The school year has ended with a “Goodbye and Welcome” BBQ - an unusual and poignant end to a complex year. Our efficient, and supportive administrator, Karen, has retired from her post, but certainly not from an exciting new journey as she pursues oriental exercises and vegan cooking.  Paul is taking a sabbatical to spend time with his family, we thank him for his trojan support running our new site at Bayswater and acting as caretaker as well as senior teacher. Andy will teach maths and science and the gap he leaves at Lavender Walk will be filled by Grace, a maths teacher with many years of experience - you are so very welcome After 18 years at Collingham, Chelsea, St Mary's, and setting up new programmes during Covid, we are delighted that Nicola has taken on an assistant heads post near to her home, rather than traveling hours each day.  Many thanks Nicola for all your hard work.  Andre our computer teacher is also moving on to teach at a college, and we wish him a successful year.

Despite the end of Covid we have had increasing members of staff and students being impacted, many for a second or third time. The teamwork this has needed has been exceptional - thank you to all our staff for ensuring students still have the support they require to achieve.

The 25th of August is GCSE results day and we have asked our students and parents to one come in on this day to celebrate this with the whole team.  The nail-biting suspense is just as apparent in staff as it is in students!

The hospitals we work in are beginning to open up to visitors and young people are now able to mix on the wards and can even come to the school rooms. Music, violins, singing, and piano playing are also having a resurgence now rules are reduced - what a gift to hear staff and students singing together - an uplifting joy.

Even though teachers and students are now on holiday until 5th September, support staff will be running a holiday programme in all our six schools for 5 weeks. This will involve outings to parks, museums, lakes, swimming, catching up with maths, music, singing and of course a range of art projects - thank you for this energy and ideas.

Best wishes,

Janette Steel (Principal)