Thank you very much to everyone who donated money to ‘Children in Need’ today, especially as we only gave people short notice about the ‘non-uniform day’. We originally were not going to do anything for this day since we will be asking for contributions for our own ‘Christmas Fayre’ in a couple of weeks but there was so much in the media about the event that I thought the children would feel left out if we did nothing. The appeal also supports some very worthwhile causes.


I am sure that some of you have been wondering what is going to happen in school on November 30th. You have probably heard a lot in the news about all teaching unions taking industrial action because of the government s decision to alter their pension provision. The hope is that the government will see the strength of feeling through the amount of people that have voted to take action and that they will change their mind about the changes to teachers’ pensions. As soon as I know what is going to happen on that day I will let you know.

I hope that we will see lots of you at the ‘Mathematics Evening’ on December 1st. We are holding this event as so many parents told us in the summer that they would love an event about maths because calculation methods are so different from those they learnt at school. Deborah Mulroney, who will be presenting the event, has been a maths consultant with Hertfordshire for many years. She is working with our school at the moment on a maths research project which involves schools that have had consistently high maths attainment over a number of years. During the evening she will be demonstrating a number of different calculation methods and strategies that are used to help solve mental maths problems. Then after a short Q & A session pupils will be demonstrating some of the maths calculation methods they have learnt in class. Apart from the pupils involved in demonstrating calculation methods this will be an evening for parents only.