We have some additions to the staff this year; Mrs Whiting is joining us as a Year 7 form tutor and she will be teaching English, and Mr Kendall is joining us on a temporary basis to work alongside Mr Bird (senior) who will be working across the county for two days a week. We are also lucky to be joined by Miss McColl and Mr Straughan who will be working on placement with Key Stage 2. We A full list of all the staff and Governors can be found on the website. Following the appointment of our new Heads of Year, we have re-visited our Behaviour Policy and made sure that it is fully up to date. This will be on the website with an ‘easy to follow’ guide to how we deal with poor behaviour. As parents, you have told us that you want to be kept up to date on these issues, rather than only hearing about them on reports and at parents’ evenings, therefore, all teaching staff will make a note of poor behaviour in a child’s planner as well as recording it on our information system. Should you have any questions about behaviour (both good and … not so good), your first point of contact is always your child’s form tutor. Please could I remind parents that the yards/playgrounds and fields around school are not supervised outside of the school day (8.45am-3.40pm), unless children are involved in pre-arranged clubs. In the interests of safety, please could you be in touch with school, if you intend to drop off or pick up children outside of these times? Breakfast club will continue to run again this year – it has been immensely successful and very popular with a number of children. For new parents, Breakfast club opens at 8am – this is supervised by a qualified member of staff in the Food Tech room and provides a range of healthy breakfasts, as well as support for homework or space to read. It is free to all children on Free School Meals and only 50p to those who are not. In a very generous moment (I was probably still in a summertime mood), I have agreed that school will provide footballs and goals for the playgrounds this year. In a break from tradition, these will no longer be ‘penny floaters’ (I had never heard this term before moving here), but will be a particular size and weight. This means that nobody has to bring a ball to school – this may deter some of the small arguments about who can play in which team, using which football. The balls and goals will be smaller than standard, so play will need to be particularly skilful … I hope that there has been some practice going in over the holidays! Finally, all children will have some time with their form tutors tomorrow morning, but will be in timetabled lessons in the afternoon. This does mean that Y5 and Y8 will need PE kit. Please could you make sure that they have all of their PE equipment because they will be labelling it up – here’s hoping that nobody loses any kit this year! I look forward to seeing the children tomorrow – hopefully, they will be as enthusiastic and energetic as the staff have been!