Headteacher blog 27th September 2024

We are now officially into Autumn and there has been an autumnal feel in school this week. We have just about resisted the temptation to put on the heating but it’s close!

On Tuesday, we had a phonics audit from The English Hub. Once again, our practice came out strongly, with just a couple of suggestions for further improvement. One big question for the school is whether we move to what is called a ‘validated scheme’. This has been an expectation for a few years and 90% of schools do use one. Last year, Ofsted described our decision to go into inspection without a validated scheme as ‘brave’ but then ‘fully vindicated’. One of my objections to moving to a new scheme is the potential waste of existing resources: perfectly good reading books replaced for little good reason. We are going to have a look at schemes now though as we could retain our books with some options (and The English Hub are offering to pay!).

Extra-curricular clubs began this week. I am grateful for colleagues running these clubs and it is good to see such a range of opportunities. They are usually over-subscribed so I am sorry if your child didn’t get all the clubs that they wanted. My Farm Club met for the first time and they had the luck of doing a big harvest in the first week: we’ll get them labouring wheelbarrowing soil, compost and manure in the weeks to come! I was delighted to get an email from a parent a couple of days later detailing the lovely-sounding dishes that they had made with the produce their child had taken home, including a risotto with the rarely-grown-at-Farfield butternut squash. Our farm project aims to connect children to their food and introduce them to a wide range of fruits and vegetables and this was a great example of a child trying something new – and loving it! Year 1 also came up to the farm and got some produce to make vegetable soup back in class.