Dear parents/carers,

It has been brought to our attention by a parent from one of our Trust schools that a suspicious looking email, seemingly sent by members of staff within the Trust, has been issued. The emails have a ‘zip file’ attachment and password to use to open it, however, this is not a legitimate email so please do not click on the attachment.

While a thorough investigation is still being carried out by our IT team, we can confirm that this is part of a wider cyber security issue which highly likely originated from outside of NCEAT, but is now having a direct impact on our own communications systems.

We have increased our internal online security as far as possible and are working with providers to ensure that as many of these potentially harmful emails are ‘filtered out’ of our network, however, if you do receive any suspicious looking emails, claiming to be from your child’s school, please do not click on any links or attachments and mark the email as ‘spam’.

To help you to identify a potential scam, please see some guidance below:

• The “sent by” address will either be a jumble of random letters and numbers or have an unusual domain (not .com or .co.uk)
• The email will contain links to click to ‘confirm your details’ or ‘make a payment’
• The email may have an attachment which looks strange or unsafe to open
• The email may give you a limited time to reply
• There might be spelling mistakes, bad grammar and sentences which don’t quite make sense
• If the email contains any logos or images, these may appear ‘pixelated’ or blurry
• If requesting money, the amount will usually be quite specific, not rounded up to the nearest pound/pence to try and make it seem legitimate, eg £692.88 instead of £700,00.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We are working as quickly as we can to resolve the issue. If anyone has any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Bishop’s Primary School is currently one of the largest primary schools in England, with over 1,500 pupils across five campuses.

Northumberland Church of England Academy Trust (NCEAT) is proposing to split Bishop’s Primary School into five separate primary schools, one on each of the current campuses.

There are a number of reasons why we feel that separating the school into five separate primary schools will be of benefit both to existing and future pupils.

To find out more and participate in the consultation, please visit www.ncea.org.uk/bishops-consultation/

The consultation will close on Friday 23rd April 2021.

An important notice for parents and carers of pupils at NCEA Trust schools:

In a statement this afternoon, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, outlined his ‘roadmap’ for easing the UK’s lockdown restrictions, beginning with the reopening of schools to all pupils by Monday 8 March.

We are currently working on a plan to ensure that we can comply with the government’s guidelines while maintaining the health and safety of all of our staff and pupils. We will communicate more information regarding specific school and campus reopening procedures to parents and carers in due course. Please continue to monitor our website and social media channels for further details.

We currently have a vacancy for a Parent Governor to join our governing body for Bishop’s Primary School West.

Parent Governors must be elected by the parents of children attending the school and must also have a child on the school roll at the school they are applying to at the time of nomination/election (one of the Bishop’s Primary School West Campuses (Josephine Butler (including EYFS at Robert Stephenson), James Knott or Thomas Bewick).

What do Parent Governors do?

Governors work as a team. They are responsible for making sure the school provides a good quality education for all pupils. Raising educational standards in school is a key priority. This has the best chance of happening when there are high expectations of what pupils can achieve.

Governors promote effective ways of teaching and learning when setting the school aims and policies. They do this together with the Principal, who is responsible for the day-to-day management of the school.

Governing boards are accountable to parents, the local community and the Trustees. The governing board’s main role is to help raise pupils’ standards of achievement.
Governors are at the heart of how a school operates. It’s important they get things right and the right people are sitting around the table. How they do their job effects the interests of pupils, staff and the reputation of the school in the community.

What are we looking for?

The Governors are keen to encourage any parent/carers to apply, who feel they have the skills, time and aptitude to support our children to realise and further their aspirations and ambition.

The governing board particularly requires a diversity of skills in areas such as education, HR, medical, legal, financial/ accountancy and leadership, and parents/carers with these skills are urged to apply.

Find out more

For more information, please view/download the relevant letters and leaflets listed below:

Bishop’s Primary School (West) Parent Governor Information

Letter of Invitation to Apply
Self-Nomination Form
Role and Responsibilities

The closing date for Parent Governor nominations for Bishop’s Primary School (West) is 9am on Thursday 21st January 2021 – THE NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED..

Dear Parents and Carers,

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement last night, all NCEAT schools are open to key worker children and vulnerable children only. All other pupils will learn by remote learning. These arrangements will continue until at least 15th February, which is the Government’s review date for the current lockdown arrangements.

Like me, I am sure you will have many questions about the details of the lockdown arrangements for schools, especially around things like what will happen with exams. At the moment, the Department for Education (DfE) has not published any detailed guidance following last night’s announcement. We will add information to the new Covid-19 hub on our Trust website as soon as we have any further details from DfE. We will also continue to publish our “Lighthouse” newsletter during lockdown and send out information on our social media channels.

I know that this will be an anxious time for many families. Please be assured that schools have learned a great deal about remote learning since the previous lockdown and are able to support this much more effectively than we could at the start of March 2020. We will also continue to provide as much support as we can for families during the new lockdown, directly if we can or by using our partnerships with other organisations when we can’t do this ourselves.

Best wishes and please stay safe,

Alan Hardie
Chief Executive Officer at NCEAT.

Updated 04/01/2021

We have taken the difficult decision to partially close Bishop’s Primary School, Castle School and NCEA Warkworth Primary School on Tuesday 5th January and Wednesday 6th January. This means that all campuses will only be open to the children of key workers who have no alternative means of childcare (please bring ID) and to vulnerable children.

For Bishop’s Primary campuses, this includes key worker children who access our 30 hours provision and our 2 year old provision. The usual opening times apply and ‘Breakfast club’ is available for children that booked via the online system.

For NCEA Warkworth Primary School, unfortunately we are not able to offer 2 year old sessions at this time. We will let you know when this provision is able to reopen. If you are a critical worker OR your child is a vulnerable pupil, please can you confirm whether he/she will be attending school tomorrow and Wednesday ASAP. We will then be in a position to let you know if we are able to offer breakfast and after school clubs.

The safety and wellbeing of our pupils and staff is always our main priority and this decision has been made on health and safety grounds. Your child will need to continue home learning if they are not attending school and tasks for the next two days will be available via the school website / Tapestry / Class Dojo.

As you will be aware, unions representing both teaching and support staff have advised their members not to support the full reopening of primary and special schools in Tier 4 areas. In addition, clinically extremely vulnerable staff once again have to work from home in Tier 4. Combined with staff absences for other reasons, we do not currently have sufficient staff available to open safely for all pupils.

We are sorry that we’ve had to take this decision, for the very short notice given and for the inconvenience this will cause you. We will review arrangements for the rest of the week and give you as much notice as possible about any further changes.

NCEAT schools and offices are now closed for Christmas until 5th January 2021.

While the majority of our staff are on holiday at this time, if you have an urgent query, you can contact us via email at admin.mat@ncea.org.uk or safeguarding@ncea.org.uk.

These addresses will be checked intermittently and someone will respond to you ASAP. Alternatively, you can find answers to some of our most frequently asked questions below:

What date does my child go back to school?
The Spring term will commence on Tuesday 5th January 2021 for all schools within the NCEA Trust (Bishop’s Primary, NCEA Warkworth Primary, Duke’s Secondary and Castle School).

I’m worried about the safety of my child or one of their school friends, what do I do?
You can find out of hours safeguarding information, including 24/7 contact details, on our Safeguarding pages. The advice on these pages cover a range of topics from cyber crime to mental health and wellbeing.

How do I contact my child(ren)’s teachers during the Christmas break?
Across the Trust, our staff have worked incredibly hard this term to make the festive period as fun and enjoyable as they can for our pupils under what were at times very trying circumstances. With this in mind, we would like our staff to enjoy their well-earned rest and would advise that all enquiries for teachers at Bishop’s, Duke’s or Castle Schools either be kept until the New Year, or in case of an emergency, directed to the Trust via email at admin.mat@ncea.org.uk.

Parents of pupils at NCEA Warkworth C of E Primary School may contact Laura Ritson via Class Dojo for all school-related queries.

What happens if my child contracts Covid-19 during the Christmas holidays?
In the instance that your child tests positive for Covid-19, please follow the Government guidelines and self-isolate for 10-14 days from the date of infection or last contact with another person who has tested positive for Covid-19. If this self-isolation period will overlap when your child is due to return to school, please notify the school via telephone at the earliest opportunity when we reopen on 5th January 2021.

I’m having issues with my free school meals vouchers, what should I do?
For all enquiries relating to free school meals, please contact margaret.hall@ncea.org.uk.

Date: 09/12/2020

To: All NCEA Trust school parents/carers
Subject: Change to Christmas closure date

Parents and Carers,

The Department for Education yesterday took the decision to allow schools to close to pupils on 18th December and hold a Training Day instead. The reason behind this is to reduce the risk of pupils having to self isolate over Christmas, avoiding the impact  this would have on family celebrations.

After much consideration, we have taken the decision that all schools within the NCEA Trust (Bishop’s Primary, Warkworth C of E Primary, Castle School and Duke’s Secondary School) will close to pupils on 18th December. The autumn term will therefore finish on Thursday 17th December and our schools will reopen for spring term on Tuesday 5th January.

This is incredibly short notice from the Department for Education and we apologise for any inconvenience that this causes to you.  However, we believe that this is the correct decision for our community because it will reduce the risk of our pupils self isolating on Christmas Day.

Yours faithfully,

Alan Hardie.
Chief Executive Officer at NCEA Trust.