Dear Parents / Guardians

A very Happy New Year, to you all and especially our new parents and students. 2024 promises to be an exciting year. Teachers have been in school last week planning and preparing for this new school year. Calendars have been reviewed and events have been planned out for the future. Please keep reading the emails and journals from the school to keep up to date with what is happening.

This week, all students have been exposed to a lot of new information, new teachers and the like. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the school to get the small questions answered. Please don't let them become big cumbersome questions!

Having written this, the first week has gone very well and today, you could be forgiven for thinking that we have now been in school for many weeks! It is so good to see students back in the school corridors, enjoying lessons and giving the school the energy and positive noise that was missing during the holidays.

I sent an email to all parents earlier in the week reminding everyone about some fundamentals for 2024 and here I would like to repeat this message

Engage - Existing parents will recognise the name Engage, as this is what we have been using as a portal for parents to access academic reports, and Parent Teacher Meetings. It is also what we use as a database for your contact details and attendance etc. Now we are moving to a new provider for this service, called iSams. Due to this your parent access to Engage will now be switched off.
iSams has a parent portal for you to access data and we will publish to parents in the coming weeks, just before the mid term reports. Please see you emails in the next few weeks for instructions and details of information sessions

Vircle - This is our cashless card system in the cafeteria. Please can I ask you all to log into your Vircle app and check the balance in your children’s cards especially after the long holidays. Please can you also look carefully for any IOU amounts that need to be settled. IOU can occur when your child doesn't have enough credit in Vircle, and the cafeteria has allowed an excess payment to occur.

Parking - This is always an issue at the start of term/academic year, and I know that it will settle over the coming days and weeks. Please be aware that parking can be difficult especially at the end of the school day and ques do develop quite quickly. As the ECA’s start, then the pick up traffic should make this situation better. Please follow the instructions of the guards, as they are just trying to make the traffic flow better.

Have a great week ahead.