Firs School News

You are warmly invited to our Christmas celebration. There will be an afternoon performance on Tuesday 9^th December at 2.15 p.m., which grandparents, friends and younger children are very welcome to attend. The performance on Wednesday 10^th December will start at 7 p.m. and will last approximately one hour.

For the afternoon performance children will be taken to the church by coach and should be collected from the church at 3.20 p.m. If your child usually goes to after school care on Tuesday they will return to school with members of staff.  There will be no after school netball club.

For the evening performance children should be brought to church in their costume and should be in their place by 6.45 p.m.  The church will be open from 6.30 p.m.

Please note there will be no after school football club on 10^th December.

Only disabled parking is available in the church grounds.  Enclosed is a map showing the nearest available parking.

We look forward to sharing our Christmas celebration with you.

Yours sincerely

Mrs M Denton

We wrote to you last summer that the school photographer Helen Venables would be taking photographs of the children and the school for the new prospectus. Helen has taken some lovely photographs and a selection are shown below. They are available for you to order professional prints direct from Helen at the following prices.

6″ x 4″ = £6.00

7″ x 5″ = £10.00

8″ x 10″ = £15.00

If you would like to browse the full catalogue (of approximately 500 photos) please contact the school with your e-mail address and we will invite you to join the private Flickr group where the photographs are stored. Please note that Helen took a wide selection of photos but not every child was photographed.

The Firs will be providing a new way of paying school fees from Spring term 09. It is a regular direct debit scheme where you pay each terms fees in 4 monthly installments. In return you pay a handling charge of 2.75%. For example on the current main school fee of £2060 per term you would pay £56.65 extra resulting in 4 monthly payments of £529.16 starting on the 1st day of the month. i.e. For Spring 2009 there would be 4 payments on 1 Jan, 1 Feb, 1 Mar and 1 Apr.

The scheme is run by Holmwoods Termtime Collections which is jointly owned by HSBC and MBNA. Further details and the relevant sign-up form will be provided in the bill later this term however if you would like to know more or sign up early the forms are available in the school reception or you can download a copy here. If you want to discus this please call the school office and ask to speak to Tim Longman.

Please note this scheme is entirely voluntary and there is no problem if you wish to continue paying the bill in full at the start of each term.

Regards

Tim Longman, Bursar.

The school is looking particularly beautiful at the moment with the leaves giving us rich shades if yellow, orange and red. Click here for a slide show.