned to a group of schools. NEPS psychologists work in partnership with teachers, parents and children in identifying educational needs. They offer a range of services aimed at meeting these needs, for example, supporting individual students (through consultation and assessment), special projects and research. As in many schools, the needs of our pupils far outweigh the availability of supports as we only ever get a maximum of 3 or 4 assessments done per year. With Covid 19, there is already a backlog in our school. Each year, pupils are prioritised for assessment based on many different criteria and it is very difficult to let parents know when their child isn't prioritised. In school, we support pupils in the best ways we can and these supports are put into Individual Educational Profiles (IEPS) or School Support Plans. We are regularly in touch with parents whose children require supports in Maths, English and in social & emotional ways also. For more info on NEPS click here.
We wish our Erasmus team the very best as they represent our school on a trip to France on Monday next. We look forward to seeing some updates, photos and videos as they visit the different schools and educational centres.
The Ballycogley Players drama group are putting on two 1 hour plays on Sunday Oct. 10th in Carrig Hall. The funds raised on the night go to our An Choill Bheag class for pupils with Autism. We ask if parents could support this in a number of ways:
Attend on the night - €10 per ticket (vaccination cert must be provided)
Help out with teas at the interval
Contribute some raffle prizes which can be left at the school over the coming weeks.
Please let us know in what ways you can help - all help is greatly appreciated.
I wish our 6th class and last year's 6th class the very best for their Confirmation this weekend. Ceremonies at 11am/1pm. We ask parents to remember that only 4 people can attend with each pupil. I thank all of the staff who have helped prepare the pupils over the last few weeks and indeed last year in school.
Finally, the Dept. of Education announced that from next Monday onwards Sept. 27th, that children identified as close contacts who are not symptomatic can still attend school. We still ask parents to be vigilant around symptoms of Covid 19, which are new onset of cough, temperature/fever. While we want every pupil in school everyday we also want to continue to minimise risks for all our school community.
Enjoy the weekend everybody!
Regards,
Audrey