The Dales School is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Her Majesty the Queen.
The children at Ashdale were so excited yesterday having received a letter and card from Balmoral Castle in response to letters they sent celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Along with the rest of the nation we offer our deepest condolences to the Royal Family at this time. The Queen will be forever remembered for her devotion to this country.
We were invited by Northern Rail to take a ride on the new Northumberland Line. Some children were able to see their houses, we also passed the school. It was very exciting. Northern Rail handed out goody bags to all the children, with a special book included.
We had a ride on three trains in one day. It was a very busy day. We learned a lot about how to travel by train. We waited for the train at Newcastle Central station. It was very busy and we saw loads of different trains. The children are becoming very good train travelers.
The weatherproofing for the train was completed this term. Noel Forte and Barry Lewis from Henkel kindly helped to demonstrate how to apply the Weatherproofing products. We would like to thank Henkel for donating £50,000 of products to help waterproof the train. Noel and Barry have gone above and beyond to help the Dales train project, we could not thank them enough.
Noel is running the great North run in memory of his Son Luke for the charity YoungMinds. Please see the link to his just giving page
We had a visit from Neil from the Aln valley Railway. Neil helped to take out the train controls for the new driving simulator installation. Thanks for all the help Neil.
Thank you to all the help from Northern Rail, Network Rail, Henkel, Northumberland CC, The police Cadets, British volt and Morgan Sindall AECOM,Neil from the Aln Valley railway and TEXO
Thank you to Cllrs Grant and Susan Davey for coming into school to hand out special medals for the Queen’s jubilee. The medals were donated by Blyth county council. The children were very excited to receive them. We even had a special guest driving the train. We would also like to thank Blyth council for funding our Jubilee party at school. We all had a great time.
We had some great news this week, RW Mann Trust have kindly donated to the train project. Thank you so much, this will go towards developing out STEM carriage.
Also a big thank you to Mr Holmes who kindly made a donation to help. On this note we have created a ‘Just Giving’ campaign to help raise £10,000 to aid in the carriage development. If you would like to donate please go to https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/thedales-school.
Thank you to Ian Levy and the chronicle for appealing to the public to help the train project https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/dales-school-blyth-pacer-train-22947145
We had a trip to Kirkmerrington School in County Durham. They showed us around their Class 142 Pacer train. We wish you all the best for your project. We are looking forward to Lesley visiting Blythdale to see our Train.
More exciting news to come next week.
You may know that The Dales School acquired a train which we are currently refurbishing to be used a a learning space. This blog will provide updates as we go through the project.
This year were fundraising for BBC Children in Need! We’re holding a BBC Children in Need Day on Friday the 19th of November to raise vital funds for children across the UK.
If you would like to donate on behalf of The Dales School, please click the following link.
The children will break up for the Summer Holidays on the 16th July at 12pm, we reconvene on the 8th September. On behalf of everyone at The Dales we hope you have a brilliant summer.
Dear Parents and Carers,
As we get nearer to half term, I’d like to update you on the situation in school and our plans for after half term.
As you know, we have tried very hard to offer as many children as possible time in school. Our limiting factors have been available staffing and our risk assessment restricting group sizes to no more than 6 (8 in classroom 11B due to the size of the room).
We know that the current lockdown will remain in place, with schools closed to the majority of pupils, until 8th March at the earliest, but we are hoping to be able to offer more places, probably part time initially, after the half term holiday. About one third of parents told us last month that they would prefer to keep their child at home. Over the coming days, the family support team will be in touch with you to ask you about your preference for after the half term holiday. We will do what we can to help.
Glynis, Tracy or Demi will be in touch soon. Please let them know what you would like for your child. We will do our best to increase our capacity to meet as many requests as we can.
As ever – thank you so much for your ongoing support at this very difficult time.
Keep safe and take care,
Sue
