St Andrew's Catholic School is holding their Open Evening on Wednesday, 23rd September 2026 from 6.00pm to 8.00pm.The evening will give you an opportunity to have a tour of the school by the students and to meet staff in all departments. There will be an Address by the Headteacher at 8.00pm to give you a flavour of what St Andrew’s Catholic School is about, it’s expectations and vision for the education of the students. Mr. Brooks advises you to come between 6.00pm and 6.30pm to ensure you have time to have a good tour of the school before the 8.00pm Address. It is not necessary to book an appointment to visit on Open Evening.
We now have available the ‘Mass attendance cards’ which will be required by parents as a record of weekly attendance at Mass. Initially the card needs to be filled in, a photo of the child attached to the card (c/o parents /guardian) and a parish register created. Once a card has been created for each child, the family will need to present themselves to the priest for the card to be signed and stamped each weekend. Someone suggested this would be somewhat like a loyalty card for a coffee shop! Well, it is, only you won’t get a free coffee after 10 stamps, but you will get a “Certificate of Catholic Practice” provided Mass has been attended weekly for two years, prior to making application to over-subscribed schools, such as St. Andrew’s, Leatherhead. A reminder then, to parents of the changes to school admissions policies where schools, such as St. Andrew’s, Leatherhead, are over-subscribed. PLEASE SEE THE DETAIL on the parish web-site at: https://www.sjcc.org.uk/schools A certificate of Catholic practice, will now be required, such certificate can only be given where there is weekly attendance at Mass for at least two years and the ‘attendance card’ has been stamped by the priest.
DEANERY WIDE: As has been mentioned, Fr. Charles Howell will be leaving Effingham and Fetcham for a sabbatical, and given there are no other priest to take his place, Mass times across all the churches in the Epsom Deanery are having to be adjusted to accommodate the situation, given the shortage of priests. Work is continuing to make the best provision possible, and it is hoped that details of adjustments will be available by the end of October, with the new Mass times coming into effect as of the first weekend of Advent. Two fundamental principles of the adjusted Mass times are that a priest will celebrate a maximum of three Sunday Masses over the weekend and there will need to be a two hour gap between the start of one Mass being celebrated by a particular priest and the next Mass he would be celebrating. The two hours between the start times affords time for travel from one church to another, but more importantly, for the priest to be available, even though, for only a short time, to speak with people of the parish.