School Newsletter : 12 December 2025

On Tuesday this week, pupils and staff enjoyed a fabulous feast – fit for Santa, the reindeer and ALL the elves – at our school’s Christmas Lunch! What a scrumptious and yummy menu it was, with a full Christmas dinner, along with special treats including chocolate, juice and an ice cream stall 🍨🍧

A HUGE THANK YOU to our wonderful catering team and kitchen helpers for organising, preparing and delivering this wonderful meal. Thanks also to all school staff for supporting each of the lunch sittings and making the day fun and memorable for all our pupils😀🎄

Our KS2 Christmas Disco was a huge success, and what a brilliant night it was! The hall was filled with excited faces, energetic dance moves, and plenty of laughter. One of the highlights of the evening was the giant conga line, which snaked its way around the hall and had everyone joining in!

Children enjoyed posing with their friends for fun photos, showing off their best dance-floor moves, and celebrating together! It was wonderful to see so many pupils getting involved and having such a memorable time.

A big thank you to everyone who attended and to the staff who helped make the event run so smoothly. We can’t wait for the next one!

A further thank you to those families who have dropped in gifts for this initiative over the week – we are so grateful for your support.

Our PTA volunteers, along with school staff, will be wrapping and labelling all gifts donated during the week beginning 15th December.  We will continue to  accept donations of gifts to pass to a local charity working with families affected by homelessness, during this Christmas festive season.

You can continue to drop off any donations until Tuesday 16th December. A  dedicated area is available for families to leave a donated gift for this cause. Your gift could be a toy, book, board game or item of clothing.

You can choose to wrap your gift and attach a gift tag identifying whether the gift is for a boy or girl and the intended age it is for. Alternatively, you can drop the donation into school where we will wrap it and add the tag.

Thank you for your support and the donations received to date.

As we come to the final weeks of the Autumn term, kindly take note of these important reminders before we break up for the Christmas holidays:

• Friday 12th December: All Extended School Day and Booster clubs finish. All pupils, unless registered to attend the After School Club (15:30 – 18:00) must be collected at 15:30 from Monday 15th December.
• Tuesday 16th December: All Autumn homework projects due in school.
• Wednesday 17th December: School Christmas Fair @ 15:30 – 17:30.
• Thursday 18th December: After School Club finishes
• Thursday 18th December: All children please bring an orange to school, to make their Christingle for use at the service on Friday 19th December.
• Friday 19th December: Breakfast club finishes
• Friday 19th December: Christingle Service 10:30 -11:15 in St/Stephens Church. All parents and carers are warmly welcomed to attend. Church doors will open at 10:15 .
• Friday 19th December: School finishes at 13:30 for all pupils.

Please also return all reading books and library books to your child’s class by Wednesday next week. This will allow us to sort and prepare them so they are ready for use in the Spring term. Please note, no new books will be sent home in the last week of term.

Many thanks in advance for your cooperation.

Parents & carers, please ensure that when pupil trip letters are sent home requesting permission for trips or visits, that you correctly read and complete the forms attached and return them to school by the date requested.

When forms are returned late, it is a challenge to manage and accurately provide the required confirmation / information to venues – which are usually requested 48 hours in advance. Furthermore:

• Our admin and catering teams face additional pressure to prepare lunch orders and first aid.
• These are difficult to amend at the last minute, and it also pulls them away from other duties & responsibilities they have.
• Teachers are also unable to assign group pupil:adult ratios to ensure a smooth trip briefing with other staff/parents supporting the trip.

Because of this, pupils will miss out on attending a trip if the correct permission slips are not returned by the designated deadline. Instead they will be assigned appropriate class work to complete in a supervised buddy class.

Many thanks for your understanding and support with this matter.

Please note that lip balms are not permitted in school.

Despite regular reminders, pupils often share these amongst their friends, which can lead to the spread of colds, flu and coldsores. These items also cause disruption and arguments, both in the classroom and the playgrounds, leading to interrupted teaching time and wasted time in resolving disputes.

If your child has a medical condition which requires any form of topical medication – such as a lip balm – please contact the school office so an appointment can be made with the school nurse. This will activate the appropriate protocols allowing designated pupils to be able to access this properly while in school.

Many thanks with your support in this.

Please ensure that your children are wearing the correct school uniform to school each day. It is important that all pupils are also wearing the correct school shoes – which are black shoes, and not trainers.

The Autumn/Winter term uniform options for pupils in Nursery to Year 6 are:

Please find here the agreed term dates set by our school’s Governing Body for the upcoming academic year, starting September 2025.

Please remember that holidays will not be authorised during the school term, and that all children should be in school (on time) every day.

Alternatively, you can click on the image thumbnail on the right to view the PDF (please note this will open in a new window) or you can click on the link below:

• Burdett-Coutts & Townshend Foundation CE Primary School Term Dates 2025-2026 >

Preschool have enjoyed diving into the festive season with the story Dear Santa. Inspired by the book, they explored Christmas through a variety of sensory and creative activities. They enjoyed making their own gingerbread man, added plenty of sparkle with glittery handprints to turn into a wreath and helped transform our home corner into Santa’s workshop. It’s been a joyful and magical week of festive learning.

This week has been full of festive fun as Nursery prepared for the school nativity and other Christmas activities. The children enjoyed making sheep headbands for their roles in the nativity and showed great creativity while crafting salt-dough snowmen, which will be sold at the Christmas Fair. We also spent time learning about the birth of Jesus and the meaning behind the nativity story. It’s been a joyful week filled with excitement, teamwork, and lots of Christmas spirit.

This week in Reception, the festive excitement was in full swing as we prepared for our long-awaited Nativity! The children transformed into little fashionistas as they listened closely to the lyrics of our main song, “Three Wise Men” and used them to inspire their very own Christmas-themed T-shirt designs. After sketching their ideas, they carefully decorated their white tops, adding colour, sparkle and plenty of creativity to bring their costumes to life.
The children worked incredibly hard, and we are so proud of the joy, confidence and Christmas spirit they brought to the stage.

The Christmas spirit is well and truly alive in Year 1! This week, we channelled all things festive in Art by designing our own gingerbread houses – but with a twist. Using recycled paper bags as our base, the children decorated their houses with glittering gems, pom-poms, pearls and snowy icing-style details, bringing their imaginations to life in the sweetest way. Every house is wonderfully unique, and together they will soon become a beautiful gingerbread garland to hang in our classroom, sprinkling festive cheer for the rest of the term. The excitement has been infectious, and creativity truly shone – we are definitely riding a Christmas high!

This week, Year 6 have shown great resilience and focus as they tackled their assessments with maturity and determination. Alongside this, we continued our History learning by exploring the concept of the home front during World War II. The pupils learnt about the impact of food shortages, the introduction of rationing and how people were encouraged to grow their own food through the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. Using historical sources, they imagined life in 1940 and wrote articles as wartime journalists, explaining how the rationing system worked and how it affected daily life. Alongside their hard work, Year 6 also enjoyed some well-deserved festive fun when the whole school came together for Christmas lunch, with everyone wearing Christmas jumpers, pulling crackers, enjoying a traditional roast and visiting a special ice cream stand with toppings and sauces. Later in the week, the KS2 disco brought plenty of singing, dancing and smiles – a wonderful way to celebrate a successful and busy week.