Thank you to all of our parents and guardians who have embraced the opportunity to restart their school taxi service to bring your children into school, and in doing so have taken the opportunity to express their appreciation directly to my colleagues, who have borne the brunt of ‘screen school’ for the past 7 weeks. Year 8 experienced just how professional and slick our school nurse and staff support team are. A triumph of ‘can do’ to enable us to return as promptly and safely as we can next Monday. It has truly been a complete partnership of teacher, child, and family to build the momentum, engagement and productivity this year so far. I feel we all do hope we can relax back into a ‘new’ normal not involving 100% communications through a screen.

Educationally, both Monday and Thursday’s assemblies were celebrations of all that’s best about ‘appreciating that which we have’; from the world of science and technology that has both helped us through the pandemic and surface solutions for our future health and wellbeing, to the English Library Digital Bookshelves providing our own school’s wealth of reading opportunities. One boy in Year 8 described it as ‘the Claires Court version of Netflix’! 

Just a few words of caution regarding our return on Monday. All of our boys and staff know what it looks and feels like to socially distance (unlike our return from the Summer when relaxation had happened for some time). Not only are we ‘masks on’ and ‘2 meters’ apart, but we are also still running Lateral Flow tests in house for staff and students for 2 more cycles next week. So Nurses, SysAdmins and teachers are carrying on with the ‘virus checking heavy lifting’ for 6 more days before we are able to issue students with their home kits for continuing the LTF there until the end of term.