As you know it has been ‘Walk to School Week‘ in school. Thank you to all of you who helped your children support this project this week. I do think that the benefits of walking, cycling or ‘scootering’ to school are extremely beneficial and we should be focussed on supporting children to use ‘sustainable’ transport all year round. As well as being good for the children’s health and wellbeing it helps protect their future health. There is good statistical evidence that demonstrates that higher exposure to air pollution increases rates of neurodegenerative diseases and we do not want to expose the children to something now that could impact on their future life. If we use less cars, buses and trains we can help reduce the chances of this happening. I have been doing assemblies about this all week and the children have all been quite amazed at how children in other parts of the world travel to school. They were particularly stunned at the picture of a nine-year-old girl using a pulley on a piece of rope to cross a river whilst carrying her younger brother in a mesh sack across her body. If children in other parts of the world are travelling to school like that I am sure that we can all organise ourselves to leave a little earlier in the morning so that our children can get to school without using a car. Even if we do need to use a car to get the children to school it would be good if you could park at a distance from the school and walk the last part of the journey so you are at least keeping pollution away from the school environment whilst helping to improve your children’s health.

I mentioned in my blog last week that we were filming a virtual tour for prospective parents. This is now complete and has been put onto the front page of our website and I thought as existing parents you may like to see it as you have not been inside the school for quite a while. I am really pleased with it apart from the opening sequence which has me in it –or at least I think it is me. If it is true that the camera never lies I need to find a plastic surgeon fast to get rid of the extra baggage around my eyes and the jowls that have developed around my chin! Let us hope I do not put off new parents coming to the school.

Next week we are starting our parent consultations. Unfortunately, because of Covid 19, we cannot do them in person so we are doing them by telephone this term. You can still book appointments in advance, and, as I always ask you, please stick to your allocated amount of time. If something needs to be discussed in more depth the class teacher will contact you at a later date to discuss it in more detail. Hopefully, at some time in the not too distant future, we will be able to welcome you in person again but in the meantime we have to do all we can to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus in school.

Have a great weekend. It may be getting colder but at least we are not expected to get the rain that we had last weekend (although it does not appear that way this afternoon).