By regulation of the Education Act, children are required to attend school unless prevented by illness or emergency.
Any absence should be reported to the school by phone, text, note or oral message from an adult, preferably by 9.00am of the day the child is absent or as soon as possible.
If a child fails to arrive and the school has no knowledge of their whereabouts the attendance officer will send a text or ring home as a safeguard.
If your child arrives late to school, ie after 8.55am, they must report to the attendance officer at the school office for a late pass. This is to make sure that they are not marked absent on the class roll for that day.
To notify us of your child’s absence text 021 057 2491, phone 09 298 8365 option 1 or via the skool loop app – include your child’s name, room number, reason for the absence, and likely return date.
The main carpark off Cosgrave Road and the carpark inside the Yang Place gate are for staff parking only. Parents are asked not to drive into these carparks to collect or deliver children. For safety reasons the carparks are out of bounds to the children.
Please obey the parking rules on our roads and respect our Neighbours when your drop off or pick up your children, by not parking over their driveways, or on the broken yellow lines, etc.
Please also take extra care when driving around the school at the start and end of the school day, as our roads are very congested.
Help us keep all our children safe.
Children are encouraged to walk to and from school by the shortest route, using appropriate walkways and footpaths, and to walk with a friend or in a small group. Make sure your child knows the way to walk to and from school and how to be safe around the roads.
Class trips and activities are charged individually throughout the year. You will receive notification before any trip that your child will be attending of its associated cost (eg. transport and entry fees). Our staff work hard to keep the costs of these trips and activities to a minimum for you. Payment is expected or your child will not be able to participate in this trip or activity. These trips give our students wonderful experiences that compliment what they have been learning in school, and we encourage you to allow your children to participate.
Parents/caregivers must keep the school informed of telephone number and address changes for both your work and home.
It is also important to give us some other emergency contacts, relatives or friends, who we can ring if we cannot get hold of the primary contacts. Please remember to keep these emergency contacts updated as well.
PLEASE: It is essential that we have correct contact numbers in the event of an emergency
Cosgrove School is fortunate to be a member of “Fruit in Schools”, a Ministry of Health funded programme which supplies fruit and vegetables for every child each day. This has obvious benefits for the health and well-being of all our students.
We are lucky enough here at Cosgrove to be part of the "Healthy School lunch programme" which supplies free School lunches every day for every child. All dietary requirements are catered for, these will be checked upon enrollment of your child.
Hearing and vision screening is now done prior to the child attending school. However, students can be referred by teachers to the Public Health Nurse. If you would like your child to have their hearing or vision checked, please talk to their teacher.
Students are not permitted to leave the school grounds unless a note or other communication has been received from home.
Parents/Caregivers who required children to leave school during school hours, must come to the school office to sign them out. Please note we will only release children to people named in our records. You will receive a ‘leaving early’ slip, which you will take to the child’s classroom before picking up your child.
The school does not allow children to leave the school unsupervised during school hours.
We have a designated SENCO (Special Education Needs Coordinator) at our school who can access support for you and your child, if there is a need, to assist your child with their learning or behaviour.
Support services available include; Ministry of Education Special Education Group, Resource Teachers of Learning and Behaviour (RTLB), Speech Language Therapist, Kelston Deaf School, Rosehill School, Whirinaki Child, Youth and Family Mental Health.
Stationery must be paid for prior to your child receiving it. Class trips and activities must be paid prior to the scheduled event. The stationery must also be paid for before your child is able to attend their class trip. If you have any questions or queries or are having difficulty with any of these payments, please talk to your child’s teacher.
Methods of payment:
Please give details of your child’s name and room number in the reference spaces.
Cosgrove School has two full time Mana Kidz staff, a registered nurse and a health worker. Their primary aim is to improve the health of our students.
They will take throat swabs of any students reporting a sore throat and will check any worrying skin infections. They will follow up with the families and will supply free medication to those students who require it.
In our enrolment pack there is a Mana Kidz consent form that you are required to complete to confirm Yes or No to this service for your child.
The school keeps a record of children who require medication for allergies or other specific medical conditions. All medication is kept in a locked cupboard in the sick bay. Medication is NOT to be kept in the child’s bag.
Parents must complete our medical permission form with details of the medication and dosage. Please be aware that we can only administer medication to the prescribed child as per the doctors' directions. These medical permission forms must be updated annually and expiry dates of medication checked regularly.
The school is equipped to handle minor injuries that occur at school, with staff receiving First Aid training. Basic facilities are provided at the sick bay by the school office.
We contact parents of those children who take ill or have an accident at school so that they can be picked up and taken home or to the doctor. If we deem it necessary we will call an ambulance for your child while we wait for your to arrive.
Newsletters are issued to Cosgrove pupils every fortnight and provide parents with up-to-date information on events and issues at school. These Newsletters are also uploaded to our school Loop app.
Additional newsletters and/or information notices are forwarded to cover special events, e.g., class trips, sports, social occasions, parent consultations.
We do allow public notices to be included in our newsletters if we have space.
Syndicate newsletters are sent out at the beginning of each term.
Parents who wish to participate in the school programme are most welcome. Parent assistance can include helping with children’s learning, sports events, school trips, activity programmes etc.
Frequent communication on the children’s progress is vital to ensure that home and school are working together on the schooling process.
There are several occasions when the school reports to parents:
Our school has an ‘open door’ policy. Parents/caregivers are encouraged to keep close contact with their child’s teacher.
School road patrols operate every morning and every afternoon at the pedestrian crossings on Clevedon Road and Cosgrave Road. Trained patrol student monitors and teachers will be on duty at these times:
All pupils are expected to use the crossings on their way to and from school. Please model this by always taking your children across the patrolled crossing if you are walking with your children. Safety rules need to be reinforced both at school and at home.
Cosgrove School is very fortunate to have the services of a school counsellor for our students. Students can pop a note in the box in the library if they would like a confidential talk about anything that is troubling them whether it is at school or at home.
Children may be enrolled with the Auckland Regional Dental Service from the age of 2 and be treated until they leave Year 8. In our enrolment pack there is a consent form for the Cosgrove Dental Clinic which needs to be completed, to allow your child to access this dental service.
The Dental Clinic is at the front of the school and is open between 8.30am and 4.00pm. The clinic number is 09 296 6014.
The school grounds are available for use after school and during the weekend, providing a few simple rules are kept.
Play in the grounds after 3.00pm on school days is not supervised, and therefore parents/caregivers must accept responsibility for their children at these times.
Our school day is as follows:
8.30am Children may enter the school grounds
8.55am Assembly and line up for class
10.55am Lunch
11.40am Classes resume
1.25pm Afternoon Interval
1.55 pm Classes resume
3.00pm School Day ends
There are no shortened school days for wet weather.
The school cannot take any responsibility for children who arrive before 8.30am. Any children arriving before 8.30am must assemble and wait quietly on the court area behind the hall or in front of the hall until the 8.30am bell. If it is wet, they may wait under the adjacent covered areas.
The school office is staffed between 8.30am and 3.30 pm each day. Our answer phone operates outside these hours.
Shows and performances in the school are free to all our students. The school uses some of its funding to pay for these shows, so that all students can participate. These shows are usually of a music or drama nature, with a strong message for our students and are highly interactive and entertaining.
We also regularly hold special math's or science shows, or life skills-based education programmes for our students, which are again free of charge. Our students learn much from these practical experiences.
Stationery will be sourced by the school for all students. We are very mindful of the financial burden the beginning of the school year can be for families and continue to look carefully each year at our student stationery to avoid unnecessary expense. As we can purchase the stationery in bulk we are able to offer it to you at a very competitive price. The school uses some of its funding to pay for some items of stationery to further reduce the cost to families.
All stationery packs will be $25.00 each.
We will have the stationery packs in school from the start of the year, but we require this to be paid before the child will receive their pack. You will be able to make payment for your stationery from the school office (or in an allocated stationery room for the first couple of weeks of the school year). Once this is paid a stationery pack will be delivered to your child’s classroom.
Cosgrove School is very fortunate to have the services of a full time SWIS (Social Worker in School). Their role is to support our students and their Whanau.
If you have any concerns about your child that our SWIS may be able to help you with please contact the school office.
The office staff are always prepared to assist your with your enquiries and concerns and direct you to the best people to talk to.
The classroom teachers are in their classes by 8.30am and may be available for a quick catch-up before or after school. However, for a more in-depth discussion an appointment is a good idea. You can arrange this with the teacher directly, or by ringing the school office.
It is necessary to make an appointment if you wish to speak to the Principal or Deputy Principal about matters related to the well-being of your child. Please ring the school office to arrange this.
We have staff meetings on a Tuesday and Wednesday after school, so it is difficult for us to meet with you on these days.
Teaching staff are not available to answer the telephone during school times. Please call the school office to leave a message and they will return your call.
The school has 4 terms each year. All schools in the Papakura area coordinate term dates. Each term is approximately 10 weeks. This allows for 2 weeks holiday between terms with 6 weeks over Christmas and New Year.
All parents/caregivers are notified of the term dates and holidays in the school newsletters. Extra copies can be obtained from the school office, or on the school website.
The school website is www.cosgrove.school.nz. We have recently upgraded our website and trust that you find it informative and easy to use.
The school also has a Facebook page, which we use to inform our community of notices and upcoming events.
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Download our Skool Loop App, a simple and free download. In Google Play & App Store search ‘Skool Loop’ and choose our school once installed.