Dear members of the Ballinteer ETNS community,
I hope that you are all well. This has been an exceptionally busy week in our school and many class pages are full of photographs. I hope you’ll have a chance to have a look. Please see some key updates below.
Very best wishes,
Paul O’Dwyer, Principal
School tours this week
This week has seen a great many classes leaving the school grounds for educational tours. I am so grateful to the teachers who organised these tours and to the many parents/guardians who volunteered their time to chaperone the trips. Without your support, we couldn’t offer nearly as many opportunities to our pupils, so thank you!
Among the trips that took place were a 6th Class trip to Collins Barracks, a trip by Lisa’s 3rd Class to the National Archaeology Museum and a visit by both 5th Class groups to St Patrick’s Cathedral. A sample of photos is provided in the gallery below and more photos can be seen on the various class webpages.
Parent Teacher Association EGM
An EGM of our Parent Teacher Association will take place in the school hall on Wednesday, 17th January 2024 at 19:30. The revised constitution of the PTA (to be emailed to all families today) will be put to a vote for ratification. If successful, the election of a PTA Committee for the current school year will then follow. A great deal of time, attention and care has been spent on the revised constitution by the current committee, led by their Chairperson Elaine. Elaine worked closely with the Board of Management to incorporate suggestions made by the Board and Educate Together to strengthen the document and the PTA’s procedures. I am really grateful to Elaine and the committee for their work on this. I hope as many parents as possible can attend on the night.
School Holidays calendar 2024-2025
The school holidays calendar for the next school year (2024-2025) is now available on our website at this link. The calendar is currently available in text format; we intend to add a visual calendar in due course. We hope that having this information available in good time will facilitate families planning holidays etc next year.
Parental Complaints Procedure
A revised version of the Parental Complaints Procedure was published in the past week. It can be found on the Policies page of our website.
The revised procedure, agreed by the INTO and the management bodies of primary schools, is designed to provide an open and clearly defined process to facilitate parents/legal guardians in raising concerns about their own child/children in an agreed, fair and transparent manner, with a view to seeking an early resolution of the issue. The purpose of the revised procedure is for parents and legal guardians to engage constructively with schools where a concern arises and to have it addressed at local level in an efficient manner, in the best interests of all parties.
Anti-Bullying Policy and procedures review
Early in the new year, the school will be conducting a review of its existing Anti-Bullying Policy and procedures. We will put out a call to parents to offer their feedback at that time.