Our academic year draws to a close and we all preparing for a well-deserved break. Who would have thought last September that this is how we end the year? The last 10 months has presented a range of challenges to meet, and this is an opportune time to reflect on how well we have managed.
You may remember that in September the new extension opened, eventually. After protracted disputes with the builders and many heated meetings with site officials, we did move the first classes into the building within the first week of term. Although there are many aspects of the building that have yet to be snagged, the new build has opened up great possibilities for meeting children’s needs, when seen in the context of the expanding school and upgraded school site. This includes the redesigned playground space, relocated offices and extra support rooms. The development of the whole site has given us a coherent building, flexible enough to allow us to manage our business with efficiency. The site is now rational and we meet children’s needs well within it.
We undertook a programme of reforms and innovations over the year to strengthen our practices and increase outcomes, all defined within our School Development Plan. These include the revisions to the new school curriculum, the development of a bespoke early Years Curriculum, projects to enhance inclusive teaching, reforms to our assessment procedures and the strengthening of our well-being provision. Whilst we have not been able to complete most of these, we made excellent progress with them all.
Staffing in the school remains very stable and individuals have all performed superbly, contributing to an excellent team effort throughout.
Our support for other schools through the Teaching School and the Redbridge Education Partnership has been excellent throughout the year. We have supported most schools within the local authority through the organisation of subject leader enhancement, successfully completed our Initial Teacher Training programme and taken part in DfE initiatives with schools in the East of England.
The Board of Governors has continued to function effectively, offering a good balance of timely challenge and critical friendship. Some of the Board’s functions have been reformed and others enhanced. Our Board has recently welcomed three new members and we currently have no vacancies.
Without doubt our greatest challenge this year was the arrival of the pandemic in March. The school has been reorganised endlessly over the past four months, sometimes more than once in a day, in order to meet the demands of protecting the community from infection, supporting the education of our pupils and offering well-being support to those in need. We have run an effective Daycare Unit since the start of lockdown, offered a wide range of challenging home learning to all children, managed the free-school-meals vouchers, learnt how to Zoom and opened up classes to children in Years One, Five and Six. All children have had accurate reports, transition arrangements to secondary schools have been completed and the site has remained opened throughout. Although a number of our community suffered infections, we are proud that our precautions have resulted in no-one being infected from contact in the building.
I am finally delighted to report the following school achievements over the year:
- The school was awarded the Mayor of London’s Volunteering Award (Activity and Well-being category) in September 2019
- We were awarded the Fairtrade “Fair-aware status” also in September 2019
- Oliver Szabadi (Y6) represented Redbridge in the London Youth Games in the cross country even
- We received a £1,000 grant from WE/Team London in the “youth social action” element to develop inclusive Tag Rugby
- We were awarded Gold STARS accreditation in October 2019 for promoting sustainable travel to school
- Our kitchen received the highest 5 star rating for food hygiene by the Food Standards Agency in January 2020
- Our Boccia team won the gold medal in the Redbridge Games in January 2020
- Our Kurling team won the silver medal in the Redbridge Games in January 2020
Our collective support and team work this year, especially during Lockdown, has been fantastic. I would like to thank each and every member of staff for their hard work and dedication. We can all rightly feel proud that we have been stronger together and managed probably the most turbulent school year ever, with such good humour and community spirit. I would also like to thank the parents and carers for supporting the children's education and protecting the children. The children have coped well with the emergency and we cannot wait to welcome them all back in September.
I wish you all a good summer, hope you can
enjoy your time with your families and look forward to seeing everyone back in school again in September.
Head
Teacher
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