Headteacher blog 16th September 2022

It has been a super week at school. I am into the ‘season’ of doing tours for prospective parents and the school has really shone as we have walked around classrooms and the grounds. It was wonderful to get email feedback after one of the tours this week from a family looking to move into the area: “…….fantastic school tour this morning. Your school will absolutely be the right school for our daughter. We are highly impressed with all that you have to offer and sincerely look forward to applying next year.”

We got more detail from our Year 6 SATs results this week. Our headline figures have been revised down slightly to include an out-of-year group child with SEND now in specialist provision. Nevertheless, our performance remains very positive and well above national average. We were also informed of our official progress scores (from end of Y2 to end of Y6) and they are very high too – probably our best ever.

We had our first PTA meeting of the new academic year on Wednesday. This group raised about £10000 for school last year and put on some fantastic events. They have exciting plans for this year too and have already agreed to fund a new projector for the infant hall and a refresh of school football kits – we expect to have four competitive teams this year. The biggest fund-raising priority will be a new minibus in the next year or two as our (fantastic) old transit will probably have to retire as clean air zones are introduced.

We have also been distributing Chromebooks this week, with our 1:1 deployment now extending to Year 3. This project has been hugely popular and positive thus far and we are excited to be able to offer it to all juniors from today. This wonderful IT resource brings a wealth of opportunity for teachers and pupils, and will be used across the curriculum.