Week commencing 30th January 2023
The Week Ahead
Quick Stop Notices
- You may be aware that teaching unions have voted to take strike action. We want to reassure you that BCS will not be affected by these strikes, and school will operate normally on these days.
- Reminder that Mr Moon has sent out details of our RSE curriculum and an invitation to meet on February 2nd to discuss it. There is also a response form to complete – please see the email sent 19th January.
- School Lunches can be ordered before 9am on a Monday for the week.
- The Northern Ballet will be visiting us on Monday 6th March to work with years 1-6 and Oak Acorns. This will be a workshop based on their forthcoming production of The Ugly Duckling which will be showing at The Alhambra during the Easter Holidays (Saturday 8 April). Tickets for the Ugly Duckling ballet can be booked here. Our children will not be taking part in the performance.
- Staff vacancies – please see the website.
- Please log on to the BCS Parent Portal to read and accept the school’s Acceptable Use Policy for this year. Make sure you’re logging into version 1.147.
- Message from the Operations Manager at Thackley Football Club….We really want to reach out to the kids in the local community and get them enjoying good quality local football up close, therefore we are continuing to offer admission to all our home games FREE for all aged 16 and under. We’d love for as many as possible to take advantage of this. Here’s a link to our league website which has all our up to date fixtures. http://ncefl.org.uk/teams/thackley/matches/2022/
Please see the following email sent from our chair of governors…..
Dear Parents and Carers
I can’t believe that we’re already into the second half of January 2023 and that 2022 already feels to be disappearing into the distant past! Our academic year is certainly well underway as we continue into our second term and it’s been wonderful to see our school community continue to go from strength to strength after what has been such a challenging pandemic period for all of us.
For those who don’t know me, I have had the honour and privilege of being the chair of governors here at Bradford Christian School since September 2020 and have been serving on the governing body in total for the past 7 years. I work with a dedicated team of faith-filled governors who have a passion and desire to serve and support our school community in a wide variety of ways.
If you’re unsure what the school governing body does, then put very simply, we set the school’s aims, review its policies and ensure a clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction. Broadly, the responsibilities of a governing body sit under three functions:
- Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;
- Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils, and the performance management of staff; and
- Overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure its money is well spent
It is important to ensure that our board of governors is a balanced group of people who can bring good commercial guidance to the school, as it is essentially a small business that also has revenue streams, employment costs and building facility costs. Our current team is a diverse mix of governors bringing outside skills to an educational setting, from church ministry to human resources and business. We also have governors experienced in education, such as teachers, while others are parents of children who want to support the school in its strategic thinking.
As part of our ongoing plans through 2023, we are looking to strengthen the current governing body in two specific areas and therefore I wanted to reach out to our wider school community to give the opportunity for anyone, with the skills that we are looking for, who may be interested in joining our governing body to get in touch.
Being a school governor is incredibly rewarding and satisfying and we are looking for two new governors to join us who can bring further experience and competencies to help us to grow the school in the following two key areas:
- Education – someone with relevant and up to date knowledge on current educational and curriculum requirements such as a teacher or school leader from another school, or someone has recently worked in a teaching environment
- Finance – someone with a strong finance background, such as accountancy or similar.
If you would be interested in joining our team and feel that you can bring additional skills in either of the above areas then I would love to hear from you. We are looking for people who have relevant knowledge and expertise, along with enthusiasm, passion and a Christian faith, or are fully supportive of an inclusive Christian ethos to strengthen our small, successful, faith school and to contribute to our strong Christian family and community feel.
It is also really helpful and healthy for us to have individuals on our governing body who do not have direct links with the school (e.g. they do not have current children at the school nor are related to any staff members) and with this in mind, please feel free to share this wider than our parent and carer community.
If you would like further information then please feel free to contact me at chair@bxs.org.uk
Yours faithfully,
Mr Richard Shackleton
Volunteers needed for NSPCC schools service to help protect children in Bradford from abuse.
The NSPCC is calling on people across Bradford and West Yorkshire to help keep children
safe by teaching primary school pupils how to recognise signs of abuse and the importance
of speaking to trusted adults about their worries.
The charity’s schools service runs a programme in primary schools called Speak Out Stay
Safe that includes face-to-face workshops in which children are taught to understand that
they have a right to feel safe, and that they can speak to a trusted adult or Childline if they
ever need help or support.
However, due to a shortage of volunteers, the charity is struggling to provide face-to-face
workshops in all areas.
Tina Sheehy, the NSPCC Schools Coordinator for Bradford, said: “Our schools service
volunteers in Bradford play a vital role in making sure children understand what abuse is,
how to spot the signs of abuse and to feel empowered to speak out about it if they’re worried
or scared.
“We would love to be able to offer all schools the face-to-face workshops so that local
children can fully interact and benefit from the experience that Speak Out Stay Safe can
provide and to ultimately protect their childhoods. But we need more volunteers to do this.”
To volunteer for the NSPCC’s Schools Service in Bradford, go to https://join-
us.nspcc.org.uk/volunteers/vacancy/6718/description
Other volunteering opportunities are available in the NSPCC, including roles for Childline
and community fundraising. To find out how you can be an NSPCC volunteer please visit
www.nspcc.org.uk
Next Week
| Wednesday |
| Y3/4 Geography Field Trip around the local area Middle School lunch club – Art Class |
| Thursday |
| Middle School lunch club – Table Tennis Relationship and Sex Education meeting in school, 7pm |
Dates for your Diary
Monday 6th February – GCSE mock exams begin
Friday 10th February – is a normal school teaching day, not a training day as advertised. Our next training day is Thursday March 23rd.
Friday 10th February – close at 3.30pm for half term.
Monday 20th February – school re-opens & GCSE mock exams continue
Lunches
Please order lunches before 9am on Monday
Latest version v1.147 – Parent Portal help
Stars and Students of the Week
Primary School Stars of the Week
| Love Class |
| Teddy for always coming into school very happy. Rosie for great counting and fine motor skills. Lucy for lots of acts of kindness and being very thoughtful. For writing an amazing first sentence. |
| Joy Class |
| Yarna for amazing concentrating on her Van Gogh flower work in art. |
| Peace Class |
| Isaac for fantastic independent work in English. |
| Kindness Class |
| Ethan for fantastic report work on Zambia. Angel for working extremely hard in science and putting in a lot of effort Bronze Award Violet Lacie Silver Award Yo Yo |
Middle School Students of the Week
| Preet (Y7) for thoughtful work on worldview in Middle School Topic |
| Angel(Y6) for excellent contribution to Spelling Frame this week |
| Krystal (Y5) for great leadership skills in English |
| Noah (Y6) for great leadership skills in English |
Acorn Class Student of the Week
| Musa for becoming more verbally confident in class and doing well in maths. |
Classroom News
Students in Y5&6 visited the Lowry gallery in Salford for their English/Art studies. They were commended by the gallery staff for their outstanding behaviour, engagement and enthusiasm. Students sketched their favourite paintings & asked lots of interesting questions.
Fund Raising
It’s free to sign up to and start supporting us with both Amazon Smile and Give as you Live. Send our unique campaign links to friends and family so they can support us for free too!
Campaign link – https://www.giveasyoulive.com/charity/bradford-christian-school
Unfortunately, AmazonSmile is being canceled in February. You do not have to do anything if you are signed up to donate to BCS. Thank you to everyone who did sign up! In two years we gained over £50! Not bad from 0.05% donations from supporter’s online shopping purchases!
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.
Our governing body are recruiting a finance governor and an education governor – see the email from the chair of governors earlier this week. I am very grateful to this amazing group of people who are technically my employers!
The governors give of their time and expertise to meet monthly, pray for the school, and support me in my role as head teacher. I want to publicly thank Nicola Booth, who after several years serving our school in a number of different ways is finally retiring from her role as vice chair. I have appreciated her wisdom, prayer, care, consideration and time, supporting the school long after she retired as head of primary by continuing on the governing body.
I also wish to thank the rest of our board of governors: Richard Shackleton, Agpo Onduku, Simon Mackenzie, Hannah Pickles, Susanne Wells, and Kevin Ryan who have helped me do my job since I started in 2020. Each of these people have huge family commitments, yet stand with us as a school trying to maintain our vision and mission whilst making sure we meet all legal and fiscal requirements.
Meetings are a pleasure, they don’t feel onerous, and our chair of governors is skilled at getting the balance between a purposeful agenda and time to pray and hear how things are. We are usually finished in an hour and a half on line – a bit longer for our occasional face to face meetings.
If you know anyone who might be good for the role, please share the email from the chair with them.