The Chronicle

Dear Parents

Welcome to the new academic year and the first Chronicle of this term.  I have had the opportunity to meet many parents in person this week as your bring your children to school and collect at the end of the day.  It has also been wonderful to see familiar faces and some new faces too.  Staff and children have settled well into their new classes and there is a wonderful buzz around school again.   I hope that with continued cleaning measures and an element of caution, we can return to function as we did before the pandemic in the very near future.

I must apologise again for the rather hectic start to Monday morning, as well as the grid-locked carline on Monday afternoon.  As we move into the routine of extra-curricular clubs next week and staff, pupils and parents become more familiar with the routines, we would expect to see a much smoother collection time.

As I am sure you will have noticed on your arrival to school, we have a super new surface on the middle playground.  This astroturf surface has been made possible with the generous funds raised by our PTA over the past nine years.  If you haven’t thought about joining our PTA yet, please do get involved, the events they arrange and funds raised make a huge difference to school and, as you will see, every child benefits.  The PTA have their own section of the Chronicle so please do take a look.  Whilst on the subject of the PTA, Mrs Lamb, our current Chair, recently completed a 13-mile charity hike for MacMillan Cancer Support raising money for this charity.  A further MacMillan event will be held at school later this month when we support the coffee morning.

Our Good Schools Guide review was published at the end of the summer and I was pleased to invite our Head Boy and Head Girl to be involved in a photograph for the local press.  A copy of the full review can be found on the Good Schools Guide website.  It was a pleasant surprise having been contacted by them with regard to a possible inclusion in the guide, subject to a successful review.

Father Kevin was welcomed into school this morning when we celebrated our start of the year Mass, with Junior 6 leading it.  Mass will be shared with the wider school community early next week.  Thank you to Mrs Jackson-Mayne, Mrs Simmonds, Mrs Olden and Father Kevin for their work today ensuring that we could celebrate Mass at the start of this new academic year.

Following Mass, the children were able to watch our celebration assembly where I announced the Stars of the Week as: Clement, the whole of both Reception classes, all Junior 1H, Zachary, Eloise, Casper, George, Archie, Anthony, Felix, all of Junior 4R, Rory, all of Junior 5L, Sofi, George and Henry.  Congratulations to all of you on your super start.  I will return to announcing birthdays, starting next week, so please don’t worry if you had a birthday at the very start of term, I will not forget you.  We will look to inviting parents back in to join in the celebration as soon as possible.  As mentioned in assembly, we will aim to have different year groups in at each week’s assembly.

It was a busy morning today as I met with Junior 6 to present them with their Steward and Captains badges.  Unfortunately, Mrs Horan could not attend but Mr Cottrill and Mrs Vaughan were able to support Junior 6H and the event was recorded to be sent to all our Junior 6 parents by Monday next week.  I am sure that Junior 6 will take pride in their roles and serve their school well.

Swimming is back on the timetable this year and Junior 3 and Junior 4 will begin their lessons at Abbey Fields next week.  I am hoping that we will be able to continue swimming at Abbey Fields but I am aware that there will be renovation work taking place at some point in the not too distant future.  If I receive further information, I will share this with you.

England will have to be at their highest level in all areas in the final test against India if they want to square the test series against a very strong team. The England footballers had a successful international stint over the past ten days but I am now looking forward to the South African rugby matches against Australia and New Zealand.

I hope you enjoy reading this week’s Chronicle and have a restful weekend.

God bless,

Mr Duigan