Headteacher’s Blog 24th November 2023
It’s been hard to keep up with the number of visits, visitors and events that the children have been enjoying over the past week or so: a trip to Temple Newsam, dance groups, football matches and events, accessible bowling, a sound workshop, cross country competition tomorrow, a World War 1 workshop on Monday and a Winter Voices concert next week. All this brings some richness to the wider curriculum that we are able to provide. Sometimes we do ask for a contribution to cover some of these costs, but we do try to minimise costs through volunteer staffing and minibus use.
Earlier this week I visited another school in Leeds to observe a boy who may be transferring here. It is always interesting to visit other schools: for good ideas and a reminder of our values and approaches to education. It was striking how different our Y1 classrooms are compared to some other schools as we retain some elements of the play-based curriculum of Reception. I do think this is positive and it is important to give 5 year olds plenty of opportunity to continue to learn and develop through play. It was also interesting to see Y1s struggling to relearn letter formation for joining letters having not been taught cursive formation in the early years.
On Monday we had our mid-year budget review. We should manage to avoid overall deficit this year after some regrettable reductions in staffing last summer. Unfortunately, it does look like we will need to make a further £50k of cuts next year. It would be really helpful if we qualified again for split site funding but unfortunately the government insists that we must have a road between the buildings to qualify despite almost all the additional costs of our arrangement being there regardless of a road…
Play based learning in the early years and into Ks1 is one of the many wonderful reasons why we chose this school. So important for children’s development.
Thank you