Stephen Perse Foundation Parent Portal - Dame Bradbury's Newsletter 5 June

Dear Parents and Friends

I am delighted to be writing this sitting in school, and able to hear the sound of our pupils playing happily outside; whilst at the same time there is more than a tinge of regret that we cannot all be back here together at the moment. I won’t pretend that there was not a touch of nervousness as we approached re-opening, but the huge amount of preparation that was put into every aspect of it has certainly paid off. Thank you to all the staff from teaching, admin, estates and management who helped, and indeed the support and involvement from our parent body during all stages of this process. You will see from the content of the newsletter that the response from both staff and pupils to the re-opening has been overwhelmingly positive so far; and I do hope some of you who have kept your children at home, either through choice or through necessity, will be reassured by what you have heard, and what you can see and read here. We are lucky indeed to have enough space on our site to easily be able to put the necessary measures in place and, though our spaces may look a little different, the feel is essentially the same. (Apart from form 6K, that is, who have now taken up residence in the theatre!)

I introduced our new learning habit, tolerance, in assembly on Monday, and it does strike me that this is a most appropriate focus for the challenges of this half term. Pupils have needed to be tolerant of their separation from each other, both off site and now on site too, where sometimes there is a feeling of so-near-and-yet-so-far for children in different bubbles. I doubt that there is a family among us where the levels of tolerance have not needed to be raised in some respect too; and of course we now also have a split staff body, with some off site and some on. But whatever the disadvantages of the current situation, I do know that our resilience and tolerance will both have been enhanced by what we have been through.

Let us not forget, though, the fundamental reason for our community, which of course is the education of your children, our pupils. We continue to hold our aims and ethos at the heart of everything that we do because we believe that it is the best education for life that we can offer. We have not shied away from difficult decisions, and we will continue to keep the wider wellbeing of all our pupils as paramount. Learning has taken on a different character, but we have also continued to focus on maintaining a robust coverage of basic skills in the core subjects too, and will continue to do so for the remainder of term, wherever we are.

One thing that I and others have found very uplifting over the past few months has been the weekly focus on pupil achievements highlighted in our Friday assemblies. It’s striking what a range of different activities children (sometimes accompanied by parents!) have been up to, and I know that one knock-on effect of having more downtime has been to afford people the time to try something new or update a rusty skill. Please do encourage your child or children to keep letting me know about their discoveries and achievements during this final half term of the year.

With my best wishes to you all

Louise Graham

Head of Dame Bradbury’s 5-11

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