Headteacher blog 26th November 2021

Headteachers all got a letter from Secretary of State Nadim Zahawi this week exhorting us to improve school attendance: ironically, in the week that our attendance has been at an all time low! COVID rates are rising for us and there are also a lot of sickness cases and heavy colds around. I am grateful to parents for being cautious and for taking their children for tests when asked. Apparently, across Leeds last week attendance was 93% compared to 96% usually, but we are much lower than that currently. Sadly, educational gaps are appearing again with children coming back to school after being off for two weeks having missed whole units of work. As I have said before, we are back to ‘normal’, but it isn’t normal.

More positively, I have enjoyed showing off the school to prospective parents again this week. We spend time looking at books as we tour and they are always impressed. I have noticed that 2La are a particularly neat class with lovely handwriting, often joined, across the class – it really is very evident. (Before 2Lo howl in protest, I visit 2La more as it is on the natural tour route to Y1!) We also had a visit from the new education officer of our partners Rethink Food and she was amazed and delighted by our cooking curriculum, farm work and growing tower. She took lots of photographs and asked if we had a job going!