Dear Parents & Guardians,

 

I hope you are all well.  This week we had a sports focus and it has been great to see so much participation in our virtual sports day from home and in school; it has certainly been competitive.  For the last full week of term Mrs Dodds has put together lots of wonderful wellbeing activities for you to enjoy.

 

This week our year 6 had two days of Bikeability and mostly missed the rain!  The first day was on the playground and the second out on the roads.  They all did brilliantly and I was proud of them hearing the feedback from the instructors.  

We have lots planned for the year 6 for their last two days in school; I can't believe their leaving has come around so quickly and under such unprecedented circumstances.

 

Sadly I must inform you that Mrs Demblon our SEND leader who has worked with us for the past year will be leaving us at the end of term.  Mrs Demblon has been fantastic for our school and has supported our staff, pupils and families in such a positive way.  I am sure you will join me in thanking her and wishing her well.  This week I held a handover meeting with Mrs Demblon and Mrs Combe who will be taking on the SEND role from September.  Some of you may remember Mrs Combe from when she taught here several years ago.  She was a wonderful SEND leader for us then and we are excited to welcome her back and I know she will be an asset to our school.

 

Last week we received the guidance for school reopening in September.  I have been working hard with the support of Wokingham, our Diocesan Advisor and the staff to make plans to fit in line with the rigorous risk assessments that I will be writing.  On Tuesday the full Governing Board will meet and then towards the end of next week I plan to share further information with you in reference to September.  As I said in a previous newsletter, we have the experience of the last few months to support us with this planning process.  It has been such a challenging time; this week I was informed that in May the Dfe made 60 updated changes to the guidance we were following and then a further 70 in June and this just refers to the Covid-19 guidance!  As exhausting as it all is, seeing the children so happy in school is wonderful and we are proud of what we have achieved and positive about September.

 

We were pleased to email out all the reports this week; thank you to those of you who have sent in the reply slip already.  Report writing time is always a busy one for teachers but this year we had much more to contend with and I wish to thank the staff for their hard work.  It is also the time of year for our parent survey and we would be pleased to have your feedback.  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/PPQFLLL

We do have a second survey relating specifically to lock down which I will send you a link to next Friday along with a transport survey.

 

Next week we will have some things to send home with the children, if you would rather your child did not bring anything from school to home please send an email to finchparents@finchampstead.wokingham.sch.uk. We also need to collect back any football kit, netball kit, Recorders and Ukuleles please.

 

I wish you a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you next week.

 

With kind regards

Jacquie Vanstone