Weekly Parent BulletinWeek of 16 June (Week B)

Dear Parents and Carers, 

I am writing to ask for your support with this year’s Nottingham Free School Culture Day (Friday 4 July 2025). Culture Day is one of my very favourite days of the school year, where our community comes together to celebrate our diversity, beliefs, cultures, interests and differences.​ The day aims to:

• Promotes unity and a sense of belonging​
• Allow students to develop an understanding and appreciation of different cultures, traditions and values​
• Provide students with a time to reflect on, and share, their identity​

During the morning, your child will engage in three fantastic sessions with their tutor that explore the theme of ‘Who Am I?’. In the afternoon, the whole school community congregates on the school sports field to enjoy cultural music, dance, arts, crafts and food.

This year, I would dearly love NFS parents and carers to help us celebrate Culture Day by offering a cultural activity, food or a stall.  You could offer:

• An information stall about your heritage/culture
• An arts or crafts stall that offers students an activity to do
• A display of dance or music that celebrates your heritage/culture
• A food stall, or donation, offering samples of cultural food

I would be eternally grateful to you if you could offer your services on the afternoon of Friday 4 July. You may have an idea for a stall/activity that is not listed above. If this is the case, please contact us (contact@nottinghamfreeschool.co.uk) and we can discuss the idea with you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I sincerely hope we can work with you to make Culture Day 2025 the best yet.

Yours faithfully, 

Dr J Simpson

Miss Harmer-Weston's 8h History class doing some fantastic extended writing about the causes of World War 1:

Miss Burley’s Year 10 group doing a food science experiment for the coursework mock investigation: 

• Thursday 19 June: Year 8 HPV Vaccinations
• Friday 20 June: Year 11 Leavers Day
• Monday 23 June: Year 9 Can Do Science Workshop
• Thursday 4 - Monday 7 July: Return Spanish Exchange
• Friday 4 July: NFS CULTURE DAY!
• Tuesday 8 July: NFS Sports Day!
• Thursday 10 July - Sunday 13 July: Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition 
• Monday 14 July: Year 12 Work Experience (ALL WEEK)
• Thursday 17 July: Year 7 and 8 Careers Event
• Thursday 17 July: Year 10 Geography Hornsea Field Work Educational Visit

 

A huge congratulations to all Year 9 students that successfully completed their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze expedition. Year 10s also successfully completed their Silver practice expedition. Well done to all and to Mr Garnham for coordinating this wonderful opportunity!

This is an opportunity to see all the work that our GCSE and A level students have done this year. Some samples of KS3 work will also be chosen to go on display and children will be notified about this closer to the time.

There will be drama performances from our KS4 drama students for you to attend too, as well as some music performances.

As usual we will also be running a refreshments stall to raise money for our Art department so any donations of cakes for the evening would be very much appreciated.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Attendance

The aim of this half term is for every student to attend every day to ensure they are prepared as much as possible for September.  Please continue to send your child into school every day so they are not missing learning opportunities and preparations for September. 

Safeguarding

All of our new year 6 parents/carers are attending our in person online safety/safeguarding updates sessions.  These sessions have been highly valuable for our new parents/carers.  I would like to provide some new updates for key social media apps:

• YouTube - parents can now use the video sharing platform, on eligible smart TVs and on other devices such as smartphones, laptops, computers and tablets as an app or through the web browser​​
• Snapchat- enhanced privacy settings, tracking sextortion and AI detects and blocks explicit content. U18s not shown adult content. Updated family safety hub. VAPES being sold on this platform.​​
• Instagram - Teen accounts introduced (13-17 and sleep mode from 10pm to 7am) and private by default.Parents can choose to supervise the account. U16s need parent permission to view live feature. Parents can approve decision to remove blur feature (nudes). Parent permission to use live feature. ​
• TikTok - TikTok accounts for users aged 13-15 will now default to “private”. Also, videos created by users under 16 years of age are restricted by default for download unless the settings are changed or update. “Family Pairing”, parents can link their child’s account to their own where they can control direct messages, set screen time limits, and turn on/off restricted content directly from their phone.  Automatic 60 minute daily use for teens. VAPES being sold on this platform and be mindful there are no age verification tools for new users.