Headmaster's Message

Headmaster's Message

Dear Parents

Welcome to this week’s Courier. We have arrived in October in good shape and, with the unique challenges of the time, this in itself feels like something of an achievement. The learning mentor meetings last week went down really well with the children and reiterated for me the positive start we have all made to the school year.

I hope you will enjoy seeing the film of our open corridors event along with today's newsletter. We are thinking hard about how to provide the fullest range of events for children and parents despite the current restrictions and I hope you will get a taste of the work and activities that the children have been taking part in in school this term. You might even get a glimpse of a piece of your own child’s work.

Earlier in the week we ran an information meeting for Reception parents on the teaching of reading. I hosted the event along with Mr Webb, but the main contributors were Mrs Emery and Mrs Pullen, both of whom gave a fascinating insight into how reading is taught to our youngest children. Again, there will be a link in today's Courier for you to access a recording of this meeting if you haven't already done so. I can strongly recommend it.

As part of our ongoing management of the pandemic risk, this week we have had an external audit carried out on our risk assessment and risk management. All areas of our provision were inspected, including the delivery in the classrooms and movements around the school. I was delighted to receive very positive feedback following the visit and it is always reassuring to know we are getting most things right. I was able to comment very favourably on the support that parents had shown for our measures, which I know is not universally the case in other schools. Many thanks for your continued support.

Next Monday I will be leading an assembly about the life of Mary Seacole and this will be followed up by a series of short videos telling the story of her quite amazing life. These will be watched during form time over the rest of the week. Mary was a Jamaican nurse during the Crimean war with a quite an astonishing life story to tell, who became a celebrity at the time. If you don't know much about her life, as I didn’t, I would certainly recommend doing some research yourselves.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster