October 17th 2021
We have had an excellent and extremely busy Arts Week, in the lead up to half-term. The Sustainability theme was pivotal to the programme, and Miss Roberts’ and Miss Symonds’ excellent assembly on Monday morning launching our new policy set the tone for the week. There was so much going on in many different areas of the school. The whole school Art Exhibition in the marquee was viewed by many parents, and the strong message of the Year 5 production ‘One Planet Future’, which ran for two nights, was very well received. After such a long absence of live music, it was a joy to have two evening concerts in the theatre, and we have also had sustainability workshops for Years 3 -8 during the week. Thank you to the staff who have made all these excellent events possible and for coordinating the week around sustainability. The boys have fully embraced this incredibly important theme of Arts Week - let’s hope world leaders can do the same in Glasgow at COP26.
It has been so refreshing to have the school running on almost entirely normal setting during this past half-term. However, parents will be aware that over the past forty-eight hours we have had a cluster of Covid cases centred around Year 6. Thank you to parents for your understanding as we introduced some temporary measures to contain the outbreak, and I know how disappointing it was for the Year 6 boys who were due to be performing in the concert on Thursday evening to have to miss it. We do hope that those boys (and parents) who have had positive tests make a swift recovery.
In many respects we have been relatively fortunate in this half of term in the limited number of positive cases that the school has had, particularly when one hears stories from other schools, but recent events are a reminder that we need to be vigilant as we enter the winter months. Prior to returning to school on 1st November, please could I encourage all boys to take a Lateral Flow Device Test on Sunday 31st October. This is a request, not a requirement, and we hope that it may aid a smooth start to the second half of term. We will leave a plentiful supply of test kits in the school porch at the entrance to the School Office, and parents are welcome to collect these over half-term.
I hope you have a restful and enjoyable break from the school routine.
