Head teacher blog 17th May 2019

It has been Y6 SATs week across the country and our children have worked hard and done their best. We await the results with anticipation. As long as they have made good progress from their various Y2 starting points, we will all be pleased.  Year 2 have also been doing some less formal SATs tests to inform their statutory teacher assessments.

The school is very busy recruiting after a number of our senior colleagues have secured promotions, are relocating or are having a career change at the end of the academic year. We are delighted with the quality of the candidates that want to come and work at Farfield and I expect the school to go from strength to strength. Today we are recruiting for a new Y6 teacher and Upper KS2 lead, and next Friday we are recruiting a new SENDCO – busy and exciting times!

This morning lots of Y5 children were in early working with a visitor to test pollution levels in the air around school. We have been left some sensors to take more readings next week. I am delighted that these children are engaged in this environmental work and I would like the school to do much more on the sustainability agenda in the future. Actually, those children won’t be in school for most of the time next week as they are almost all off to the Yorkshire Dales for a residential during which we will be caving (possibly including a roped climb), mountain biking, doing a river study and doing a variety of interesting walks with a focus on history and physical geography.

Finally, a word about money. I have previously had a little bit of criticism for complaining in this blog about school budgets. I am pleased to say that our new budget, that was signed off this week by governors, looks relatively healthy thanks to some careful ‘under-spends’ and increased income last year.  Much of that income was down to my part time secondment and is not sustainable. Nevertheless, we are in a ‘better place’ financially than we might have expected and I look forward to some good school improvement investments from September.

One Comment

• Ruth says:

  21/05/2019 at 7:05 pm

  As a parent and air quality scientist I am very interested to see the results of the diffusion tube monitoring being undertaken by students. Where did you decide to locate the tubes? I’m guessing first results in a month? Watch this space!

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