This week’s message kicks off (pun intended!) with some football news. Don’t miss the staffing update, especially if your child is in Reception, Class 2C or Class 3,4B.

Fantastic football

We’re really proud of some of our Y5,6 children who represented our school in the EFL Utilita Football Cup. They played in a competition with five other schools – and won! The team now progress to the next round of this national competition.

It was a tense affair with the final going all the way to sudden death penalties. We’re proud of their performances but we’re even more proud of their attitude: during the competition, a representative from Harrogate Town FC came over to say what ‘a credit to our school they all were’. He was particularly impressed with how well they worked as a team, how they encouraged each other and how they showed great sportsmanship towards the other teams – well done to all involved!

Staffing updates

We don’t always have lots of staffing changes mid-way through the year but there are a few changes in January…

Reception

Mrs Allen-Kelly, one of our Reception teachers, will be leaving us at the end of this term (Friday 19 December). Mrs Allen-Kelly has worked in Sphere Federation for eight years, much of that time here at Scholes (Elmet) Primary. We’ll be very sad to see her go. Whilst with us, Mrs Allen-Kelly has started lots of children off on their learning journey. Being a Reception teacher is such an important job and one that Mrs Allen-Kelly has done with dedication, patience and care. I’m sure you’ll join us in wishing her the best of luck with her new venture.

Mrs Cowgill will be taking over from Mrs Allen-Kelly in January. Mrs Cowgill has over 15 years of teaching experience, including many years working in Early Years. In Spring and Summer 2025, she worked at St James’ CE Primary, another of our federation schools, so she’s very familiar with our routines.

From January, Reception will look like this:

Sunshine: Mrs Long on Monday and Mrs Brown for the rest of the week (Tuesday – Friday)
Rainbow: Tuesday – Mrs Long on Tuesday and Mrs Cowgill for the rest of the week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday)

Class 2C

From January, Mrs Paterson will work Monday – Wednesday and Mrs Wilkins will work Thursday and Friday.

Class 3,4B

In 3,4B, we welcome Miss Iveson back from maternity leave. Miss Iveson will work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Mrs Lake will work Thursday and Friday.

How we communicate with you

As we’ve been using Arbor for a couple of months, we thought it would be useful to let you know about the different ways that we communicate things with you.

Anything urgent (such as the cancellation of an after-school club) or a quick reminder about something (like the photographer being in school) will be sent via the Arbor app. If you haven’t already downloaded it to your phone, please do so. It may be useful to set it so you receive notifications of messages. As it’s free for us to communicate with you this way, we’ll use in-app messages rather than texts. If you don’t have the Arbor app installed, these messages will come to you via email.

Our weekly message on Fridays contain information about things coming up, such as parents’ evenings or sports days, as well as other information that we think you might find useful, such as top tips to support your child to stay safe online. Most letters will be emailed out to you, too. We’re moving away from sending out hard copies of letters. Please try and check your emails daily, so you don’t miss anything important.

For anything relevant to your child’s class, please check the Class News pages of the website (we recommend doing this at least once a week). Nursery and Reception tend to put reminders on their Class News page, as they don’t have a homework page.

After-school club – early closing

Next Friday is the last day of term. If you use our wrapround care on Fridays, please remember it closes early: 5pm.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

Our weekly message: Friday 12 December 2025

Fantastic football

Staffing updates

How we communicate with you

After-school club – early closing