Charity/Dress Up Days in School

Recently we invited 'Children North East' in to Lemington Riverside to help us break down any financial barriers for our families.

We are keen to ensure that money should never be an obstacle to children or families attending our school. 

You'll be aware that we already do lots around this such as never charging for trips/visits/residentials, giving out free uniform bundles, free after school clubs, etc.

We are really grateful to everybody who took the time to either fill in the online survey for our Poverty Proofing audit or spoke directly to the people completing the audit. Your views are extremely valuable and help us shape how we can be even better at what we do.

One area that a few parents/carers mentioned was charity and dress up days and the pressure to buy outfits or donate money for charities. 

From this feedback, we have made the decision as a school that we will reduce the amount of charity days/dress up days we have and when we do have them we will give people plenty of notice that they are going to happen. 

We also feel that if and when we do collect for charity we would like to give you, as parents/carers, the opportunity to choose a locally based charity who we will collect for. 

A lot of people have asked about 'Children In Need' this week. Because of what we've described above, we are not promoting this as an event in school this week. If people would like to donate directly to the 'Children in Need' charity, you are very welcome to do so by clicking here.

Likewise, we know that some people have already told us they've bought Pudsey Bear ears etc. for their child to wear on Friday - they are fine to do so if they would like to on this occasion if you have already bought them, but we don't want people feeling the pressure to go out and buy something for the day. 

Looking forward to next month, we have our Christmas Dinner Day on Thursday 12 December. In previous years we have promoted this as 'Christmas Jumper' day, but again feedback said that some people found it very expensive, particularly if they had more than 1 child in school to go out and buy new Christmas jumpers. Therefore, children can wear something festive if they wish on this day. This could be a Christmas jumper, a Santa hat, tinsel in your hair, a festive t-shirt, etc. We will also have art & craft materials available in school so that children can make their own festive party hats on the day, so nobody feels left out. Likewise, if you have any old Christmas Jumpers in good condition that your child has grown out of, we will add to our pre-loved collection of clothes for families in school have them available for anybody who would like to take on the week before Christmas dinner day.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback to help shape our school.