Dear Parents,
This week has been/is a quintessential English summer term week, with beautiful sunshine, some fantastic cricket matches ,a brilliant aquathon, a good splattering of rain and a great series of parties to look forward to this weekend. The Centenary Ball tonight is ready to roll and we have 160 past pupils and staff attending our Alumni event on Sunday. A lot of hard work has gone into arranging these events and I would like to thank everyone involved as it has been a real team effort.
We said a sad goodbye to Abigail Wills at the end of the last half of term but she leaves us with the school growing in a wonderful way. We have at least a 10% growth in pupil numbers for next year and we have more visiting – and enquiring weekly. The marketing and admissions team have done a wonderful job sharing the school’s open events and stories on social media and in print – and are lining up a packed schedule of events for next year. We will be hosting ‘Discovery Evenings’ for future Year 7s each term, and reserving an additional Discovery Evening for our own pupils. We have three bus routes running for next year – one from Mersea, through Layer, one up from the Chelmsford direction, and one from Braintree and Stisted through Coggeshall and Feering. We are investigating a fourth – if you are interested in one from the Tendring direction (Wivenhoe, Elmstead Market etc.) we will be collecting this information soon.
Please introduce yourselves to Sam Owen next week. She is our new Registrar and Head’s PA (in that order), and will be in the front office each morning at drop off, before spending the day in the ‘new’ Admissions and Marketing office, and at the Sports Hall on some afternoon pick ups.
Year 2 have been studying ‘Children at war’ this term, a term’s work which has been built using our new curriculum framework – called ‘Ignite’ – more details to follow. Today was a special part of this work with a VE day celebration involving writing questions for some grandparents who lived through the war, eating ‘food from the time’ including delicious carrot biscuits, singing some incredibly moving songs, and yes, dressing up as evacuees. This was the ‘fantastic finale’ to the topic to make it memorable.
Normally I share with you details of my assembly; this week it was on ‘self-regulation’ and it was all set up nicely when the sound failed!! The pupils were very good at recognising how their emotions take over in certain situations, when siblings pinch their favourite chair, when they get bowled out for 0, when they are asked to go to bed… and the aim was to help them understand what goes on in their brains, and how to manage this. Instead I needed to self–regulate! Next week we have a special assembly from Essex Integration on how they are helping refugees in the community.
We have had an email from Barclays warning us about a fee fraud. We have not sent out any letters regarding payment of fees this week. Please be aware and check that any such letters from the school come from the usual email.
Next week sees Sports Day. I am yet to hear of any parents’ races so far…. Have a very good weekend.
Edward Bond
Headmaster