Week 9

Dear Parent/ Carer,

The first week back after the first Half Term always puts me in the mind that Christmas concerts, Carols Around The Tree and more will be upon us very soon.  I am looking forward to celebrating Christmas with our children and with you all.

First, the business of learning.  We have hit the ground running again after the break.  I have asked all staff to set themselves small achievable goals for every Half Term.  Goals for how they will help our children to progress; to acquire a new skill, to secure new learning, to breakthrough a barrier from the first Half Term.  The business of learning is a joint enterprise, and I would encourage you to build that rich dialogue with your child's teacher in support of their learning.  Ask those questions that you don't know the answer to, give us feedback on your child's learning.

Our unique partnership of schools has been on my mind this week.  One of the many attractions for me in this post was the opportunities that the partnership offers to all of our children and each of our communities.  Our teachers this week began a collaboration on developing Pupil Voice in our schools, all of our Maths leaders met together to plot how we will together improve our provision for Maths.  I am meeting with teams next week to look at building a World Class curriculum that uses London as its inspiration... together.  In the background, teams are collaborating on ICT, assessment and quality of teaching.  I am sure that as the year progresses many and much more tangible examples of our partnership will be in evidence.  We are, for instance, planning joint sports and Arts activities.

I am also very keen to develop further - from what is already a very well established, very rich and very diverse range of community-based activity in our schools - our engagement with our communities.  Again, a huge attraction for me was the richness and the depth of talent and creativity that exists within our school communities.  I am eager to tap into that in any way that we can, for the benefit of our children.  The more experiences that we can give them, the greater the breadth of opportunities they have, the more experts and inspirational role models that they meet... the better.  The schools themselves don't always have all of the answers and sometimes we can overlook the blindingly obvious... Please, let us know what skills and talents you have, if we don't know already, and if you are able to make them available to support children's learning and experience at our schools.

Have a great weekend,
Mark Wilson