The Scottish Government plans to expand Early Learning and Childcare services to almost double the number of funded hours from 600 currently to 1140 each year. These extra hours will be available to all children aged 3 or 4 and for some children aged 2 and will be in place by session 2020/21. Families should have choice and flexibility in how they use services – including whether they use all of their child’s funded hours and whether they use them during school term-time or throughout the year.

By early learning and childcare, we mean all pre-school education such as nurseries, early years centres, childminders and playgroups.

The City of Edinburgh Council is keen to maintain high quality early learning and childcare services as they change and expand, to make them work well for you and your family. To do this, we need your help so that we can plan for the future.

We want to find out what your experience of early learning and childcare is really like in Edinburgh – whether you use it or not, what you like and if there’s anything you think could be changed or improved.

Please help us with this by taking some time to complete this survey. It should only take around ten minutes.

www.edinburgh.gov.uk/earlyyearsparentconsultation

Thank you.

The NSPCC’s Speak out. Stay safe. programme is visiting our school to help our pupils have the knowledge and understanding they need to stay safe from abuse.
The NSPCC will be delivering their Speak out. Stay safe. programme on Wednesday 23rd October 2019. This is a nationwide programme for every primary-school-aged child in the UK and Channel Islands. With the help of their friendly mascot Buddy, they’ll be presenting an assembly to the children in our school as well as a workshop for P6 and P7.

We have studied the content of the materials and heard from other schools who have participated and are extremely confident that they are appropriate for primary-school-aged children. By the end of their visit, we’re convinced children will feel empowered – knowing how they can speak out and stay safe.

Attached is a letter with further information below-

NSPCC Letter for Parents and Carers

If you would like any more information about the NSPCC Speak out. Stay safe. programme, including frequently asked questions, you can find it on the NSPCC website nspcc.org.uk/schools

The NSPCC’s work in schools will help encourage conversations about staying safe – and they have a number of child-friendly materials to help you carry on the conversation afterwards. That includes ‘The Underwear Rule’, a simple way for parents and carers to help keep children safe from sexual abuse – without using scary words or even mentioning sex.
The guide uses the rules of PANTS to teach children that their body belongs to them and them alone. You can find out more and download the free resources at nspcc.org.uk/pants
If you’d like to know more about the NSPCC’s work, or take a look at the wide range of information and advice which is available for parents and carers, please visit their website https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/

Next Friday 11th October is our annual Harvest Celebration. We will be collecting food donations for the Edinburgh Food Project, who provide emergency food to local people in crisis through eight foodbank centres in the Northwest, Central and East areas of Edinburgh.

All contributions should be handed into the school gym hall on Friday 11th October. However, if people want to hand in donations before then can they be sent into classes and they’ll be taken over to the hall next Friday.

Please see below a newsletter with further information about the Edinburgh Food Project, as well as a shopping list for the most sought after items.

Thank you in advance for any donations you can make!

Harvest Newsletter 2019

Harvest Shopping List

 

Here is our definitive collection of pictures and videos from our recent P7 residential trip to Lagganlia Outdoor Education centre.

We had a fantastic time, and the children had the chance to experience a wide range of different activities, as you can see from our pictures and videos!

You might want to settle down with a cuppa before you look at these, there’s quite a lot of them!

 

 

 

 

 

Please see below the latest head teacher’s newsletter from Mrs Gowans.

Head Teacher’s Newsletter-September 2019

A huge thank you to our Cafe Co-ordinator Rachel Blythe for spending Thursday making some very yummy soup with some of our P6 children from the vegetables we harvested in the playground a week past Friday – this was the first cooking part of our Leith Chooses Project 🙂

Our café on Friday was very well attended with a lot of lovely donations from  families, and our P6 helpers did a fabulous job of helping set up, serving customers and helping clean up at the end.

While official amount raised needs to be confirmed from the Treasurer (will be confirmed in our next Parent Council meeting), we raised £328 towards Lagganlia costs in 2020. Thanks to everyone who came along and bought something!

We would like your feedback on what we should spend £3000 of our raised funds on this year. If you took away a slip from the café, please email your replies to broughtonparents@gmail.com or you can fill in your thoughts on our feedback form online here https://forms.gle/Cejkyf8mV2eixPWh7

Some photos below, taken in between the busy spells, featuring some of our old P7’s who came along from their new high schools to say hello to everyone.

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Today was our last full day of activities here at Lagganlia! We enjoyed canoeing, snowboarding, archery, abseiling, mountain biking and bushcraft skills, where we made popcorn, bread or toasted marshmallows!

After our final delicious dinner, we had the chance to buy some souvenirs from the shop. We started packing for our journey home, and enjoyed a fantastic disco to celebrate the end of the week!

We’ve had such a fantastic week, and we are so proud of all our pupils! The instructors have been so impressed by their enthusiastic participation, listening and following instructions.

We’re travelling back to school tomorrow, and hope to be back around 12.30-1pm.

Once we’re back, we’ll post lots more photos and some videos of our excursion.

Goodbye Lagganlia, we’ve made some fantastic memories!

 

 

Day 3 at Lagganlia has been another lovely day! We’ve had canoeing, mountain biking, abseiling, gorge walking and hill walking.

More good feedback and positive comments from our lovely instructors. Our evening activity after dinner and journal time was a tree orienteering activity, which allowed us to have a good run around the centre to solve clues!

We can’t believe it’s our last full day of activities tomorrow. Time really does fly when you’re having fun! Looking forward to another fun filled day, and an exciting disco to celebrate our fantastic week.

Some more photos and a video of some of our campers below!

 

 

Day 2 of our amazing excursion to Lagganlia has been fabulous! All of the groups apart from one took part in a gorge walk, and other activities happening today included rock climbing, mountain biking, archery and canoeing.

All the children participated so well today, we are incredibly proud of them! Today we saw great listening, co-operation, teamwork and confidence to try new things!

This evening we also saw more great teamwork as the children took part in a night line, where they were blindfolded and had to lead each other through a complex ropes course in the dark!

Here are a few pictures of today- we’re looking forward to another great day tomorrow!

We’re here! P7 have arrived safely at Lagganlia Outdoor Centre.

We made good time on our journey up, and arrived at lunchtime.

We’ve met our instructors for the week, and they’ve given us a tour of the centre, and explained the main things we need to know! There are no other schools here, so we have the whole centre to ourselves! 🙂

We’ve also had the chance to complete the first page of our Lagganlia journal. This evening, after a delicious dinner, we took part in a scatter course, where we explored the centre in teams to find the answers to different clues.

Lagganlia staff are already impressed with our enthusiasm and focused attitude- we’re looking forward to a great week!

Now let’s see if we’ve made our beds we’ll enough to last through our first night!

Goodnight everyone, here are some photos of our first day!