Law Primary Parent Council  

Christmas Timetable 2020

Click here to find out more information about what your child will be doing in the run up to Christmas!

The council implemented a Positive Relationships policy and they have asked us to share a survey to get your feedback – you can share your thoughts here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KBQ629T

Hello and welcome to your new regular Law Parent Council update.

Our aim for the updates is to share with you the results we are achieving on key areas that impact our children – based on parents and carers feedback.   We will also share the minutes from the most recent Parent Council meeting. You can see last week’s minutes on this website.

The parent council only works if we get input from the people who are the integral link between school and home and that’s all of you!!

We appreciate there is a whole new year of parents (welcome P1 parents!) and there is also the new team involved in running the Parent Council so we thought it would be good to go back to the start and share some background info with you…

What is the purpose of the Parent Council? 

We exist to represent the voices of Law Primary School parents and carers. We are also involved in broader discussions around the future of educational services and how budgetary issues within East Lothian Council might impact on Law Primary.

Who is involved with the Parent Council? 

Kate Allen – acting Chair

Kate has been a member of the PC since her eldest son Sam started P1 – he is now in P5 and Oliver is in P3.  Kate joined as she wanted to get to know the school community and she says that she has learnt tonnes about teaching and school policies, practices and budgets. She believes that the PC should feel welcoming to all parents – somewhere to share a worry, a moan, a brilliant idea or a skill and she hopes more of you will get involved – whether that be to share your thoughts or just to listen – everyone is welcome.

What are the three subgroups? 

These spun out of activity a couple of years ago and allow the people involved to get down into the detail and really push issues through to resolution. The groups are currently:

1. Safer routes to school – which does as it says on the tin and the project lead here is Zoe Lovell. The activities of this group span the whole town and are completely focussed on getting Law Primary School children there safely. Pretty important we would say!

The group has successfully pushed forward a number of campaigns – most recently:

–          Traffic signals agreed for at Grange/Law/Haddington Road junction;

–          Zebra crossing and 2 raised tables at Haddington/Lochbridge Road

–          Staff entrance from Haddington Road to be improved to include some extra parking and pedestrian access.

–          They are also in discussion with the Council to improve links from the East of the town. Work on the much promised crossing from Aldi to the park will begin in March.

The Safer Routes to School group had a virtual meeting last week and you can find out more information in the attached SR2S newsletter and you can contact Zoe on lovellzoe@yahoo.co.uk. 

2. Health and Wellbeing

The health and wellbeing subgroup are in the process of engaging with the local Health and Wellbeing Association,  we hope that this will provide us with good connections with other groups with similar aims who we can work alongside / get support from as projects arise.   We are also continuing with our work to set up a ‘SNAG’ (School Nutrition Action Group) that will focus on school lunches and are looking forward to further discussion with Mrs Wells to get an update following the inevitable changes to catering caused by Covid-19.    Charlotte Rooney is the lead on this group and you can reach her on rooney.charlotte@googlemail.com.

3. Parental Engagement and Communications

We know how inundated everyone is by a million message a day and we don’t want to add to that. But we do need to communicate with you and we need to hear your thoughts. This sub-group will be working on how we can improve the flow of information between the school and parents/carers and the first step is this regular update – we are trying to move away from a whole bunch of individual emails to one email after each Parent Council meeting – on average once every six weeks. We are also going to be looking at the Parent Council website. The group lead is Rebecca Rennie and you can contact her on rchristensen81@gmail.com.

How can I get involved? 

You could ‘come along’ to our next meeting which will be online and is on 18 January from 7 – 8.30pm, we will be in touch beforehand to find out if anyone has any suggestions or things they would like to raise. If you would like to get involved with one of the three subgroups then please email the lead – they would love to have you involved and they are all new groups of people so it’s a nice time to join as everyone gets to know each other.

Anything else? 

Yes!! We frequently hear that people do not know what is going on in the school – the teachers have all committed to sending weekly updates through Google Classrooms and these provide a great summary of what is going on. Only one-third of people are opening these – so if you haven’t managed to start reading these then please do – the feedback from those who do read them has been very positive.

And one final thing – the council implemented a Positive Relationships policy and they have asked us to share a survey to get your feedback – you can share your thoughts here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KBQ629T

Until next time we hope you all have a healthy and happy Christmas and look forward to ‘meeting’ lots of new faces on our next meet up on 18th January.

The Parent Council

Do you feel like you’re at the end of your tether? Are you struggling to make ends meet? Children 1st Parentline is here for you and your family.

Children 1st Parentline

Please find attached a very short survey trying to gather the views of parents / carers about the new measures that worked well for you during term one.

https://www.nhslothian.scot/Coronavirus/Parents/Schools/Pages/default.aspx

This has been a difficult year for many people, and for many reasons.  If you think your child could benefit from this service, please use the information attached.

0131 454 0757
Enquiries@mypas.co.uk
www.mypas.co.uk
East Lothian Counselling Service 10 – 18 year olds

Please follow the link below to read the draft of the school Positive Relationship Policy.

Positive relationship policy draft

Any comments should be sent to: parentcouncil@law.elcschool.org.uk