Message to all families
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
A huge thank you.
Dear families,
A huge thank you for your support this term. It has been a very successful term where it has started to feel in some areas like we have been getting back to normal. It has been, and continues to be, a real challenge to maintain a full working school, with the absences we have seen with both COVID and the cold & flu bug that has been present this term. On a couple of occasions we have come close to asking for a year group to work remotely home for one day, when teacher absence was particularly challenging, but thankfully we have managed to avoid this. The staff have been brilliant at covering for colleagues absence and hopefully half-term comes at a good time and we are able to keep the full school working for the next half-term.
A special ‘well done’ to the Year 7 cohort who have now completed their first half-term at Preston, along with the new staff who joined us in September. It has been a brilliant half-term in school and I’d like to say how well everyone has settled in and are contributing positively to the Preston School community.
We have welcomed a huge amount of Year 6 pupils and their families to visit Preston over the half-term. This has not only been on Open Day & Evening but also during the school day over the last 5 weeks. It has been great to show so many people around and all visitors have commented on:
· The amazing learning environment in the school. Behaviour is excellent, allowing teachers to teach and great learning to take place
· The warmth of the school, in terms of the people, and how well everyone gets on together
· How hard-working the students and staff are
In terms of getting back to normal, it has been nice to host some in school events this term. These include:
· Open Day & subsequent tours – over 300 Year 6 pupils and their families have now visited Preston this term!
· Enterprise Day
· Race for Life Day – we raised £1,418!
· Year 8 Family Learning Day
· Governors’ Training Day
· Academic Mentoring Day/Night
One new introduction this year has been our improved safety and safeguarding with the new front gates at the entrance to school. This has made the experiences of our students who get taxis and lifts, to and from school, much better and also the school more secure. One knock-on effect of this has been the concentration of traffic at the top of the road and in surrounding roads. Please can I ask you to only drive your child if you really need to. If you do need to, please try and drop them slightly further away from school than the top of the road. This allows the traffic to flow much better and means that any emergency vehicles and buses are able to complete their journey without interruption. If your child has any mobility issues then please let us know and we can give you access to the car park. Only these authorised vehicles should enter the car park so please can I also ask that no-one else tail-gates another vehicle to gain entry. Sadly, some neighbours have also had people parking in front of their drives and on one occasion on their drive, whilst waiting to pick up their child. This is all about maintaining the safety and well-being of our students so thank you for your help with this.
On Thursday/Friday you will have your meeting with your child’s Academic Mentor (AM). This is to help further improve the home-school relationship and celebrate the positives about their return to school this half-term, as well as flagging up any issues so that they can be worked on throughout the rest of the academic year. If you have not yet got an appointment please book it through the portal or contact Miss Surrey on Jaclyn.Surrey@prestonschool.co.uk and she will be able to support you with this. Most of the information that your child’s AM will go through is available on the Family Portal. This is a wealth of information on your child and their performance at school, so please do make sure that you regularly log on via https://intranet.prestonschool.co.uk/parentintranet/ .
Finally, a reminder that school ends at 1.55pm tomorrow (Thursday)to enable AM Day appointments to start in the afternoon. Students are also not in school on Friday although work will be set on Google Classroom for all years. After half-term, Monday 1st November is an INSET Day where staff will be working on fine-tuning our curriculum offer and our deliver of this through working on The Preston Way. Therefore students will return to school on Tuesday 2nd November 2021.
Thank you again for all of your support this half-term. On behalf of the staff and governors I wish you a peaceful and healthy half-term.
Best wishes
Gregg Morrison
Principal
