Reflections on week 31

On Monday of next week, the next stage of the “Roadmap” comes into force and sees hospitality reopening indoors and overnight stays possible in England. Alongside this good news, we have the worrying outbreaks of the “Indian variant” just down the road in Bolton. We need to continue with social distancing and the wearing of face coverings on the school site please to help ensue community safety and prevent us having to go back into any future lockdowns. Again, I thank everyone for their continuing support with this.

I hope that all families who celebrated Eid this week managed to enjoy time with their families and loved ones, especially as last year’s festivities had to be cancelled. It is lovely to see the children enjoying “showing off” their Eid clothes and with everyone else in non-uniform, there is definitely an air of celebration around school. On behalf of my lucky colleagues and myself, I send thanks for all of the lovely samosas and other treats that we’ve received – delicious!

I am pleased that Froggy will be visiting some of our infant classes next week to award certificates as I tentatively reintroduce celebrating together. At this stage, we cannot yet invite parents into school, but will share photographs with you.

Yesterday, teachers from a school in the North East who are keen to learn about “Forest School” lessons joined us outdoors and they were hugely impressed by our offering and especially enjoyed their session in Hyde Park with Mr G, Mrs Mercer and our nursery children. They commented upon their polite and engaging reception from all of our pupils. (More and more schools are recognising how important connecting with nature is in improving a sense of wellbeing and tackling issues from the pandemic.)

 We also hosted Enquire Learning Trust central team, who spent the morning looking at progress towards achieving our academy improvement goals for this year. As ever, it is great to receive positive endorsements of our children’s positive learning behaviours and the work that is going on “behind the scenes” to ensure our subject coverage is in line with the demands of the National Curriculum.

Have a great weekend,

Best wishes,

Mr Fell