Headteacher blog 19th May 2023

Year 5 have enjoyed a fine week up in the Yorkshire Dales on residential this week: caving, mountain biking, walking and geography fieldwork. The children have shown good resilience and confidence tackling the activities. I am very grateful to the volunteer staff who work from 6am ’til gone midnight each day, to our volunteer caving instructor Phil who gives up his time for us, to British Cycling and Chris Young for their support and to Northern Rail who provide free train tickets. Special thanks go to Mrs Hawkhead who pulls together all the organisation of a fabulously active DIY residential for which the costs to families is ‘just’ £80. (£80 is still a lot of money, but most school residentials cost considerably more.)

Back at school, Y2 have been completing informal SATs tests and Y1 are practising their phonics before a statutory assessment in June. Y6 SATs continue to feature in the news: personally, I think there should be differentiated papers to allow more children to access them at their level (as is the case at GCSE and used to be the case at KS1). Now I hear that the training for the markers was chaotic and that they are struggling to recruit enough people to complete the marking on time.