Mr Spanswick's Words Summer 7

I hope you all enjoyed a lovely half term break.

We have embarked upon our last 5 weeks or so with great gusto and the boys have been very excited by the prospect of cricket tours this weekend, Bushcraft expeditions, swimming Galas, visits to Forest school, drama productions and learning new songs for the end of term concert. School has certainly not been quiet this week!

On Monday parents of boys in Year 2-6 will receive their sons’ performance scores in English and Maths, with a further result for Creative Writing for Key Stage 2 pupils. These are a useful indicator for us to establish how the boys are getting on and complete the picture for all of our academic tracking systems for the year. Please read carefully the information I have provided regarding the scores when you receive my letter on Monday - it often helps to give a wider perspective to the scoring systems that we use. As a final set of results that I am presiding over, they are arguably one of the best I have ever seen from our school and it fills me with great pride in regards to the work your sons have done throughout the year and guidance they have received from my staff.

Our gallery is awash with pictures of our swimming galas, our hard work of the week and also of your sons’ enjoyment of their challenges. My assembly on Monday was on the theme of ‘no excuses please!’, and we discussed this in depth. Imagine then my horror at finding out that a certain International goalkeeper from Liverpool had seemingly been handed a raft of excuses as to why he made two critical errors in the Champions League final... a number of your sons have been very happy to catch up with me about this issue! Never before have I received so much ribbing!

And for me? I am joining the Under 10 cricketers who travel to Dorset today for what will be my last tour as a teacher. My first tour was 22 years ago and I calculated last night that I have taken 47 of them since, not to mention over 50 Outward Bound trips. Great fun, amazing memories and friends for life are made when boys camp or go on sports tours. I am sure your sons will reflect (when they are a bit older!) on this wonderful aspect of education. It is most certainly one of my favourites.

Next week I will be updating you on Food Banks, staffing changes and hopefully even more success from our boys.