9^th October

Next week

• Y6 cycle sessions continue through the week
• Monday 12^th – Land Phase (Y1/2) Beach School session – packed lunches needed. If the weather is particularly awful we’ll make a call and put it off until Tuesday.
• Tuesday 13^th – Governor’s Meeting for parents – come along and learn what the governors do, feel free to ask questions too
• Thursday 15^th – Shwmae Day – please wear red. The event aims to show that the Welsh language belongs to us all – fluent speakers, learners or those shy about their Welsh.It’s an opportunity to have fun and share the language.
• Friday 16^th October - Show Racism the Red Card - wear red. This event gives us another opportunity to educate children, helping them to see the importance of Promoting inclusion, equality and respect for difference. We want our children to have the confidence and understanding to challenge racism rather than simply recognise it.

Outdoor Learning Appeal

Last year we had a few families take pupils out of school when we were doing outdoor learning days! Please, do not to do this! Outdoor learning has SO many benefits – not least of which is building resilience in children which is badly needed in our society. It also helps their physical wellbeing, their curiosity, and their mental health (masses of evidence on this). As teachers, it helps us put learning – which can at times be quite abstract – into different contexts and give our children a concrete, visual, authentic learning experience. Please, please ensure children are in school.

Work on Forest School

On Friday 23^rd October we’d like to have a work session on our Forest School Area in the afternoon, from 1-3pm. We’ll need gloves, spades, shovels, loppers, secateurs, garden bags. If you can help, please do. It’s such a great thing when the community are involved, bring a relative, bring a neighbour. Many hands make light work!

Share My Work Evaluation

Many thanks to those who took the time to give us some feedback on the Share My Work session. We’ll analyse the information next week. If you have 2 mins and haven’t given feedback yet, please do:

Share my work evaluation - October 2026 – Fill in form

Swimming Survey

As you may be aware, there is a Welsh Government initiative called Nofio Ysgol, which aims to provide all children in Years 4 and 5 with access to 20 hours of swimming lessons. Whilst Welsh Government funding contributes towards transport costs, providing these lessons would still cost the school £3,700. This is the cost of the Service Level Agreement we would have to buy into if we accept their help with transport. 

We would like to hear your views on this. Your feedback will help us understand whether parents feel that offering these lessons should be a priority for our pupils. We know that many parents would pay for lessons outside of school, and therefore they wouldn't necessarily want school time being used for whole class swimming lessons. However, if there is strong support from our school community, we will explore how we can provide swimming lessons.

If there is little appetite for this change, we will continue using that money to fund other areas of children's education and learning.

We encourage as many parents and carers as possible to share their views so that we can gain a fair and representative understanding of our school community. Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete the survey.

Swimming Survey – Fill in form

2^nd October

Next week

• Tuesday 7^th – 3.30pm – Y4 Residential Information session

Flu Vaccine reminder

The school nursing team will be visiting on 14th October 2026 to deliver the annual Flu Vaccination Programme for children in Reception to Year 6. Please could all parents/ carers complete the online consent form, this must be completed whether consenting or declining. 

2026/27 School Nasal Flu Vaccination form – Fill in form 

Social Media

Any parents who allow their children to use social media, please ensure you are monitoring carefully. We’ve had some grim reports of very inappropriate language being used and sometimes really hurtful behaviour.

Reading

As you know, we are working on improving the whole Reading culture of the school. The National Literacy Trust is supporting the National Year of Reading 2026 through its 'Go All In' campaign. As part of the campaign, the National Literacy Trust and the British Council are aiming to set a new Guinness World Records™ title for the most people reading together online over 12 hours.

We have signed up to take part in this exciting event next week! Our KS2 pupils will enjoy a reading of The Blockbusters! by Waterstones Children's Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce, while our Foundation Phase pupils will listen to Super Uma by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, followed by a draw-along activity with illustrator Nakul P. By taking part, our pupils will be contributing to this nationwide reading celebration and the world record attempt.   

PTA

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated sweets and bought off the Amazon wishlist for our Halloween disco, it is very much appreciated! If anyone else would like to donate, please could you do this by Monday so we can see how much we need to order.

🎃👻 Spooky Halloween Disco Alert! 👻🎃

Get your costumes ready and prepare for a frightfully fun evening of dancing and Halloween treats! 🕷️🕸️

Our Halloween Disco will take place on Thursday 22nd October in the Junior Hall.

🎃 Foundation Phase Disco: 5:30pm – 6:15pm

(Parents are very welcome and encouraged to stay)

👻 Junior Disco: 6:30pm – 7:30pm

(Parents can drop off, or you’re more than welcome to stay if you’d prefer)

🧛‍♀️ Don’t forget to come dressed in your best Halloween fancy dress! 🧙‍♂️

💷 Cash only event

Entry is £1 per child on the door.

There will be lots of spooky goodies available to buy, including:

🌭 Hot dogs

🍿 Popcorn

🧁 Cupcakes

✨ Glow wands

🍬 Sweets

💀 Halloween tattoos

🎨 Face painting

…and plenty more treats! ❤️

🚗 A little reminder about parking: The drive gets very busy, especially during changeover. Foundation parents, please leave promptly after the disco finishes, as junior drop-off begins at 6:30pm. Street parking is recommended where possible.

We can’t wait to see everyone dressed up and ready to party! 🎃👻

Before the Bell – see the poster below on support for morning routines.

25^th September

Next week

• Tuesday 29th - Sky Phase Y5/) Beach School

Uniform

Thanks so much to all the parents for supporting the school with the uniform. It’s helping us a lot. Please do keep it up. We have found it impacts attitudes in school, it’s a leveler for all children.

INSETs

We’re having to make a change to our INSET program because of an unforeseen change with a trainer we had booked. The new INSET program will mean that children aren’t in school on these days:

• Friday 18^th December 2026

• Friday 5^th February 2027

• Monday 7^th June 2027

• Monday 19^th July 2027

• Tuesday 20^th July 2027

PTA update

We’ve had a number of parents asking if there are ways that they can help by purchasing items directly for PTA events. To make this easier, we’ve created an Amazon Wishlist for our upcoming Halloween Disco.

If you would like to support the event, any donated items from the wish list would be hugely appreciated. Every contribution helps reduce our costs, meaning we can raise even more money for the school and our children.

Thank you for your continued support!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1ACXTV5PISLNG?ref_=wl_share

Share My Work (Years 1-6)

On Thursday 8^th October we have our Share My Work session. This is a lovely session for you to come as a parent or grandparent etc. It gives you some time to talk to your child about their learning within the school. In the Foundation Learning year groups they will show you activities they work on. In Key Stage 2 they will talk you through the learning from their books. It’s always a positive session. We put it before Parents’ Evening in case it brings up anything you would like to discuss with the class teacher.

Please make every effort to stick with the timings below.

We don’t have the staff to bring pupils from the Foundation Phase across to Key Stage 2 or visa versa.

• Foundation Learning - in the FL Hall

  • Mrs Ellis' class and Mr Bean’s Years 1s - 0900-0950

  • Ms Melling & Mrs Gorvett's class and Mr Bean’s Year 2s - 1430-1520

• Key Stage 2 - in the KS2 Hall

  • Year 3 - 0900-0940

  • Year 4 - 0940-1020

  • Year 5 - 1400-1440

  • Year 6 - 1440-1520

Parents Evening Bookings

On Monday at 1pm, MCAS will be open for parent evening bookings. This will be a new system for us, hopefully making it all more efficient. Most parents are now registered with MCAS. If you’re not scroll down for instructions. If you’re unsure, please come to the school office on Monday morning, we’ll help.

Residentials

Information on residentials will be coming out shortly. We’re excited to once again plan to take pupils on these really special trips.

• Year 4 – 16-17^th March 2027 – Urdd in Cardiff

• Year 5 – 26-30^th April 2027 – Llain in West Wales

• Year 6 – 14-18^th June 2027 – Llangrannog in West Wales

More specific information will come out to you as parents next week.

Dogs on site

Please help us by discouraging people from bringing dogs onto the school site. Every week we have to clean up a child who has stepped in dog mess. As a school, we can not believe that dog owners seem to have so little regard for the fact this is a school site.

MCAS Reminder

The Local Authority have purchased a new Management Information System, called Bromcom, for schools in Swansea. Last year we transitioned from SIMS to Bromcom, it is used throughout school for registration and other key information.

Through Bromcom, we have the ability to interact with families using an app/ web based system called ‘MyChildAtSchool’ or MCAS, which will in time replace iPay. We are now using MCAS for:

• Before school club, breakfast club and after school club bookings

• School announcements and notifications

In the coming weeks it will be used for:

• Online payments (for trips, residentials etc)

• An appointments booking system for Parents Evenings

As each of these features are released, further details and parent user guides will be provided.

We kindly ask all parents/carers to register for the MCAS portal, either online or via the mobile app. To sign up for MCAS you must use the email address that we hold on record for you. If you already have MCAS for children at another school, your child should link automatically.

When installing the MCAS app you must enable notifications in order to receive Push Notifications. If notifications aren’t enabled at installation then you will not receive any notifications. If you accidentally skip this step, you will need to delete the app and reinstall it, making sure to allow notifications during setup.

If you would prefer to use the app:

Download the MyChildAtSchool (MCAS) app from your app store

• Click reset password

• Enter email

• Tick ‘not a robot’

• Click send reset email

• Go to your emails

• Click on ‘here’ in the email text from MCAS

• Enter a password and then re-enter

• Click continue

• Go back to the parent login and sign in

• Chose a 5 digit pin enter and then re-enter

• Click confirm

• Make sure you say yes to notifications pop up and then allow notifications

If you would prefer to use a web browser:

Go to www.mychildatschool.com

• Click reset password

• Enter email

• Tick ‘not a robot’

• Click send reset email

• Go to your emails

• Click on ‘here’ in the email text from MCAS

• Enter a password and then re-enter

• Click continue

• Go back to the parent login and sign in

• Make sure you say yes to the notifications pop up and then allow notifications

• If you receive the error message ‘incorrect email address’ or have any problems please contact the school office.

18^th September

Next week

• Friday 25^th at 9am: Coffee Morning around Foundation Learning. This is a time to understand how the learnings works in our Foundation Learning area (the Infants). Mr Bean will be running this session.

Y6 Coasteering Session

Huge thanks to RipNRock for kindly taking our Y6 pupils Coasteering today. The conditions today meant a slight change in the programme, but they still took the pupils out into the water and gave them some excellent lessons around water safety on the Gower.

Portrait Photos – change in date

Roz and Kirsty – the Photographers – have asked us to change the date we had our portrait photos booked in. It was on Thursday 22^nd October. It will now be on Friday 23^rd October. I've changed this on the calendar if you subscribe to that.

Calendar | Bishopston Primary School

Get your child reading, and reading with your child!

We perhaps all sometimes need reminding how important – and how fun – reading is. Children have never lived in a time like this generation where there are so many distractions, endless clubs, endless screen media to consume.  Reading is the cornerstone of learning and a fundamental skill that shapes life chances. Although lots of children are reluctant readers when instant entertainment is competing for their time, please, please try to get into the great habit of reading to them every day, and giving them time to read every day. In doing that, you’re not just improving their educational outcomes (in every subject), you are helping to give your children the tools they need to thrive in life.

If you need inspiration to choose the next book, here is a bit of help:

Literacy | Bishopston Primary School

Coffee Morning Sessions

We have a variety of coffee morning sessions planned for the year. The feedback we had from parents was to have them on a Friday as more people work from home or can get a bit of time on a Friday morning. We’ve got sessions ranging from supporting learning in literacy and numeracy, play based learning, ALN, a time to meet the new deputy headteacher, Internet safety, Welsh, and transition sessions. It would really help us if you would be willing to book onto the sessions. We had one last year where the poor teacher did lots of prep and no one turned up.

Here is the form:

Coffee Morning Sessions – Fill in form

We’ll send reminders through the year.

Message from the PTA

We wanted to let you know that each year group is asked by the PTA to run one event per year, with a PTA class rep to coordinate this. We hope this will create more opportunities for people to get involved for a one off event without the need for a big commitment. We would love to see more dads getting involved too, maybe you could recruit a few friends and come along to your class event. We want to raise funds for the school and support the school community for all the children at our school.

These are the events assigned to each year group:

• Nursery - no event but if you want to get involved, please let the office know.
• Reception - Sports Day drinks stand, morning and afternoon Friday 28^th May
• Year 1 - Murton Bonfire Night Glow wand stand 5^th November
• Year 2 - Lantern parade, selling lantern kits. Friday 27^th November
• Year 3 - Christmas fair sweet jar and teddy stalls Friday 27^th November.
• Year 4 - Fun run Friday 22^nd July
• Year 5 - Halloween Disco Thursday 22nd October

Please look out for updates from your class rep on your year Whatsapp group and we look forward to seeing you at these events.

Request for donations of sweets - we would love donations of sweets for the first PTA event of the year, the Halloween disco. Please give them to your class teacher or drop them at the office.

11^th September

Next week

• Tuesday 15^th – Mountain Phase (Y3/4) Beach School – packed lunches needed
• Friday 18^th – Half of Y6 Coasteering Session – packed lunches needed

Tree Falling Danger

We have received a report of a tree that has partly fallen onto Providence Lane. More of the tree could fall, so please avoid that area until the Council have been able to deal with it.  They have the added complication of dealing with overhead wires within the branches.

Coffee Morning Sessions

We have a variety of coffee morning sessions planned for the year. The feedback we had from parents was to have them on a Friday as more people work from home or can get a bit of time on a Friday morning. We’ve got sessions ranging from supporting learning in literacy and numeracy, play based learning, ALN, a time to meet the new deputy headteacher, Internet safety, Welsh, and transition sessions. It would really help us if you would be willing to book onto the sessions. We had one last year where the poor teacher did lots of prep and no one turned up.

Here is the form:

Coffee Morning Sessions – Fill in form

We’ll send reminders through the year.

New Governors

This year we have a few changes in our Governors. We are delighted to have a new Chair, Mike Davies and Vice-Chair, Rosie Greenaway. We’ll need to recruit another parent Governor shortly, adverts will soon be coming out, so give it some thought. Governors/ Llywodraethwyr | Bishopston Primary School

Labeling uniform

Please can we appeal to parents and carers to label all of their children’s uniform. You wouldn’t believe how much lost property we’re dealing with, it’s made even more challenging when there is no name!

Y6 Cycle Training

Year 6 cycle training – 5^th to 16^th October 2026. Consent forms have been given to children, please could these be returned by Monday 21^st September at the latest.

Flu vaccinations

The school nursing team will be visiting on 14^th October 2026 to deliver the annual Flu Vaccination Programme for children in Reception to Year 6. Please could all parents/ carers complete the online consent form, this must be completed whether consenting or declining. 

2026/27 School Nasal Flu Vaccination form – Fill in form 

Please visit the school nursing website for all vaccination information and read the Patient Information Leaflet for the vaccine Patient Information Leaflet . There is also a video children can watch in preparation for their vaccination https://youtu.be/KIbPEFRJz1o.

Time to Talk Sessions

The Additional Learning Needs Inclusion Team are offering ‘Time to Talk’ sessions across the county to support parents and carers of children and young people who may be experiencing difficulties with social communication and interaction. The sessions provide an opportunity to access helpful information, advice and support. For more information, please visit the school website. Additional Learning Needs | Bishopston Primary School

4th September  

Next week... 

• Meet the teacher sessions – see below

• Monday 7^th at 8.50am – Secondhand uniform, we have 100s of items, please come and pick up a bargain. What doesn’t go will go to charity.

Meet the teacher session

We run this session each year to give parents a time to touch base with the teacher and get an understanding of the routines and expectations etc. The sessions are all straight after school at 3.30pm, except for Reception which will be at 2.50pm.

• • Monday 7^th  – Mountain Phase (Y3/4) Teachers

  • Tuesday 8^th – Sea Phase (Reception) Teacher (2.50pm)

  • Tuesday 8^th – Land Phase (Y1/2) Teachers

  • Thursday 10^th – Sky Phase (Y5/6) Teachers

Key Reminders 

• The Drive - no one should be using their vehicles on the drive unless they have a pass.

• Booking for BSC, ASC - please use MCAS for booking either Before or After School clubs. (If you’re unsure, talk to the school office.)

• If you haven’t signed up for MCAS scroll down for info.

• Phones - children cannot use phones on the school grounds.

• Appointments - wherever possible, please ensure appointments for dentists etc are made outside of the normal school day.

• Attendance and punctuality – help us help the children make the best progress. Please get them here each day and on time.  Being on time also helps keep staff in the right places supporting all children. Anyone who is late for school needs to come to the main entrance and sign the late book.

• Please let us know when different people are picking up children – for safeguarding reasons we don’t allow pupils to go home with anyone!

• The Comprehensive have asked us to remind parents not to walk through their site for drop offs and pick ups – please use the right of way that drops down to the back entrance, but not the one that comes onto the playground. Thanks.

Allergies

We want to double check our school system to ensure pupil's records are correct regarding allergies. If your child does have an allergy to anything, please take the time to fill this form in: Allergies – Fill in form

SeeSaw

All parents should have a QR code come home which you need to scan to join the class SeeSaw. Paper copies went home this week. This enables teachers to be able to communicate with you. Please don’t delay signing up.

MCAS - My Child at School

The Local Authority have purchased a new Management Information System, called Bromcom, for schools in Swansea. We use it in school for registration, safeguarding, and other key information.

Through Bromcom, we have the ability to interact with families using an app/web based system called ‘MyChildAtSchool’ or MCAS, which will soon replace iPay. We are now using MCAS for:

• Before school club, breakfast club and after school club bookings

• School announcements and notifications

In the coming weeks it will be used for:

• Online payments (for trips, residentials etc)

• An appointments booking system for Parents Evenings

As each of these features are released, further details and parent user guides will be provided.

We kindly ask all parents/carers to register for the MCAS portal, either online or via the mobile app. To sign up for MCAS you must use the email address that we hold on record for you. If you already have MCAS for children at another school, your child should link automatically.

When installing the MCAS app you must enable notifications in order to receive Push Notifications. If notifications aren’t enabled at installation then you will not receive any notifications. If you accidentally skip this step, you will need to delete the app and reinstall it, making sure to allow notifications during setup.

If you would prefer to use the app:

Download the MyChildAtSchool (MCAS) app from your app store

• Click reset password

• Enter email

• Tick ‘not a robot’

• Click send reset email

• Go to your emails

• Click on ‘here’ in the email text from MCAS

• Enter a password and then re-enter

• Click continue

• Go back to the parent login and sign in

• Chose a 5 digit pin enter and then re-enter

• Click confirm

• Make sure you say yes to notifications pop up and then allow notifications

If you would prefer to use a web browser:

Go to www.mychildatschool.com

• Click reset password

• Enter email

• Tick ‘not a robot’

• Click send reset email

• Go to your emails

• Click on ‘here’ in the email text from MCAS

• Enter a password and then re-enter

• Click continue

• Go back to the parent login and sign in

• Make sure you say yes to the notifications pop up and then allow notifications

• If you receive the error message ‘incorrect email address’ or have any problems please contact the school office.