Mr Spanswick's Words Summer 7

I hope you all had a lovely half term break. I have chosen to use my words this week to inform you of staffing changes that will be occurring for the next academic year.

Firstly, Mrs Sue Thomson, our Year 2 teacher and Head of Key Stage 1 will be going part time next year so that she can spend more time with her family, and she is excited about focusing on 1:1 support rather than class teaching. Mrs Sarah Sullivan, our current Head of EYFS will be our new Year 2 teacher and Head of Key Stage 1, with Mrs Chantal Hankin stepping up into the role of Head of EYFS.

I have also chosen to increase the size of our Senior Leadership Team to reflect our growing school. Mrs Samantha Henry is taking on the role of Assistant Head (Curriculum and Head of Maths) as well as a Year 4 form tutor, Mrs Linda Stay will become Assistant Head (Pastoral Care) as well as being a Year 5 form tutor, and Mr Gillespie will become Assistant Head (Learning Development and SEND). While Mrs Judy Nott remains as the Deputy Head and my second in charge, Mr Leuzinger will also take on the role of Deputy Head as our School Operations Manager. We have also taken on two outstanding new form tutors, as well as another Learning Support Assistant for Key Stage 2. I now look towards September with a great deal of excitement and anticipation, and my ongoing ambition to provide the best possible learning environment for your son remains as strong as it ever was.

Some lovely news was shared with us at half term, where Dan and Stephanie Gillespie became proud parents of the beautiful Freya Esme, their first child. So eager was Freya to meet her parents that she was born a little early, and in only her 28th week she came into this world weighing 2lb 4oz. Both mother and baby are doing well, and Mr Gillespie is on cloud 9!

A busy week for our boys saw a wonderful performance at the ISA Regional athletics championships. I was lucky enough to commentate on the event for the 1000 strong field, and our pupils performed superbly, breaking records, qualifying for the Nationals, and most importantly, representing the school with such pride and integrity. More information can be found in Mr Butterfield’s words.

We will be sharing with parents results of the PTE (Progress Test in English) and PTM (progress Test in Maths) assessments for Year 1-6 at the end of next week, and you will have the chance to reflect on the outcomes with your son’s form tutor at the upcoming parents evenings.

But this week was all about the Claires Court Mock Election!! Having perused the manifestos as a school on Monday, we all took part in the mock election on Wednesday morning, with some very interesting results!! Our Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (Mrs Henry!), our Lib Dem leader (Mr Grose!), our Green Party leader Caroline Lucas (Mrs Nott!) and of course, our own Tory leader Theresa May (Mr Hogg!) all wooed the audience hoping to get as many votes as possible.

And the results??? No hung parliament here, Lib Dems won (nothing to do with Mr Grose’s influence as a sports teacher!), with Labour coming second, the Green Party a close third, who were just a fraction ahead of poor Mr Hogg in Fourth place. In all seriousness, when I questioned some of the boys on why they had chosen their particular parties, the answers showed such an incredible understanding of politics and the state of our nation, that some of the teachers who were watching were left speechless….not something you often see!! In any case, we had lots of fun, and hopefully the boys learnt a little about democracy in our country.

We have another busy week coming up, so please do read the bulletin dates that follow carefully. I look forward to seeing you all at some of our events soon.

Justin Spanswick