Head teacher blog 23/10/2020

I have been astounded by the quantity and quality of the submissions for our PTA decorated pumpkins and scarecrow competitions.  We have clearly got a lot of talented and competitive children (and parents!). I am glad that I haven’t been a judge. Furthermore, we have a school full of ghoulish costumes today – apologies to Y3 families who have dressed their children as stone age people on Thursday and Hallowe’en characters today.  We don’t usually pay this much attention to Hallowe’en, but with activities being curtailed in the community this year, we thought that we would be a bit more engaged with it this time. Not every year I hope…

Parents Evening seemed to go well despite being delivered remotely. Teachers reported that the Google Meet sessions felt more productive than the phone calls, and this could be something we offer in the future too. There was a definite improvement in time-keeping this way, and if any parent felt that their consultation was too brief, we can pick up another meeting next half term.

This week we published our plans and commitments for future remote learning should the need arise. Feedback suggests we did a pretty good job last time, but the government has increased their expectations as regards live sessions and we have reflected this in our plans. It does, however, raise the issue of children’s access to their own IT, and also parents’ ability to support learning at home whilst perhaps working from home or caring for little ones. Children’s access to their own IT is an issue we are exploring, and we may use some of our catch-up money to help address some of this.  Our assessments suggest that there has been a little bit of a decline in terms of where children should be academically but for most children this is modest. This suggests that school and families typically did a good job together as regards education during lockdown.

On Thursday we had our first competitive football match of the season. Mr Hemmings’ Y5 team played Weetwood Primary at home, and a close match was won 2-1. It is great to see another element of ‘normality’ return and our four teams should get lots of games over the coming months.

Finally, I wish to thank all our staff for their hard work, diligence and flexibility at the end of this challenging half term. Colleagues have had to be ‘on duty’ for longer than usual and we have had to cover each other more. Overall, it has been a really successful half term and it is great to have a school that is much closer to normal. Have a great half-term break everyone!