The Courier

Dear Parents and Friends of the School

Coming back to work on Thursday, following my three-day conference over in Liverpool, it really dawned on me just how much goes on in our busy little school. In a relatively short absence, I had managed to miss the Upper School Harvest Service on Tuesday, not to mention rehearsals earlier in the week and the first House meetings of the year. On top of this were residential information and phonics information sessions for parents, the Year 5 trip to the Space Centre and the start of our ‘Bags2school’ fundraising. All of those were just in the first three days of the week. We are a busy school but also a happy one, and this was well reflected in the enthusiasm of the children in the Pre-Prep’s performance to parents on Thursday. It was lovely to see the young folk taking part so heartily and I know the parents attending will have got a warm glow from seeing their children embracing being in the fray.

As soon as this concluded, our Year 6 children made their way over to Princethorpe College to experience the shiny new Science Centre there. They came back full of stories of building bridges with straws and junk and exploding chemistry experiments, which sounded most exciting.

Today of course has seen the Macmillan Coffee Morning and this concluded a week of fundraising in the school including the harvest service collection as well as the bags to school drop-off organised by the parents’ association. Many thanks to you for all of your generous donations and for giving up time to help out as well.

I will say just a few words about my conference as there were lots of fascinating workshops and presentations. Many heads talk about the camaraderie of meeting colleagues in similar roles at these events, which I get of course, but for me the main benefit is in gaining the knowledge and understanding of new directions that education is travelling in, so that I can then bring these ideas back to improve our school here. One thing that was talked about quite a lot was the rise in AI and how this would affect education, and much of this was presented in a very positive light. One presenter started his talk by asking the heads in the audience how many of them actually had downloaded ChatGPT onto their phones or devices. Quite a number sheepishly admitted they hadn’t (me included, sorry) and we were told to download it there and then. ‘Just experiment with it and try out to see what it can and can’t do’, we were told. If you haven’t done this yourself then I advise you to have a go.

I know for many of you, AI will already be part of your working lives and it is something that we need to embrace and encompass here in school. Key people in this for us are Mark Adkins, our Cresent Head of Digital Learning and also Andy Compton, who leads digital strategy across the Princethorpe Foundation, they are already involved in staff training in this area. It is an area that we need to be at the forefront of to ensure that children receive the grounding in this critical new technology that they will need and deserve.

This weekend, I have a long journey ahead of me as I drive up to Newcastle to attend a university open day for my youngest son Hugh. Let’s hope the M1 is kind to us. As we speak, my eldest son, James is currently overseas in Florida on his first live mission with the Royal Navy as an officer, whilst my daughter is back with us at home after her graduation, saving hard for a planned gap-year-style trip to Australia.

Whatever you have planned for the weekend, I hope it is an enjoyable one.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster