Head teacher blog February 15th 2019
Thursday was the day of love and I saw so much to love in school on that day. The morning consisted of a Farsley Learning Alliance review of writing across our school with the heads of the other Farsley primary schools, their leaders and our School Improvement Advisor joining with our own senior leadership team to look at writing from Nursery to Year 6. Standards were good across the school, staff are implementing plans skilfully and imaginatively and the children were a delight. Provision for our children with SEND was seen as a strength and our staff working 1:1 were complimented on their work. Whilst there are areas to improve further, I was proud of what we saw.
In the afternoon, I briefly joined Year 1 and their families for the annual Year 1 Art Gallery. This tradition seems to get better and better every year and families left with impressive collections of work. Bravo!
I am writing this prior to a reported ‘Youth Strike 4 Climate’ planned for Friday. I don’t know how many young people in Leeds will join the protest but I have a lot of sympathy for them. Ironically, this week head teachers in Leeds got an email from the council encouraging us to switch off or turn down our heating over the holidays. This is the first time I recall receiving such an email in my 15 years of headship. Whilst I agree with the advice, and we hopefully didn’t need reminding, it is a sad reflection of how incredibly low the bar is as regards energy conservation and action to combat climate change. The council are in the process of replacing our junior heating system, having replaced the old boilers last year. The new system will be more efficient, but there was no scope for innovation or renewable fuel options. The environmental problems of the world are enormous and I hope that the young generation takes an educated lead as my generation has selfishly failed to make the scale of changes that are needed.
