Headmaster's Welcome
Dear Parents
Another week has just flown by. Pupils and staff have been incredibly busy and I am delighted to see how happy and engaged our pupils are. I am also most grateful to my staff for their commitment and willingness and ability to adapt to the necessary changes that we are currently facing.
We have, unfortunately, continued to record a high number of absences across the year groups this week and there has been a need to operate hybrid learning in certain year groups. The pupils have adapted very well, yet again, and I hope the level of absence has now peaked and children will start to return to school feeling fully recovered. If your child has any symptoms such as headache, stomach ache, cough, temperature, or any other known Covid symptoms, I would urge you to err on the side of caution and take regular lateral flow tests. Quite often, a negative test can be recording during the morning and by the evening, another test will show positive. Many people are probably passing on the virus before their lateral flow tests register a positive result. Symptoms are key – and they are not always very strong symptoms.
Staff will continue to wear masks in school, test regularly and remind children to sanitise hands. Good ventilation is maintained and monitored in school, with windows open in each classroom. I do hope that your families remain safe and are not adversely affected by the spread of Covid.
Due to the number of positive cases in Crackley Hall and other local schools, some fixtures have been affected this week and this, most likely, will continue next week. Please monitor SOCs and your emails for further updates from the sports staff.
Our Celebration Assembly took place this morning with Junior 4 attending in person. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties with the equipment, we are unable to send parents a recording of the assembly. I know this will be a disappointment for some parents but I hope that after half term, we may be able to extend the invitation to more parents thus the need for recording will no longer be necessary. I apologise for this and will be consulting the Foundation’s IT team with the intention of ensuring a better quality recording for our families.
Our stars of the week this week were: May, Thomas, Harriet, Tristan, Hector, Shuvan, Charlie, Olivia, Elsie, Grace, Theo, Harry and Merryn. We were also able to award Jia her star of the week, carried over from last week. Well done to all our ‘stars’! I was also able to congratulate our Junior 4 da Vinci recipients and everyone in Junior 4 who passed their recent LAMDA examinations and music examinations. Congratulations to all!
All year groups have been enjoying the new library space which revamped recently. This has been a joint effort between Mrs Horan, Mrs Steeples and the Estates team who came together to ensure that the children have a more welcoming and well-stocked school library. The PTA have also contributed to the new reading material in the library to ensure that there is something for everyone – many thanks to Dr Card and her super team!
I am sure that you will have received notification of Numbers Day which will take place next Friday. Mrs van Zyl will be sending more information to families and I look forward to seeing the variety of outfits in school, whilst raising money for charity.
Wishing you a happy and relaxing weekend with your families.
God bless,
Mr Duigan
