Coleham School organises ‘Pull Together for the Coleham Community’ following flooding

Coleham School in Shrewsbury is organising a ‘Pull Together for the Coleham Community’ to help raise spirits among local residents and business owners in the wake of this week’s devastating floods.

Coleham Primary School closed early on Monday to ensure children could be safely collected and was closed for Tuesday and Wednesday as River Severn levels rapidly continued to rise.

The school said it although it was unfortunate it had to close for two days, it is lucky the school is on higher ground and suffered no damage. 

The school wanted to do something to help its local community, which has been badly affected by the floods with the access roads only reopening yesterday after a three-day closure.

Headteacher, Claire Jones, said: “Coleham School is in the heart of this community and the children care passionately about what is going on locally.

“Every child in the school has created a card and written their own message of support to the affected businesses on our doorstep and members of our school council hand-delivered these on Friday to help try and raise spirits as much as we can.”

All next week the school will be gearing up to host 'A pull together for the Coleham Community,' on Saturday, 7 March.

The children are creating posters to go up around the area to advertise this event and create a “buzz around Coleham” and help create a sense of community.

Staff, parents and their families and friends will be invited to come down to Coleham to shop local and support the independent shops and businesses which were forced to close have had to twice endure a huge clean-up operation after being hit twice by flooding in just seven days.

Year 3 children have already written to the residents of nearby Hazeldine Court retirement apartments, who had to be evacuated during the floods, to offer messages of support.

Ms Jones added: “We are aware that some shops have suffered considerable damage and it may take them longer to get back on their feet. Our ‘golden threads’ in our curriculum are resilience and community, so I have been talking to all the children in assembly about the resilience of our local traders to have been flooded twice in one week. As a school we support many of the traders and were devastated to see their loss.

“Our team of reporters from the school newspaper, Coleham Express, are putting together a special edition, interviewing these local businesses, not only about what they’ve been through, but also to promote them and their services to their parents and encourage them to shop local. 

“After the clean-up operation, from speaking to businesses in the Coleham area, we realised what they need most is for people to come down here, support them, spend some money locally and spread some community spirit after such a difficult time.

“Our children are great ambassadors for this and have learnt so much, not only about floods, but the resilience of the traders who were flooded twice in seven days and what is happening to people and businesses which have been so personally affected.”