Message from the Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers,

As we reach the end of another half-term, please find our latest newsletter below! Thank you to all the parents and carers who came along to Parents Evenings recently. We appreciated you taking the time to attend, and hope you found the conversations helpful.

It’s been a busy half-term with lots of events and activities taking place. We kicked off with the annual Eisteddfods, which were a brilliant celebration of Wales and also the amazing talents our children have. In the same week, we had World Book Day, which was a great opportunity to enjoy reading together – we  loved seeing everyone’s fantastic costumes, too! Lots of year groups have also been out on various educational visits – you can read more about those in the individual year group updates in the bottom section of this newsletter.

It’s been great to finally have some sun towards the end of this half-term and one afternoon, we took the opportunity to have a WHOLE-school playtime on the field – nearly all 706 children (without the nursery though!) Usually, our playtimes are split across the school but bringing everyone together always feels special – especially seeing older siblings playing with their younger siblings. You can see a couple of photos below.

Wishing you all a relaxing Easter break!

Mr Mansfield – Headteacher

Training Day After Easter Break & May Bank Holiday

Don’t forget that Monday 28th April is a Staff Training Day. Therefore, children will return after Easter on Tuesday 29th April.

We also remind you that Monday 5th May is a Bank Holiday.

Attendance

Please continue to help us improve our school attendance. We’re currently at 92%. Before the pandemic our attendance at the end of the year was 94.6%. If children don’t attend school regularly, they can fall behind in their learning. Missing lessons means they may not fully understand important concepts or miss key building blocks for future learning, which can affect their confidence and progress. Irregular attendance can also make it harder for children to maintain friendships.

You can view your child’s class’ weekly attendance here.

If you attended our Parent Consultation meetings, you will have been given an attendance report for your child for the year to date. If you did not attend or have not received this report, please contact the school office or speak with your child’s teacher. Please also contact us if you’d like further help understanding the report.

If your child is too ill to attend school, please make sure you let us know straight away on the morning of the first-day of absence. You can either leave a message on the school answer phone, notify us using our online form, send us a text message or email (Do not use Class Dojo as we don’t use the messaging feature on the app). If we don’t receive notification, the absence is recorded on our system as unauthorised.

Update on School Development Priorities

Please click here for a reminder about our main school development priorities for this year.

Our priorities come from a range of Self Evaluation activities which take place across the year. Governors have ideas, the Local Authority have ideas, staff have ideas, children have ideas and parents have ideas which are captured in our annual surveys. We collate all of these with our Self-Evaluation outcomes to devise our main priorities.

Don’t forget our Online Suggestion Box

If you have any ideas of what we need to work on or improve as a school, please do let us know! If we adopt your idea, we’ll buy you a box of chocolates! You can use this link.

Writing Workshop and Multiply Maths Workshops

Thank you to all the parents who attended our Writing Workshop this half-term.  Thank you also to those who have attended the Multiply Maths course! We hope that you’ve found these sessions informative and helpful.

Upcoming Sports Day Dates

We’ve already released the Sports Day provision dates, but just in case you missed them, you can see the dates here. We’ve tried to get them out as early as possible to allow working parents to book time off work. The weather is so unpredictable, however, that it may be necessary to postpone an event if it’s pouring with rain or the field is waterlogged. We will try to give you as much notice as possible if we do need to cancel one.

Extra Curricular Clubs and Activities for next term

View clubs available during the summer term by clicking this link.

Use the links below to register your child for one of the listed after-school clubs.

If you would like to attend ‘Cook with your Kids’ or ‘Engineering Club’, there is a separate registration link below.

Even if your child attended a club last term, parents will need to re-register their child for any club they wish them to attend in the Summer term. This helps ensure a fair process, as some club leaders have waiting lists and would like to offer all children the opportunity to take part.

Clubs will resume the week commencing Monday 5th May 2025, although Monday 5th May itself is a bank holiday.

Your child will come home with a ‘club acceptance’ letter in the first week back of term if they have been allocated a space.

Club Registration form Summer 2025 – https://forms.gle/m5UBwMGGjo6tnfNX9

Cook With Your Kids Club Registration Form Summer 2025 – https://forms.gle/gvZFhRxG7LqBVvBcA

Parents and Kids Engineering Club with Mr Mansfield (Years 3-6) – https://forms.gle/eT4jKBTS7J13tKe36

County in the Community

County in the Community have successfully delivered a mathematics intervention programme that integrates physical activity for 32 children from Years 4 to 6. The sessions have not only reinforced essential maths skills but have also provided pupils with an opportunity to challenge themselves through dynamic physical activities.

County in the Community have also delivered engaging workshops to Year 5 pupils, sharing the fascinating history of the club and how it all started. The children learned about the club’s origins and its exciting journey, giving them a deeper appreciation for its impact in the community!

Heddlu Bach visit Police Station

Our Heddlu Bach pupils enjoyed a fantastic visit to Newport Central Police Station, where they were given a guided tour by the Newport East Neighbourhood Team, Police Inspector Giles and local PCSOs. The children explored different areas of the station, including the custody suite, and gained a deeper understanding of policing in our community.

Sports Update

Newport Primary Schools’ Football Tournament
The school football team took part in the second Newport Primary Schools’ Football League tournament of the year, competing alongside 25 teams from 22 schools, with 320 children from across Newport coming together for the event.

Newport Netball League Festival
Our school netball team had a fantastic day competing in the Newport Netball League Festival at Lliswerry Primary School.

Parenting Support Leaflets

Click here to view a range of leaflets and resources for advice and guidance on one of the toughest jobs in the world… being a parent!

Great St Julian’s Bake Offs!

We have loved having teams of parents and their children take part in our Great St Julian’s Bake Offs this term! We’ve held a Greatest Pancake Bake Off, Wonderful Welsh Cakes Bake Off and Eggsellent Easter Cake Bake Off!

New Outdoor Equipment

As you’ll know we have Pupil Parliament Groups (juniors) and Pupil Voice Groups (infants). One thing that is regularly suggested by these groups is the need for better outdoor play equipment. We installed an outdoor table tennis table on the junior playground earlier in the year and have installed metal sheds containing lots of outdoor games on all playgrounds. Children were really keen to install some larger pieces of play equipment, but it is so expensive! We have however managed to save up enough money to install a ‘Trim Trail’ and a Climbing Frame with slide on the bottom infant playground (see images above).

You’ll notice that the climbing tower near the nursery has ‘Noah’s Slide’ written above the slide. In 2021, one of our precious children, Noah, sadly passed away during the Christmas break. We worked closely with the family, who made a donation to the school to install a memorial for Noah. He really loved slides, so we’re thrilled to be able to have this. A couple of weeks ago, Noah’s mum and her family came to officially open the new climbing tower. Children have loved playing on it since.

Eisteddfods

We had a great time celebrating St David’s Day with our annual Eisteddfods on 3rd March. The main Eisteddfod took place throughout the whole day and was live-streamed for parents to watch at home. The day involved singing, musical instruments, dancing, recitations, art competitions, hand-writing competitions and more.

Congratulations to Violet, whose poem about Wales was chosen as the winner in the poetry competition, making her the Eisteddfod Bard. In line with tradition she was crowned and throned on our Eisteddfod chair!

The mini Eisteddfod took place with our younger children in the infant hall after lunch, involving year groups from Nursery to Year 2. The choir sang absolutely brilliantly and each year group also performed a Welsh song.

New Chartwells Dinner Menu

You can download the new Chartwells Dinner Menu here.

We often get asked which week we’re on – you can see the Week Commencing date at the top right of each page of the menu so you know which week to choose from.

World Book Day

Thanks to everyone who came in dressed up as their favourite book character for our World Book Day celebrations. Everyone looked brilliant. All classes took part in a range of book/reading-related activities throughout the day and during the afternoon, all the teachers switched classes to read to another class. We applied to a charity for some free World Book Day costumes, which meant we were able to offer a costume to every child who wasn’t already wearing one!

Comic Relief and World Down Syndrome Day

We held a n0n-uniform day and Odd Socks Day to support Comic Relief and Down Syndrome International. It was wonderful to see so many different outfits and odd socks across the school! Thanks to everyone’s generosity, we raised just over £300, which will be split equally between the two charities. Thank you for helping us make a difference!

BAE Systems Workshop for Year 5&6

BAE Systems ran an exciting Y5/6 workshop: The Age of AI: Human Skills Meet Technology. We met their AI dog who performed for the children and was able to describe her surroundings in great detail. We also found out about ‘deep fakes’.

Keeping Costs Down – nearly £12000 used to reduce the cost of school visits

Educational Visits are some of the most exciting experiences that children remember about school but we know that the cost can be a struggle for some parents. We try to keep costs down as much as we can and we are pleased to announce that we managed to allocate nearly £12000 to reduce costs for parents on school visits/experiences over the past financial year. In some cases, we reduced the cost of visits by a few pounds per child. In other cases, we’ve paid entirely for the activity – for example, the climbing wall for Year 4 children.

School Essentials Grant

If you are in receipt of certain benefits, you may be eligible for the School Essentials Grant from the Welsh Government. More information can be found here.

National Online Personalised Assessments

The Welsh Government has three online assessments that children in Year 2 – Year 9 need to take at least once every year. The three assessments are: Reading, Procedural Numeracy and Reasoning Numeracy. These assessments are taken online and are adaptive, meaning that questions are selected based on the responses to previous questions. If a child answers correctly, the questions become more difficult, if a child answers incorrectly, the next question is easier.

There is no set timeframe for when schools must complete these assessments but at St Julian’s Primary, we complete them annually around the beginning of June.

Once completed, a report is published to your child’s Hwb account. You can log in at any time to view reports from previous assessments. These reports show the progress your child has made since the previous time they undertook the assessment, along with a feedback report which shows areas of strength and areas for further practice.

Miss Sier Publishes Children’s Book

We are super proud of Miss Sier, one of our Year 1 teachers, who has recently written and published her own children’s book! It’s called Magic, Mum and Me and is inspired by her 5 year old daughter. To celebrate this, we’d love to invite you to a book launch after school on Wednesday 30th April in the infant hall. We’ll provide some drinks and snacks and Miss Sier will tell us a bit about her book.

Easter Bonnets and Easter Egg Decorating

We had a great Easter Assembly on the last day of term. In the Infants, we sang songs and paraded with our Easter Bonnet Hats. In the juniors, we judged the best decorated Easter Egg. Two children made egg versions of Mr Mansfield – one said that they used real hair, which they got from their mum!

Staff Changes

We are really pleased to welcome Miss Bruce to the team – who will take over from Mrs Lee in the infant office. Don’t worry – Mrs Lee is not leaving us, she runs a lot of our interventions and support programmes, so releasing her from the office means that she focus on these.

Mr Evans has been working as a teaching assistant with us through an agency for the past couple of terms. He’s been working in our outdoor learning area as well as providing literacy and numeracy support for learners in the Foundation Phase/Infants. Mr Evans has now been appointed by the school.

Whilst we say hello to those new staff, we also sadly say goodbye to Miss Hurford who leaves us this half term. Miss Hurford joined us in 2019 and has worked across a range of year groups but is moving to a new post in administration. We wish her all the best as she starts her new job!

We’re also sad to say goodbye to Mrs Robertson who has worked as a teaching assistant in our infant building for the past couple of terms.

Easter Egg for Every Child!

A huge thank you to the Warehouse Church, who helped make it possible for us to give every child a Chocolate Easter Egg to take home with them on the last day of term!

PTA Quiz and PTA Easter Egg Hunt

I must say an enormous thank you to the members of our PTA. Again this half-term, they have worked so hard, giving up their own time to help us plan and prepare events for everyone to enjoy. The Pizza and Quiz night was a success – a few families joined us in the hall and around thirty families joined via our live-stream from the comfort of their living room. Congratulations to The Gittings Family who had the most correct answers, winning them a £40 take-away voucher. Well done also to the Smiths, who came second and won a £20 take-away voucher!

Official Launch of Kelly Park

Over the last few months, Newport Council has improved several parks around the city. One park which has recently had a makeover and some new equipment installed is Kelly Park, around the corner from us. We were invited by Newport Council to be part of the official opening. The Mayor of Newport was there, local councillors and also the park installers. Several children from school got to try out the new equipment and give their views to the council. They also received a free ‘goodie bag’ with lots of gifts in!

Site Maintenance

Recently…

• We’ve given the front of the school a lick of paint.
• Installed a handrail alongside the infant path from the top playground to the bottom playground
• Repaired a pathway damaged by tree-roots in the nursery garden
• Installed four outdoor sheds around the playgrounds to store improved playground equipment
• Installed a new Trim Trail and Tower Climbing Frame with Slide on the Infant Playground
• Installed an outdoor table tennis table
• Installed some new signs to help new parents/visitors finding their way around the site.
• Bought some new picnic tables for children to eat lunch outside.
• Improved Additional Learning Needs facilities in the Infant Building
• Refreshed our infant Accessibility Toilet
• Improved an old cupboard to make it usable

Check out the photographs above.

Need Help?

Mrs Walshe, our Family Support Worker, is always happy to do what she can to help our families with whatever situation they’re facing. Click here to find out more about what Mrs Walshe can support you with.

Class Dojo – Main Communication Platform

We want to remind all parents and carers that Class Dojo is our main communication tool for sharing important school updates and class news. Through the app, you can receive whole school announcements, as well as specific updates from your child’s class teacher. It’s a great way to stay informed about events, learning activities, and key reminders. We also use the online calendar which notifies parents of upcoming events. You can control the notification settings in the app to increase the number of reminders or reduce them. Please note that we don’t use the private messaging feature of the App, so don’t message us using that as we won’t see it.

If you haven’t already, please make sure you have the app and are connected to your child’s class.

Updates from Each Year Group