After a fantastic outdoor Christmas Fair we are all excited about our Elf run today. A huge thank you to everyone for getting behind these school PTFA fundraisers, which are bringing so much joy to all of our children! The teachers and support staff have spread some Christmas sparkle around the building with all the Christmas trees and decorations. Yann and Gemma from St Mary’s got us even more excited about Christmas in their weekly Collective Worship yesterday too!

It is certainly starting to feel busy in school with lots of lovely events being planned both nationally and locally for our children to enjoy. Please remember that none of us are superhuman and no one has endless money, so it is up to each family to decide which events to join in with. We try hard to ensure events and costs are spread across the year but a return to ‘normality’ with the residential payments looming on top of Christmas is a lot. Please do get in touch if you would like to set up payment plans for these. We are very clear with children that PTFA events are optional and try to ensure every child can feel involved. We appreciate every donation, no matter how big or small.

It has been great to be able to finally share the Ofsted inspection report with parents, carers and staff. Thank you very much for all the positive feedback, cards and messages from our, your feedback means a lot. The report is due to be published on the Ofsted website very soon and we will update our website link as soon as it is so that all friends of the school can read it too!

Last Friday after school I attended the COP-26 event set up a by Damian Hinds our local MP. I was hugely inspired by the passion and vision of everyone at the event. From retired people to Bentley parents, to East Hampshire teenagers and our very own Bentley ECO council (via a film which got a huge round of applause from the audience of about 400 people).

At our governing body meeting this week, we were discussing our long plans for the next five years and governors also agreed sustainability must be a vital part of our work.  

As I have been bringing together thoughts and ideas for this week’s newsletter, I realised there is a real theme for this week about ‘Pupil Voice’.  This is something we care very much about as a staff and we have many ways in which children share their thoughts, emotions and ideas with us at school. We have pupil groups such as the School Council, ECO Council and other special responsibilities. We have ‘HAS’ (Happy, Angry, Sad) books where children can draw, write and record their feelings). We prioritise listening to our feedback from our children, both as staff and governors. This helps us to try to address any concerns, but also ensures we collate feedback and reflect upon it at all levels so we remain truly child centred in what we plan.

Receiving the Ofsted ‘call’ on Monday morning is never expected but as we had been waiting for over fourteen years for another inspection it was very much welcomed. Whilst we knew the length of time between inspections was for very positive reasons, the school governors and I were aware our report was out of date and written around a framework which has been reviewed, updated and replaced several times since 2007!