Headmaster's Welcome
Dear Parents
It has been a particularly cold, but beautiful, week in school. The school buildings and grounds looked stunning in the crisp, clear air and I was able to make the most of the opportunity to support some of our sports teams in their matches on Wednesday.
This week we have, unfortunately, seen a slight increase in Covid cases in school, mostly contained in one particular year group. As parents, you will continue to receive any notifications in accordance with the guidance we have received. It may be that you are contacted several times during the course of a week if your child is a close contact for each case. Please continue to be extremely vigilant of the usual symptoms and conduct daily lateral flow tests if you have been notified if your child is a close contact. Increased cleaning procedures at school will be maintained and children will not be sharing equipment.
Please do not send your children in if they have any of the Covid symptoms. PCR tests should be booked as per government guidance. As a school, we are requesting that regular lateral flow testing is carried out, as part of our current procedures; this should continue even if your child is not displaying any symptoms of Covid. Any positive lateral flow tests will necessitate taking a PCR test and pupils should remain at home until a negative result is obtained from this or until the isolation period is complete (please refer to latest school and government guidance on this). Our current experience is that if one family member has the virus, it is highly likely that other family members will also contact Covid. I expect this trend to manifest itself at school as well.
Some of our sports fixtures have been affected by positive Covid cases in both our school and our opponents so please check the school calendar and your emails for the latest updates. I was delighted with our football results against Croft and netball against Bilton Grange, where almost all of our teams won.
During this morning’s assembly I welcomed our Junior 5 parents and grandparents into school and I presented Stars of the Week to: Avni, Katie, Reuven, Cleo, Patrick, Angelica, Sophia-Rose, Malachi, Amelia, Finley, Josh, James, Rayane, Leonardo and Summer. I also presented certificates to children who achieved their Bronze Award, Junior da Vinci and the Music Examinations. There was certainly much to celebrate this morning. Junior 4 parents will be invited into school next week and I look forward to hearing more about achievements outside of school too. May I please request that if you are staying in school for assembly, please park respectfully on the approach roads to school so that parents dropping off their children on the lower playground can do so safely. It may be that we open the car park on the playing fields for assembly parking next week as we experienced some congestion at drop-off time this morning. Please look out for further information on this next week.
I am sure that you will have seen a communication from the School Office on behalf of the PTA which invites families to purchase their own Jubilee Tree from the Queen’s Canopy Trust. This is something that I am very keen to support and Crackley Hall School will be purchasing trees for each class which will be planted in the grounds and will hopefully be a lasting reminder of this year’s cohort for years to come. It will also be supporting the PTA in their quest to raise money to develop our sports facilities on the school playing fields. This is a project which I hope to share in more detail with you as the year progresses.
I would like to wish everyone a happy and relaxing weekend.
God bless,
Mr Duigan
