News

Latest news from around the school

Does your child use TikTok?

Posted on 14 January 2020 by Mr Roundtree

If you’re child uses TikTok, read this guide for parents.

TikTok is a video-sharing social media app available on iOS and Android which lets users create, share, and view user created videos much in a similar manner to Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. It’s main draw, however, is that users can record and upload bite-sized looping videos of themselves lip-syncing and dancing to popular music or soundbites, often for comedic effect, which can then be further enhanced with filters, emojis and stickers. TikTok has been designed with the young user in mind and has a very addictive appeal. At the beginning of 2019 it skyrocketed in popularity to become the iOS store’s most downloaded app with over 33 million downloads. Estimates suggest that it now has anything between 500 million and over 1billion monthly active users worldwide.

Attendance matters

Posted on 13 January 2020 by Mr Roundtree

Our school’s overall attendance rate this year so far is 96%. Well done to the classes with attendance that matches or exceeds the average:

  1. 3,4C (Mr Gathercole’s class): 97.1%
  2. 2KN (Miss Lowry and Mrs Lake’s class) and F2M (Mrs Palmer’s class): both 96.6%
  3. 3,4E (Miss McCormick’s class): 96.4%
  4. 5,6M (Mr Lindsay’s class): 96.1%
  5. 5,6S (Mrs Hogarth’s class): 96.0%

Keeping active - new gym fitness equipment

Posted on 09 January 2020 by Mrs Latham

There was great excitement with the arrival of the new outdoor fitness equipment before Christmas. The wet weather slightly delayed the installation but it is now ready to use. Everyone wants a go!

This is part of our plan to increase physical activity undertaken within school. The UK Chief Medical Officers found that, “the latest evidence shows there is a clear link between physical activity and chronic disease.” We want children to be physically active for at least the Chief Medical Officer’s recommended 30 minutes during the school day, and this will help us to do this.


Merry Christmas!

Posted on 20 December 2019 by Mrs Latham

Pop choir performed some songs for us this afternoon. The whole school then joined in with a Christmas sing-a-long. Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone!


A special visitor

Posted on 18 December 2019 by Mrs Latham

Early Years and KS1 were lucky enough to have a visit from Santa today. He read stories and handed out presents. We’re all feeling very Christmassy now!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...lunch!

Posted on 12 December 2019 by Mrs Latham

We all enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch today prepared by our wonderful kitchen staff. The lunchtimes supervisors did a fantastic job (especially Mrs Pennock) decorating the hall too. Thank you!

School Council tree planting - thanks to Scholes in Bloom

Posted on 06 December 2019 by Mrs Latham

We have planted another 120 trees from the Woodland Trust on the school grounds this week. Thank you to Scholes in Bloom and the School Council for helping to do this.

You can also see the Scholes in Bloom presentation here that children in school saw last week too. The village looks wonderful!

Yorkshire Cricket

Posted on 04 December 2019 by Mrs Latham

We had another visit from Tom Bates from Yorkshire Cricket this week. He worked with teachers last week, sharing coaching tips for us to use in lessons. He shared an assembly with us this week, talking to the children about cricket, upcoming coaching and competitions we will be entering.

New annual report format

Posted on 03 December 2019 by Mr Roundtree

At Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we seek your thoughts on lots of things, whether this is straight after an open-session in school like our Watch us while we work sessions, or in the annual surveys in the summer term.

Just before the summer term last year, we also asked for your views on the annual reports. We wanted to make sure we kept the reports as informative for you as possible, and we also wanted to relieve some of the workload for teachers when they write them.

You told us that the aspects of the reports you found most helpful were the teachers’ overall comments and the grades for progress, attitude and attainment – we’ll be keeping these aspects in the new reports (we’re going to make the grades even clearer and use them for attendance, behaviour and effort, too).

Some of the sections will be made smaller or not included. This is based on your feedback, too.

Thank you to all the parents/carers who helped us with this. Do speak with me if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns.

Taking pics at our productions

Posted on 02 December 2019 by Mr Roundtree

As we approach the time of year when many of you will be visiting school to enjoy our Christmas production, we thought it would be useful to send an extract of our Online Safety Policy (even though this new version is still in its draft format):

Staff and parents are reminded at least annually (eg during an assembly or performance) about the importance of not sharing digital images and video without permission, due to reasons of child protection, data protection, religious or cultural reasons, or simply for reasons of personal privacy.

We appreciate that families will treasure photographic/video memories, and the general rule is that parents and carers may take photos and videos of the children in their care, for personal use only. There may be rare exceptions to this, and parents / carers will be made aware in advance of particular events where no filming etc is possible.

When parents capture footage or still images of their children, there is a strong possibility that other children will also be visible or audible. For this reason, no such content should be shared publicly.

Live streaming, whether public or private, cannot be permitted on streaming platforms or ‘live’ features (e.g. Facebook Live) to stream events/circumstances as they occur. Parents / carers may be asked to leave the premises or event if this takes place.

Parents will be provided with clear direction by a senior member of staff in order to comply with this policy around public performances.

You can read more about this in an article written by a barrister specialising in education law.