The Week Ahead weekly newsletter

Growing Lives that Bear Fruit

This week...

Thanks for the positive feedback about ISI, it was lovely receiving your comments and encouragement.

Quick Stop Notices

Use of staff personal phones and social media

This week we have received some additional guidance re the teachers’ standards of ethics and behaviour, both within and outside of school. There is a list for staff, and some of this impacts parents:
Staff should never contact pupils or parents from their personal mobile phone or give their mobile number to pupils or parents. If staff must contact parents from home, they will do so by school email and not personal phones.

If staff need to make telephone contact with a pupil or parent, they must use the school telephone.

There is additional guidance about professional distance on on social media

Staff should not request or accept friends from school parents unless they are friends in the real world. We realise that many parents in our community do have friendships with staff - that's OK!

Staff should never add school pupils before they're 18 years old

Please make sure you help us by respecting these rules around boundaries and confidentiality

Occasionally staff will share a number for emergencies - e.g school trips and residentials. We would ask you to delete numbers after the event and only use them whilst the trip is taking place

Start & End of the Day + lunches

Start of the day

We usually have someone on gate duty at 8:45am Before this staff are in meetings and are not available to supervise. Please do not leave your children before 8:45.

If it is wet, please do not send children into the building before 8:45am - there is nobody available to look after them.

The bell rings at 8:55am, when school starts. ALL children should enter school through either the Early Years outside entrance, the AP entrance or the school playground, not the main entrance.

The main entrance is for emergencies, and for people waiting for meetings. It is not the main way into school. Please make sure you are prompt so children can enter school with their peers, through the appropriate routes.

End of the day
School ends at 3:30pm and all children should be collected promptly. Please let us know if you are held up, as children get anxious when they have to wait after school.

School Lunches

Mrs Trice Parkin is doing an amazing job with school lunches, but is finding a number of parents are forgetting to pay and order, yet their children turn up each day expecting her to provide lunch. She buys ingredients according to weekly order numbers, which keeps the price affordable and keeps waste to a minimum.

Please make sure you top up your MIS account and order by Sunday evening each week. If a child turns up who has not ordered, they will not be served lunch.

If your account is not working for some reason, please contact the office staff who will help you sort it out.

Please DO NOT add trip money to your MIS account.

Labelling clothes
You will have received an email about our mountain of lost property - all un named or containing names of unknown people. There are eleven coats, several large school jumpers, thirteen black hoodies - all without names and all similar sizes. Please please please label your child's clothes - then when we find them strewn around school we can return them.

Support religious literacy

Uniform

Thanks to everyone who has filled out the uniform survey. We will be considering all responses and are already looking at alternative suppliers for next year.

We had a high number of responses which is encouraging. 90 percent of you want to keep a school uniform for our students, and 88 percent like the changes from primary to middle to upper school. We will consider the fine detail of how this looks and keep you informed.

Options for GCSEs

World Book Day 2024

Music Equipment

Political actions on VAT policy - take action

From the ICS:

All schools should be in touch with local politicians to make them aware of the impact of Labour’s tax proposals. We encourage you to focus on the impact on your parents, local state schooling, and your school operations. Stress whenever possible your school’s public benefit work, and existing links to the local community – as well as any specialised provision. While we still expect to see the tax proposals in the next Labour manifesto, our combined efforts are necessary to provide the best possible basis for conversations with Labour if they form the next government.

The ISC and associations are working at a national level to engage with the Labour VAT/charitable tax policy – but schools also have a vital role to play as local advocates. We are speaking to political parties, education groups, and unions – making them aware of the unintended consequences of the policy, but also the hugely positive role independent schools play in UK education. We are also highlighting the diversity of independent schools, the specialisms schools provide, and myth-busting about the true nature of our sector.

Parent Prayers

Second use uniform

Parent WhatApp Group

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Parent Zone

Next Week ➡️

Monday 26th February

Barcelona Year 9 and 10 - from Monday to Friday - parents please be on time at the airport to drop off children on Monday morning, and to collect your children on Friday

Y11 Mock Exams continue - They are managing this time remarkably well

Primary Drama Club - 15:30 - 16:30

Homework club, 15:30 - 16:30

Tuesday

Middle School Drama club, 15:30 - 16:30

Wednesday

Homework club 15:30 - 16:30

Thursday

Homework club 15:30 - 16:30

Friday

Y7&8 Romeo and Juliet trip, Skipton

Y9&10 return from Barcelona

Saturday

First Encounters Shakespeare Saturday 2nd March for primary aged children

Dates for your diary

7th March
- Year 11 residential
- World Book Day - EYFS & Primary
13th March - Staff Training day - school closed to students
22nd March - School CLOSES at 12:30 for Easter break

⭐️Stars & Students⭐️ of the week

Primary School

Love class

Seren for writing a fantastic sentence.

Eliza for super independent maths work.

Nina for a creative boomerang.

Peace class

Eric for having good focus this week and working hard.

Kindness class

Thandi for outstanding participation in the Shakespeare workshop.

Maya for outstanding participation in the Shakespeare workshop

Joshua for super work in Literacy looking at adverbs

Bronze Awards

Leo

Ruth

Lucy

Imani

Violet

Willow

Jessica

Silver Awards

Miriam

Penelope

Upper School

Evie for settling in well to BCS

Y10

Tyrese for improving focus on learning in class

Autism Provision

Acorns Class

Kai for working hard in all his lessons.

Helpful Links

Online Safety

Parent Resources

Prevent Stratergy

Chromebooks for school & home

Fundraising

It's free to sign up to and start supporting us with Give as you Live. Send our unique campaign links to friends and family so they can support us for free too!

giveasyoulive-asset-new-supporter-giveaway-2024-twitter-post

Regular campaign link - https://www.giveasyoulive.com/charity/bradford-christian-school

£15 raised so far!

To say it's only been a short time we've been apart of the Stikins campaign, this is an incredible achievement. Please continue to engage with this campaign. Thank you!

Marks & Spencer Uniform

£120 raised so far!

Every time someone purchases a BCS school uniform through our affiliate, M&S, we receive a small commission. So far this year we have receive £120. Thank you for your support.

Headteacher's Message

Our Mission

To provide a holistic Christian education for all and to inspire discipleship.

Our Vision

To be a Christian community in which everyone grows in character, faith, knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

Last year we changed how Maths is taught, implementing a whole school approach to improving standards. We are using a new scheme, have a new Maths team, and we are seeing improvement across school - right from our nursery up to year 11.

In a recent national Maths competition, school won 6 Bronze Awards and one Silver - Congratulations to Josiah for his silver, and Daisy, Jack, Sammie, Elliot, Aaden and Kevin for their bronze bronze awards.

This week Sarah Bullen, one of our lovely Maths teachers, shared her story of faith integrated learning in Maths. She reflected on the question posed by one of her students 'Miss, Did God invent Maths?'

Maths is a subject which is notoriously known for being difficult to integrate faith into learning. However, starting my role as a Maths teacher in September I wasn’t satisfied that this should be so. I’m on a journey which has been filled with prayer, research and conversation as to how I can teach the Christian faith hand in hand with the Maths curriculum. I believe that if God is the foundation of all knowledge then everything He created, the visible and the invisible, must reflect back to Him his beauty and wonder. That’s why each Maths lesson I teach, I endeavour to evoke awe and wonder within the students leading to worship of God for his glory in creation. An example of this would be the Fibonacci sequences the Year 7 and 8s looked at as part of their learning of non-linear sequences. The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence which is seen throughout creation: in flowers, trees, fruit, shells, hurricanes, galaxies and in humans- even our DNA! Studying this sequence gave the Year 7 and 8s an opportunity to explore whether maths we see around us is evidence for God’s presence and design in creation.

Sarah Bullen

Job role: Maths Teacher

Church: The Light Church Bradford

Sarah joined BCS in 2021 as an LSA working in Primary. In September 2023 she began her role teaching maths to Middle and Upper School. With a background in Psychology and Youth Work, she is passionate about championing young people on their journeys both spiritually and educationally. Having been brought up in the Lake District, Sarah loves nothing more than being on top of a mountain, however as a new mum is more likely to be found in the park, at soft play or feeding the ducks with her 17 month old.