Headteacher blog 6th July 2018

Last week’s ‘Friends of Farfield’ Camp-Over was a great success again and has raised £3000 towards  another new minibus. This was a great community event and I am immensely grateful to Diane and her team of volunteers for their brilliant work.  It is always great to see happy children playing freely for hours across our fantastic site.

This week as part of my seconded role with the city,  I was one of the hosts of an event to mark the retirement of Leeds headteachers.  Some were retiring early (one only a few years older than me!), and high-stakes pressures of SATs and Ofsted were cited as factors in their decisions. All agreed that schools now play a much larger role in ‘early help’, supporting children and families around issues such as mental health, family breakdown, poverty and domestic violence.  We all agreed, however, that teaching was a great career and that it always has a worthwhile, positive moral purpose.  We might wonder how we would have fared in other jobs or industries, but never regret the decision to work with children in schools.