Headteacher blog 15th November 2024

It has been a really busy week again, with a full governing body meeting and lots of school tours: one of which was in the dark in the evening with no children – that’s a sales challenge! On one of the tours I was leading a group of prospective parents and children up to the chickens area and suddenly spotted three Y6 girls in the undergrowth. Had they absconded from school and not been noticed? I was about to be excruciatingly embarrassed but then there was an ‘only at Farfield moment’: they were taking a pig for a walk!

At the full governing board meeting, we reflected on some outstanding SATs results last summer and some very positive feedback from families. The shadow hanging over us, however, is financial with the school projecting a significant deficit in the near future. Being a split site doesn’t help as this brings lots of additional costs. When I first started as head here, we got £40k a year to support our split site costs but the government changed the definition of split site in 2014 and we have lost half a million in revenue funding since then. That money would have been useful!