Weekly Bulletin 07.03.2025

Welcome to Bulletin #25

From Mr H

It has been another very busy week in school with lots going on. Thanks to all who supported World Book Day. There were some fantastic outfits, which made school feel very different – Hogwarts-eqsue in a lot of places!. I think the only person who let the side down was myself – my apologies…I couldn’t figure a way to do all the things I had on in the day whilst wearing fancy dress!

Our girl footballers played their first ever match on Thursday. Our team is largely made up of Year 5s who are playing ‘a year up’ in a Year 6 league. They came up against a very strong Mapperley Plains team whose physical strength and clear advantage in terms of match experience made a world of difference. Our girls did us proud though, showing great attitude, lots of resilience and pride and definitely got better as the match went on. It finished 11-0 and is far from the biggest defeat we’ve ever suffered, either girls or boys!

We have a new Vice Chair of Governors. Our sincere thanks to parent governor Trevor Wilson, who kindly agreed to take on this role following the ‘retirement’ of outgoing vice-chair Dennis last term. Trevor is daddy to Ziva in 1 Palm and is usually on the playground each morning, often to be spotted catching up on school and Forest matters with myself!

Walk To School Week (see below from previous bulletin) is actually a fortnight (!) and starts on Monday.

We will all be trying to reduce our dependence on cars for our journeys to school. Each day, teachers will take a tally of journeys that meet the criteria of an ‘active journey’ for the Big Walk and Wheel and these are submitted to the organisers. We can win prizes and awards in this national event. It is recognised that some children might be unable to complete an entire commute actively, but the criteria allow for a car journey to be cut short and finished with at least 10 minutes of walking or wheeling. We’ll launch with an assembly on Monday that explains everything to the children.

Annual Report Trial

Our huge  thanks to those who volunteered to be ‘guinea pigs’ for our trial of a new report format. The feedback was unanimously positive, rating the new format as better than the old. Everyone agreed the new style was more digestible, informative and personalised to their child. There were also some great suggestions to make the new format even better, which we have now incorporated into the design. We hope everyone will be pleased with these changes when the reports come out for-real in the Summer.

Ethical Uniform

More thanks – this time to anyone who responded to the market research on offering more sustainable, ethically sourced uniform. This was largely very positively received and Governors considered this in their termly meeting on Wednesday. They have asked school leaders to investigate further, with a view to offering a choice to sit alongside the existing options, with the further parental choice to have Parkdale branding or not. We appreciate that many people love the logo and branding (us too!) but that it adds to the cost and the Department for Education expects all schools to keep the requirement for logos to a minimum.

Diary