Dear ALS Community,
In a break to tradition, I hope you’ll understand me writing to you in Mr Preston’s stead. You will have seen our announcement earlier this week that Mr and Mrs Preston welcomed Henry Thomas Preston last Saturday and so while they spend some precious family time together I have the privilege of writing to you.
As we hit the half-way point of this half-term, I hope that remote learning continues to be a success at home. Whilst some children will continue to enjoy remote learning right through to February half-term, I’m conscious that such a long time away from friends and teachers can be difficult for some or that you may see a little less enthusiasm from your child for learning at this point. It’s worth knowing that this is completely normal and there’s always a noticeable lull during the middle of a half-term for children and teachers - after heading out the blocks at a sprint, there sometimes comes a bit of a dip for a day or two. It’s important to take some time to shake it off and then get back in to the rhythm. Of course, if you need any support or you’re worried about the effect of the lockdown on your child, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We’re here to help.
I am sure you will also have seen the news around changes to testing protocols within schools and also the brief messages this week that the Government have started to share about how they will give schools 2 weeks’ notice to re-open. Please be assured that we will continue to keep updated on every announcement that is released and now with Katrina, our School Nurse leading on the testing and the plans we have already used for keeping the school environment safe, I am confident we will quickly and easily be able to adapt our approach as is required. We will also share with you any news as soon as we are aware of it.
For next week, our mantra comes from Amicus: Respect everyone and their contribution. A little like our Dedicas mantra from last week, I think our school community absolutely lives this part of our value every day. I’m not sure there’s many schools that have the commitment to an ethos that ours does. We continue to receive letters of thanks from parents for the efforts of the team in school and we are always grateful for the time you take to do that. In school, I know colleagues really do respect the contribution of the whole staff team and the support we receive from our parent community. It’s easy, sometimes, to view a school as the sum of its children and teachers but that simply isn’t the case - much of the heartbeat of a successful school can be found in the operations team. Ask children about their day and you’ll often get a blow by blow account of lunch (amazing work catering team!), break time with friends (thank you lunch time supervisors) and then they might mention a lesson or two. Whilst there’s obvious thanks due to the teachers and teaching assistants, without sounding biased I’d like to champion the work of our operations team. Thank you!
For any who missed it in a previous weekly email, please find our term dates for the next academic year here. The term dates will continue to be provisional until we have a little more clarity around how things have settled down over the next few months but I would hope that they will be fairly accurate should you wish to use them to plan for any future holidays or visits around the UK with family. For Senior School please also look out for a text message regarding upcoming parents evenings, we are starting to trial the use of texts as a way of keeping you updated and I hope you find these useful.
Last week, we shared our House Competition information with you and I’d like to plug it again. Please do take the time to encourage your child to enter as many competitions as they can, the competitions cater to a range of interests and there’s plenty to get stuck in to! The document containing the information can be found here. If you have any questions about the House Competition, please email [email protected] and one of Mr Hawkins, Mr Dobson or Mr Scott will be happy to help.
All that’s left is for me to wish you a wonderful weekend that is filled with relaxation and family time and to thank you for your support and kindness.
Mrs Sanj Dhadda | Operations Manager
