Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.

• COPSA Colour Run - Friday 4th July 2025

  Fri 06 Jun 2025

  Join us for an afternoon of colour and fun - watch your children race around the school track while having splashes of colour thrown at them! They start the race clean and wearing white t-shirts, but by the end they will be COVERED in splashes of bright colours! We are so excited to see the utter joy and excitement on their little faces!

   

  Date: Friday 4th July Location: the School Field

  Time: 3.30pm

  Cost: £10

   

  The cost of this event includes entry and a bag with everything your child needs - a white t-shirt, glasses (although we recommend providing goggles for full protection), all paint powders used during the run, and a certificate at the end of the race to show participation. Please note, you will need to collect your children as normal at the end of the school day, then meet us on the field for the run! There will be refreshments available to purchase on the day and there will also be extra paint powder sachets for spectators to purchase and join in the fun! There will be an opportunity to throw these over the children at the end of the race. We will also be holding a raffle for unlucky Mr Craven to be gunged - the winners of the raffle get to do the gunging!

   

  To secure your child’s place in the run, please follow the link and read the description carefully before purchasing. There is a link to a waiver form you must read and sign electronically in order for your child to participate. Any child that has been bought entry but has no waiver will not be allowed to participate. Please sign the waiver as soon as you have made your purchase.

   

  Ticket sales close Friday 27th June at 9am so please ensure you have purchased in time as we cannot accommodate latecomers.

   

  Thank you all for your support and we cannot wait to run this event!

  

• Marvellous Men - Friday 13th June

  Mon 02 Jun 2025

  To coincide with Father's Day this year COPSA are offering a gift making craft event where the children will have the opportunity to personalise their gifts for the marvellous men in their lives.

  The online shop is open until Friday 6th June. Gifts will be made and sent home with the children on Friday 13th June.

  https://copsa.sumupstore.com/

  Please choose in the drop down section whether the gift is for Dad, Grandad or Other (please specify in the message section who this is for). Please note that gifts cannot be purchased for younger siblings.

  As always please do ensure that you add your

  CHILD'S NAME and CLASS in the 'Message to Merchant' section or in the 'Full Name' box when giving your contact info before payment.

  Thank you as always for your support!

  

• Colour Run - 6th June (NOW Cancelled - New date is 4th July 2025)

  Tue 20 May 2025

  IMPORTANT NEWS RE: THE COLOUR RUN EVENT TODAY (Friday 6th June 2025)

   

  Due to the inclement weather this week, together with the school we have decided that the ground would be too wet and potentially unsafe to go ahead with the Colour Run today. We have therefore postponed the event with the new date set for Friday 4th July. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for sunnier skies! 🤞🏼. 

   

  Please note when the day arrives, you must collect your children from school as usual then meet us on the school field for the run. 

   

  If your child can no longer participate due to the date change, please drop us an email and we will issue you a refund. 

   

  Alternatively, if your child is now able to attend, we have reopened ticket sales on our website for you. 

   

  Thank you for your patience and understanding, there’s nothing quite like the British weather! 

   

    https://copsa.sumupstore.com/

  

• Walk to School Week - 19th to 23rd May 2025

  Thu 01 May 2025

  Our school is taking part in Walk to School Week between 19th May to 23rd May. This

  nationwide event is organised by a walking charity, Living Streets, and is designed to help pupils experience first-hand the importance of walking to school.

   

  Children will be well on their way to reaching their recommended minimum 60 minutes of

  physical activity per day before even reaching the school gates! Not only will it set them up for a positive day in the classroom, but it will also help create healthy habits for life.

   

  This year’s challenge, The Great Space Walk, encourages children to travel actively to school every day of the week. Meeting various magical beings and objects along the way. They will learn about the important reasons to walk and the difference it can make for individuals, communities and the planet!

   

  Each pupil will be challenged to travel sustainably (walk, wheel, scoot, cycle or Park and Stride) to school every day for one week. Each class will work collectively to make as many active journeys to school as possible across the week. Individual activity diaries, daily stickers and end of week pupil rewards will complement this activity, reinforcing the benefits and keeping pupils engaged.

   

  As a parent/carer we ask, if possible, to make arrangements so that your child/children can travel actively to school the week commencing Monday 19th May, helping our school reduce congestion and pollution around the school gates. In return, your child will earn special stickers and a reward trophy! Walking, wheeling, scooting and cycling all count! If you live far away from school and need to drive or take public transport, try parking the car or hopping off the bus ten minutes away and walking the rest of the journey. Even parking in the car park opposite Jewsons / The Two Brewers then walking to school from there, will count as a point for your child walking to school.

  

• We are now on Instagram!

  Thu 24 Apr 2025

  We are now on Instagram!

  Follow @chippingongarprimary for updates and news!

  

• Tesco Stronger Starts - We need your votes!

  Fri 04 Apr 2025

  We are delighted to share that our school’s application to the Tesco Stronger Starts scheme has been successful to help our school raise additional funding for our OPAL Project.

   

  Between now and the end of June 2025 our project can be voted for by customers in the following Tesco stores:

  2469 Epping Superstore CM16 4BA
  2988 Ongar Express Express CM5 9AL
  3320 Theydon Bois Express CM16 7ES
   

  To check the location of any of the above stores, please go to the Tesco website here: http://www.tesco.com/store-locator/uk

   

  To vote, you will need to make a purchase within one of the above stores to any value. You will receive one token per transaction and it's not necessary to purchase a carrier bag in order to receive a token.

   

  The project with the highest number of votes across our region will receive £1,500 (or the amount that was requested up to this value), the second placed project £1,000 (or the amount that was requested up to this value), and the third placed project £500.
  
  Once voting has concluded in store, votes will be collated during the month of July 2025 and we will be notified of the outcome of the vote in early August 2025.

   

  Please share amongst your friends and family. Every little helps!

   

  Happy shopping and thanks as always for your support.

   

  For more information on the Stronger Starts scheme, you can visit their website: https://www.tescoplc.com/strongerstarts

  

• We are a Lexia Star School!

  Fri 04 Apr 2025

  Every month, Lexia select one fantastic school to shine a spotlight on as their Lexia Star School.
  This month, we are delighted that Chipping Ongar Primary School has been selected as a fantastic example of Lexia best practice and dedication to reading.

  Well done to Miss Saddington and Mrs Crook who lead our Lexia programme and were interviewed as part of the process. They shared with the Lexia team how they have been able to embed Lexia into our school day, personalise learning for pupils, and use the myLexia progress data to track progress and inform interventions. 

  They also discussed the impact on pupil confidence, motivation, and outcomes in SATs—highlighting inspiring success stories and the enthusiasm Lexia Core5 Reading and Lexia PowerUp Literacy has generated across the school.

  

• Essex Teaching Awards - There’s still time to nominate!

  Fri 04 Apr 2025

  There’s still time to nominate. Closing date: Friday 25th April 2025.

  

• Wonderful Women Craft Event

  Wed 12 Mar 2025

  COPSA’s gift making craft event is back this year where the children will have the opportunity to personalise their gifts for the wonderful women in their lives.

  Pre-ordering is essential using the following link -

  https://copsa.sumupstore.com/product/wonderful-women-gift

  The online shop is open until Friday 21st March. Gifts will be made and sent home with the children on Friday 28th March. We won’t be able to accommodate any late additions so please do make sure you purchase before the closing date.

  How it works:

  💝 Pre-purchase gifts on your child's behalf, using the drop down menu to let us know who it's for. Please note gifts are for adults only (no siblings).

  💝 Kids come along to our craft event in school on Friday 28th March where they collect their prepaid gifts and personalise them.

  💝 COPSA helpers will be on hand to guide children through the process.

  As always please do ensure that you add your CHILD’S NAME and CLASS in the payment section (rather than your own), or pop them in the note to merchant.

  Thanks for your support!

  

• Introducing OPAL

  Mon 20 Jan 2025

  We are pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new project to make our play times even better, in conjunction with OPAL.

   

  Introduction to OPAL

  OPAL stands for Outdoor Play and Learning and is a programme aimed to improve opportunities for physical activity, socialisation, cooperation, coordination, resilience, creativity, imagination, and enjoyment through improved play. 

   

  The Programme is the result of over 20 years of testing and development in over 800 schools and has been used in Spain, Canada, France and New Zealand. The programme has also been adapted and used in schools in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Austria under the Play Friendly Schools project. In 2018, OPAL won first prize in an EU-funded award for the 

   

  OPAL is based on the idea that, as well as learning through good teaching, children also learn when they play. As 20% of their time in school is playtime, we want to make sure that this amount of time (equivalent to 1.4 years of primary school) is as good as possible. 

   

  One reason the school is carrying out this programme is that childhood has changed, and many children no longer get their play needs met out of school. 

   

  • Average screen time per day is six hours. 
  • Average outdoor play time per week is five hours. 

  • Percentage of UK children who only play outdoors with other children at school is 56%. 

   

  There are many proven benefits for schools that carry out the OPAL Primary Programme. They usually include: more enjoyment of school, less teaching time lost to disputes between children, fewer accidents and greatly improved behaviour.  

  Play is not messing about. It is the process evolution has come up with to enable children to learn all the things that cannot be taught, while also having so much fun. There are certain things children musthave in order to be able to play. These include: 

   

  • Having clothes that they can play in 

  • Having things to play with 

  • Having a certain amount of freedom 

   

  As our school improves play opportunities for your children, we will be asking you for resources and will be making changes about how children use the school grounds. We may use more of the grounds, for more of the year. The children may get a bit messier, be exposed to more challenges and have greater freedoms to play where, with whom and how they like. The experiences our school is fostering are essential for children’s physical and mental wellbeing and are in line with all current good practice advice on health and safety, wellbeing and development. 

   

  Our school will be supported by OPAL for 18 months and there will be an opportunity to come and talk to the OPAL mentor. If you would like to learn more about the OPAL Primary Programme, please have a look at the OPAL website (www.outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk), where you will find lots of useful information and several videos about the programme. 

   

  In the coming 18 months parents will be invited to events where they can come and see what is happening and have the opportunity to join in too.  We are really excited about this project and hope parents and carers will support us in our efforts to improve playtimes for all children.