Some of the boys had busy holidays! Ruben Goswell spoke to us in assembly today about his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Ruben described his adventure to us with such passion and sensitivity - we were all extremely impressed and I must commend him for his efforts. Noah Olikara passed his Grade 1 piano with distinction, which is a superb achievement. Similarly, in school James Cranfield and Jamael Qureshi produced some outstanding pieces of writing in their literacy lesson which was worthy of my Gold Stars. All of these boys can be seen in our picture gallery below.

With the start of the summer term and our thoughts turning to cricket and athletics, our sports department were not surprised to see a substantial amount of rain on the weather forecast! Nevertheless, we have already begun in our quest to find the next Alastair Cook or James Anderson….or in fact the next Graeme Swann - we have a number of off and leg spin bowlers coming through the ranks which is wonderful to see. We just need to find some cricket squares that the ball will turn on! Bring on the sunshine! I should remind parents of boys in Years 4, 5 and 6 that most of our cricket matches go well beyond 5pm and therefore boys are not normally able to catch the 5pm bus at the end of the day if they are playing against another school.

So what is in store for the term? Apart from the aforementioned sports (and not forgetting our swimming galas and cricket tours), we have plenty of Bushcraft and camping activities, music and drama productions from all our pupils, Pupil Problem Solving week just before half term which I will write more about in future weeks, the fete, chess fixtures with competitions at home and at Bristol, Chembakolli day, the Vikings adventure, art competitions, trips out to farms and rainforests…..and of course, our academic assessments. Indeed, my principal focus this year has been to guide our boys towards improving their academic skill set, with a view to becoming more independent and resilient learners.

So, it could a busy term! I must say that the boys have returned from their break in wonderful spirits and I am really looking forward to everything the summer term has in store.