Dear Parents,
Chipping Norton Festival
Many congratulations to all the children who took part so successfully in this year’s Chipping Norton Festival. We entered children in the drama, choir and orchestra classes. Many children from Year 5 and 6 performed scenes from Shakespeare and Dickens, doing so with amazing skill, clarity and feeling. The orchestra played on Wednesday. Again the sound was magical and all the children enjoyed being part of the festival. The choir’s singing last Saturday was superb as well, receiving an ‘Outstanding’ grade from the adjudicator. The high quality of the performance has resulted in the choir being invited back next Saturday (20 th) to perform at the closing event of the festival - a real honor and achievement. Well done to all who took part and especially to Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Tadman-Robbins for the effort, time and skill they have put in with their classes to ensure that this year’s festival was so successful for our school.
The festival continues for the coming week with our Year 5 children are taking part in a Partnership singing event called ‘Sing Your Socks Off’ next Tuesday. I hope they enjoy that just as much and particularly enjoy singing together with 4 or 5 other schools.
Sharing Assemblies
The Year 2 sharing assembly was lovely today. Don’t forget that there are 2 sharing assemblies next week – Year 6 on Thursday 18 th at 9.15am and Year 5 on Friday 19 th at 9.15am. We will also be holding a meeting directly after the Year 5 sharing assembly for parents to discuss arrangements for this year’s Year 5 residential visit to Cheddar.
After school clubs
There will be no hockey club next Tuesday, 16 March since all but three of the members are on the year 5 trip. For the week commencing 22 March (parents’ eve. week) clubs will run as normal with the exception of the cancellation of KS1 Art club (Tues), Chess club (Thurs) and KS1 Computer (Wed).
Parents’ Evenings, 23 rd and 24 th March
We are looking forward to seeing you all at our parents during the week of the 22 nd March. If you haven’t had a chance to sign up for an appointment with your child’s class teacher please do so on the boards in the entrance hall.
Easter holiday activities
If you are looking for activities for your children this Easter break 2 have recently been brought to our attention. Both of these are independent of the school and should be booked directly through the provider:
HolidayChildcare: Oxford Active were inspected by Ofsted with their holiday childcare at Chipping Norton School and gained a “good”. Oxford Active run Holiday Activities for 4-14 year olds at Chipping Norton School during Easter, Summer Half Term and Summer Holidays. You can book online at www.oxfordactive.co.uk or call 01865 594325.
Holiday football: Skillzsoccer, Kingham Football Club is running a course for both weeks of the Easter hols. Week 1, 6th -8th April. Week 2, 13th-16th April from 9am - 3pm (with a lunch break) at Kingham football Club. Each day will consist of skills and drills coaching including passing, shooting, dribbling etc.. and also fun and games all based around football. They are aiming this at 5-12 year olds and the price for week 1 is £25, or £33 for week 2 as that includes an extra day. For more details/to book contact Sam Tyack on 07595 545087 or at skillzsoccer@hotmail.co.uk
Village Hall – Kingham Farmer’s Market
Kingham Farmers Market will be in the Village Hall on Sunday 21st from 10 until 1pm, funds raised will be for the upkeep of the hall. Tea, Coffee and Hot Cross Buns + stalls selling breads, cakes, pies and pastries; Venison; Bedding Plants and Hanging Baskets; Bibury Trout and pates; Cotswold Lagers; Beef, Lamb and Pork joints etc and lots of cheese from Simon Weaver, Daylesford and Crudges Cheese; Novelty Chocolates and Pottery. Please come along and meet the makers!
 
KPSA NEWS
THE BIG SPRING CLEAN!
IT IS TIME TO EMPTY THE WARDROBES, LOFT SPACE AND STORAGE.
 
- Each year in the UK we throw away over one million tonnes of clothing and household textiles - more than half of these could either be re-used or recycled!
- However, the proportion of textile wastes reused or recycled annually in the UK is only around 25%.
- Nearly two million pairs of shoes are thrown out each week that could be worn by someone else.
- The second-hand clothes trade supports hundreds of thousands of livelihoods in developing countries…trading, distributing, repairing, restyling and washing clothes. For example, in Senegal alone there are over 24,000 people working in the second-hand clothes trade.
- Landfill sites are filling up fast. By 2010, almost all landfills in the UK will be full.
- And by educating children on the importance of textile recycling alongside other materials recycling, textile recycling will become part of everyday life for generations to come.
To learn more please read the document below this Newsletter. It is also important to acknowledge that this scheme enables us to raise money for our school. Posters will be displayed around KPS, while flyers and collection bags with be distributed in our children’s book bags. Please do support this worthwhile initiative. It is after all, a perfect excuse for that all important spring clean!
Further collection bags will be made available in the school foyer (alongside the school office at the Main Entrance).PLEASE DO HOLD ON TO YOUR COLLECTED ITEMS UNTIL FRIDAY 26 TH MARCH. PLEASE THEN DO DROP THEM OFF AT THE BACK OF THE SCHOOL CAR PARK READY FOR COLLECTION AT 9AM.
Many thanks for your on-going support.
I hope you have an enjoyable weekend
Yours sincerely,
Ed Read
Information about Bristol Textile Recyclers Ltd and Clothes Recycling in the UK
Bristol Textile Recyclers (BTR) are a Bristol based textile recycling company. We have been established since 1972 and are a small family firm. We employ around 65 local people and work hard to be an ethical, responsible company. We aim to look after our work force well and provide an excellent service to the charity shops and schools we work with.
Our core business is working with charity shops, providing them with a textile recycling service as well as recycling other goods such as books, mobile phones, bric-a-brac and electrical goods. In addition, we now run a project specifically tailored for schools called Clothes for a Cause. The school (pupils, parents and staff) collects up their unwanted clothing and raises money for the school based on how much they collect.
Textile recycling in the UK
If you take a bag of clothes to a charity shop or a textile bank, the charity may be able to sell some of the items. The other items they do not sell they sell on to organisations like BTR. In this way BTR is providing an additional source of revenue to many charities through out Southern England and the South West, to fund the good work they do. With out this revenue charities would be much poorer and our landfill sites would be much fuller. If the textiles weren’t sold on and recycled in this manner, they would end up on a landfill site once the charity became inundated with too many clothes. This wouldn’t take long either, for example we collect 4 times a week from some of the charity shops we service.
What BTR does with the Clothes
BTR sells the majority of the clothes we buy through our charity shops and schools to Africa. Unfortunately we are not a charity and have to sell the clothes, otherwise we would not be able to operate. There are many overheads generated in order to recycle the clothes. We have the initial collection costs, the costs to sort the clothes into the 100 grades of clothes we have, then there are the transport costs to the end destination, operating costs of the factory etc.
We believe that by providing a product, that is in much demand in Africa, presents developing countries with additional trade and employment opportunities. As the old saying goes “trade, not aid”. By giving away the clothes we wouldn’t be helping a country develop in the long term. Our African customers buy the clothes from BTR, and they in turn have their customers they sell the clothes to who would normally be wholesalers and market stall holders. The clothes are bought by African people at a fraction of the cost that we would buy them for.
In terms of where else the clothes end up, some heavier items are sold to Pakistan and Eastern Europe. Damaged items are cut up into wiper cloths and sold to industry locally. Woollen items that cannot be reused are sold to another organisation where they are broken down into their original fibres and then remade into other goods including emergency blankets.
Other textile recycling organisations in the UK do exactly the same as BTR. So whether you donate your clothes to charity or put them in a textile bank, or even put them in your black recycling box, an organisation like BTR will pay money for the clothing. It will then either end up in Eastern Europe or Africa. BTR are happy that most of our clothes go to Africa where there is a real need and demand for our second-hand clothes, rather than chasing a short term market in Eastern Europe, where there is also less need.
BTR work very closely with our African customers. They come and stay with BTR (at our expense) and work with us in our factory selecting the clothes they want to buy. This creates a great working relationship alongside high levels of mutual trust. We would never knowingly work with any customer that was engaged in unethical forms of business or corruption of any sort. It is in fact more likely that corruption will occur when no payment had been made for goods (e.g. in the case of aid), as the profits are obviously far greater. We believe the customers we work with are like BTR, small business people who just want to make a living.
www.btr-ltd.co.uk
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