Thank you for all the lovely messages and thanks to staff regarding our super Bfest last Saturday. Apart from the rain starting just at the end, it was a perfect day. The children performed brilliantly, the PTFA stalls were superb, the Well-being tent was wonderful and the Year 5 and 6 stalls kept everyone thoroughly entertained. Bravo to everyone involved and a huge well done to Mrs Proud for masterminding the whole event and creating so many special memories for all of our children! Please see the thank you list below.

We are all in a great state of excitement for Bfest and preparations are going very well. Thank you to every parent/carer/grandparent who has signed up for a slot to help this event. WE NEED YOUR HELP to make this a successful day for all our children - so please get involved. There is really something for everyone before/during/after and no special skills are required – just like we say to the children, ‘give it a go’ and I promise you won’t regret it.

We have had a lovely start to our Jubilee festivities with an active day of dancing! A professional dancer came to teach us dance steps from different eras, funded by school PE premium money; Year R had 1950s dances, Year 1 1960s, Year 2 had 1970s, Year 3 had 1980s, Year 4 had 1990s, Year 5 had 2000s and Year 6 had 2010s. It was somewhat galling to know your ‘heyday’ of youthful dancing is now seen as a historic era by the primary children, but we all had a great time (and learnt some cool moves)!

We have packed an awful lot into the four day week! Year 3 and 4 have had a brilliant time at their first school residential. One of the children described it to me as “like the best ever sleepover, but with your whole class and you’re all having fun”. I visited earlier this week and can confirm the Gordon Brown Centre remains a child’s paradise with animals to pet, plenty of green space to play, and brilliant instructors to inspire, and our Bentley teachers are on hand to offer support and fairness. A huge thank you to Mrs Rushin, Mrs Rhodes, Mrs Phillips, Miss Hastie and Mr Goddard for juggling home life so they can take the children for this amazing opportunity. We are so lucky to have staff who volunteer to do this. You can read more about what they have been up to by clicking here to read the blog.

It has been lovely to come back into school after being off with Covid – it finally ‘got’ me! It has certainly made this term quite a challenge in staffing but I am so incredibly grateful for our amazing staff team and our regular supply staff too. Everyone has pulled together and we have somehow – miraculously – continued to be open every single day for school except for the terrible storm day just before the half term break. We have continued to offer the children a rich and engaging curriculum, hot school lunches every day, a great offer of clubs and wrap-a-round childcare was only affected once. I am not sure quite how we managed to pull this off but I do know I wish each one of the adults working in school a very restful and re-generating Easter Break!

Many of us have been thinking back to this time in 2020 as we went into the first lockdown and this time in 2021 when we were coming out of the third lockdown. Whilst I am always keen to think of the positives and look at the amazing progress made with vaccines, I have been reflecting upon everything we have all experienced throughout this time. This academic year so far half of our two hundred Bentley pupils have not experienced any time out of school due to Covid, but 98 pupils have a shared 800 days of missing school. This is way beyond our typical patterns of absence. Whilst some children have been off for just a few days, a couple have missed a significant amount of time this year, and others have been in and out more than once. This is something we are very mindful of in our classes and encourage all parents to support any children who are self-isolating to engage with home learning through Seesaw and Tapestry.