Headteacher blog 29th January 2021

Many thanks to the 260 respondents to the Remote Learning survey that we sent out last weekend. Feedback was largely positive and gave us a few things to look at. It is a difficult time for everyone – for you, at home, helping with remote learning, and for us trying to deliver it effectively – but we are generally working very well together. I was struck by the thoughtful and insightful comments and suggestions that so many parents made. We will try to make the work packs easier to organise in future, and we are working on improving feedback systems. One problem was that the KS2 children didn’t have activated email accounts and didn’t get notifications of the feedback that their teachers were leaving – but they do now.

March 8th is the date now given by the government for the earliest return of children to school. That is four more school weeks and a half term. I had been working on an assumption of Easter, but if we can get the children back in safely before then, we would be pleased.

A fun highlight this week was trying to renovate the pond in the conservation area: barely touched in 20 years. We were hoping to empty it and reline it before frogs returned next month but, to our surprise, we found a couple of dozen large frogs already in the mud at the bottom and in the sides. Sadly, we may have disturbed their hibernation. The children loved looking at the captured frogs and we looked after them whilst the work continued. A lot of excess mud was removed and the water was pumped out. But then it rained biblically on Wednesday night and by Thursday the pond was more full and deeper than it has ever been! The renovation has been abandoned for now and the frogs have been returned. We will try again in the summer if it dries up again.