Friday 25 October 2013


At last it is half term– it has been a very eventful half term even without including the Ofsted and I know everyone at school is looking forward to the break – we will certainly have to get our energy reserves built up for the next half term which includes all the excitement of Christmas (I do not like mentioning that word in October). It was a long day for everyone in school yesterday because of the parent consultations but I have had lots of positive feedback from my teachers and all the parents I spoke to appeared to be happy with the work we are doing so that is always reassuring for us.

We have seen a change in the weather recently and I think we can say that autumn is definitely upon us so this is a good time to remind everyone that all KS2 will need to be in winter uniform after half term. Some of the children do not like the ties and tend to try to wear them more casually so it would be a great help to us if you could ensure that they do up the top button of their shirt and have the tie pulled up to the collar before they leave home. It does make a difference when all the children are smartly presented. We are also having an increasing amount of children coming to school without their PE kit which is not acceptable. PE kits should be brought to school on a Monday and taken home on a Friday so can you please make sure that your child brings their PE kit to school when they come back after the half term.

After the holiday the Year 6 will be selling poppies in the classrooms all week so if you would like your child to have one, please make sure they come to school with a donation - we at school all think that the Royal British Legion charity is a most worthwhile one to support. We will also be having our annual Bonfire Night with the Rotary Club on November 9th. The winner of the poster competition was presented with their prize this morning (this year the winner was Roxy in Year 3).  If you have not purchased your tickets yet make sure you get them quickly – it is always a great night and not one you would want to miss.

All that is left for me to do now is to wish you a great half term – I hope you all manage to get some rest and relaxation and I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 4th November.

Friday 18 October 2013


I am now returning to normal service with my blog after the disruption that has been caused over the last couple of weeks. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about I am referring to the fact that two weeks ago due to a technical fault my blog was not published and then last week I was at the Head Teacher’s Conference so I was out of school at the end of the week.

In school this week it has been a much more normal week although I have had to attend a lot of meetings so I have not been around some mornings to stand on the gate. Our school improvement partner visited us this week.  He was helping us set the targets for the coming year to ensure that we achieve the best from the children and also assess our performance over the past year. As we have just had Ofsted this was quite a straight forward exercise but it was still good that he confirmed their findings. Our job is now to get the school to outstanding and although it will still be just as challenging as before I am sure with everyone’s support it will be achievable. I do not think that a school should be solely judged on its Ofsted report but I do hope that the recent inspection has given parents the confidence to realise that we do know what to do to move the school forward.

I am sure that all the Year 5 parents who could attend this morning will agree with me that the assembly that we saw this morning was very good. I thought that the children’s interpretations of the fairy tales were very amusing and their performances were very entertaining. I would like to thank all the children for the hard work they put into their performance and also Mrs Richardson, Mrs Clarke, Mrs Ranzetta and Miss O’Brien for all their efforts in putting the assembly together.

We have a good start to next week because the Sharing Assembly is now on a Monday morning which is always enjoyable. We have changed the day of the Sharing assembly in response to a request from the Parent Council who asked that we do not have the assemblies all on the same day to help working parents.

Next week is also parent consultation week so I will see a lot of parents in school which will be nice. I would like to remind everyone that the consultations only last 10 minutes (15 minutes for Year 6) so do please keep to your time because if only a couple of sessions run over it can have a big impact on the smooth running of the event. If you feel there is a need to discuss something with the class teacher in more detail please make an appointment to see them at a separate time.

Monday 14 October 2013


It has just been brought to my attention that my blog did not get published onto the website last week. I thought I had published it and it showed up on my laptop as having done so, so obviously there must have been a technical error. One of the main items of my blog last week was to explain that I would be out of school for half of the week as I was at the heads’ conference and that Mrs Zegallo would be in charge but obviously that is old news now as I am now back in school. Normally, when I attend this event I do not write a blog but because of what has happened I am producing a sort of ‘2 in 1’ with an explanation of what has happened and also some of the content of what you should have seen last week as there were some important thanks in that.

I would like to finish this week’s blog by asking that as I always publish my blog on a Friday that if people notice it is not there, and I have not given any explanation the week before that I am out of school, please do come and tell me. I will not be offended and will be very glad that I have been made aware of an error in the system.

Items from last week’s blog that should have been published on 4th October 2013.

I am writing this after a busy morning helping out with the Harvest Festival. This event has become a bit of a tradition in Little Heath and I look forward to it as it gives me an opportunity to meet up with many parents. It also serves a good purpose because we raise a lot of money for charity. I would like to thank the PTA and all the parent helpers who ran the event and I would like to thank all the parents who donated cakes and who attended the event because without all the support this event would not be possible.

Even more thanks are due because of the ‘Book Fair’. We have not got the exact total in yet but we sold just over a thousand pounds worth of books and whatever the final total is we get to spend 60% on books for the school. The generosity of Little Heath parents never fails to astound me. Again I would like to thank everyone (and that includes the staff) who helped to run the Book Fair after school.

We are having an increasing amount of requests to put invitations and letters into the children’s book bags so they can be sent home. We have a policy that we do not send any leaflets home via the book bags and that has been in place since before I arrived at the school. I have been informed that on a number of occasions, to try and help a parent, staff have overlooked this policy but this will not happen again. If your child has party invitations or thank you letters to give out they should do it themselves -particularly as one of our action points is to encourage independence in the children. If there is a class event you would like to advertise you can display it in the class window but we cannot guarantee that everyone will see this.