Welcome back to all of you whose kids are returning to Hyndland Primary for the new school year and welcome to all of you whose kids are new to the school, whether in P1 or across the school years.

We hope that you and your children all had a great summer, enjoyed the unusual and extended period of actual real summer in Glasgow, but are happy and raring to engage with what lies ahead in the school year.

Welcome back also to all of the hard-working staff at the school and we as a Parent Council look forward to helping to support you in your work with our children over the coming year.

The new speedbumps are a welcome and long overdue addition to the road safety around the front of the school. Glasgow City Council in their wisdom may have decided to only place the parking meters at either end of the long bend on Fortrose Street, rather than in the critical area in between and right outside the school, but it’s important to consider that trying to avoid paying the meter fee for a brief stop is not an excuse to either disembark small children into the middle of the road, abandon them on the other side to navigate crossing oncoming traffic by themselves, nor to park on the yellow zigzags outside the school. Parking on the zigzags is unlawful, dangerous and, as the sign says, selfish. For the safety of the children, other parents and carers and staff, please be conscientious drivers and parkers.

We have a number of social events planned for this school year, but would like to draw your attention to the first of these, a Parent Council School Social for parents and carers, your children and staff at the West of Scotland Cricket Club on Friday 7 September from 6pm to 10pm. Other events include ceilidhs and Halloween discos for everyone and quiz nights just for the parents, carers and staff. We will be looking for volunteers and raffle prize donations, etc., and will let you know in due course and hope that you and your children will come along and enjoy them.

It is also really important that as many parents and carers as possible get involved with your children’s learning experiences at the school, whether that’s through the new Seesaw app, helping out at the school, fundraising, or engaging with and through the Parent Council. So, we would be delighted if as many parents and carers as possible came along to the Parent Council meetings, the first of which is the Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 12 September from 7pm to 9pm in the school dinner hall.

On behalf of all the parents, carers and members on the Parent Council, we hope that you and your children have a great year ahead.

Next Meeting: ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, Wednesday 12 September 2018, 7pm-9pm, School Dinner Hall, Hyndland Primary School

Hyndland Primary School Parent Council is only as good as the support and involvement of those who contribute to it and the work of the wider Parent Forum.

Please come along to the AGM and find out what we did during 2017-18 and what we plan to do during the 2018-19 school year.

We are always looking for as a wide a level of engagement and involvement with the Parent Council as possible, so please do approach Parent Council representatives with your comments, views and ideas and come along to the monthly meetings or email us at: enquiries@hyndlandprimaryparentcouncil.org

If you have anything you would like to raise at Parent Council please contact the Chair, John Lewis, at john.lewis-hpc@hotmail.co.uk

Please come along and support us!

NB: Issues about individual children should be taken up with class teachers, the Head Teacher or the Depute Heads.

Other Parent Council meetings TBC:

• Wednesday 24 October 2018
• Wednesday 28 November 2018
• Wednesday 16 January 2019
• Wednesday 27 February 2019
• Wednesday 27 March 2019
• Wednesday 1 May 2019
• Wednesday 29 May 2019

On Monday 14 May Glasgow City Council (GCC) issued a lengthy school consultation on secondary school Placing Requests and School Catchment Areas, which runs from 14 May until 24 September.

The proposals that were approved by GCC’s City Administration Committee are available at: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=22550. They provide a glimpse on how GCC will propose changes to Secondary Schools’ placing requests criteria, as well as allocating catchment areas to 17 secondary schools in Glasgow.

As it is a large scale consultation that will affect many families across Glasgow, it would be advisable for those of you who have children who will progress to secondary school over the next several years to read through the consultation thoroughly and respond.

Hyndland Primary School Parent Council will contact parents and carers who have children at the school after the summer holidays (so that the new P1 parents and carers are included), in order to provide a collective response.

This may be particularly of interest for parents and carers whose children entered Hyndland Primary School as placing requests.

Additionally, GCC has now committed to start preparatory work for the consultation to review the admission policy of Notre Dame High School (currently girls only), just after the above is concluded in the Autumn.

It has been another great year of learning and teaching and productive activity and development for the children at Hyndland Primary School. They have experienced an engaging curriculum in line with the aims, principles and the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence – to be successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens.

Our children have been doing exceptionally well in a whole range of extra-curricular activities in sport, dance, music and outdoor learning, etc. Our musicians and budding musicians have been singing, fiddling, banging the drum and blowing their own trumpets to the delight of audiences in and outside the school. All of our children throughout the school have been acting, singing, running, scoring, playing, helping, supporting and learning their way through another busy, enjoyable and fruitful year.

We began the year by welcoming the now not so new Depute Head Teacher, Mr Frame, and finish the year by saying congratulation, we’re gonna miss you and we hope that you enjoy the experience, but not so much that you don’t come back “home” soon, to our one and only Mr Byrne, who has been undertaking headteacher training and has a fantastic opportunity in his temporary position.

Fare thee well also to yet another successful crop of P7s heading out to the big bright world of secondary school. To the departing P7s: You will be gone, but not forgotten and your impact on the high schools that you progress to will no doubt be as important as the one that you’ve all left at Hyndland Primary!

The Parent Council and also some great helpers and supporters are also either moving on as their children do, or taking more of a back seat from a hands-on approach within the Parent Council, so special thanks to them.

We would like to thank all of the management and staff at Hyndland Primary for their continuing, dedicated hard work and patience in helping our children grow educationally and emotionally as they grow northwards. We wish those staff who have had long term absences well and a speedy recovery, and we welcome back some not so old faces.

This year the Parent Council has been – as always – finding ways to actively raise funds in order to support the school, by purchasing a range of resources to help enrich the children’s learning experiences. Over the 2017-18 school year you have all helped us raise a few thousand pounds through two ceilidhs, two parent quiz nights, bake sales/bake offs and a Halloween disco. This money has been spent on a whole range of important resources, such as plants and gardening equipment; P1 playground improvements; Christmas books for the children; scientific calculator gifts for P7 leavers, etc.

Additionally, parents throughout the school have contributed to raising funds through a variety of activities, such as taking part in Mums on the Run; baking; cooking; making; creating; donating money; donating to or buying from the school Christmas Fayre; Quiz Nights and Ceilidh Nights; sourcing resources at a discount; linking your online shopping activity to easyfundraising.org.uk; buying books through the school book fairs, etc. Thank you all for your kind and generous support.

Over the next few years, along with making applications for external funding, we will be looking to raise even more funds to both maintain our current spending commitments and also to raise sufficient funds for the school playground developments, so that our children (well, yours, as mine will have left by that point!) have what is already a large and unusual playground space made into an excellent one.

A final, important, note is that as a result of changes to Data Protection law (due to GDPR), we have renewed our parent/carer contact database. So, thank you to all those parents and carers who have contacted us to confirm that they wish to continue receiving communications from the Parent Council, but for those of you who have now, you won’t receive them unless you contact us to strictly confirm.

On behalf of all the parents, carers and members on the Parent Council, we hope that you have a great summer break and we look forward to seeing you in August. Except of course for those whose youngest child is leaving Hyndland Primary School – in which case, so long and best wishes to you and your children!

Happy Holidays!

John

John Lewis, Chair, Hyndland Primary School Parent Council

Next meeting: Wednesday 30 May 2018, 7pm – 8.30pm, Staff Room, Hyndland Primary School

Hyndland Primary School Parent Council is only as good as the support and involvement of those who contribute to it and the work of the wider Parent Forum. We are always looking for as wide a level of engagement with the Parent Council as possible, so please do approach Parent Council representatives with your comments, views and ideas and come along to the monthly meetings or email us at:

enquiries@hyndlandprimaryparentcouncil.org

If you have anything you would like to raise at Parent Council please contact the Chair John Lewis at john.lewis-hpc@hotmail.co.uk