| Head's Blog
A very warm welcome back to the new school year – and especially so to our new families.
We hope that you are already feeling at home and enjoying all that Sherborne House offers.
As ever, it has been a very busy summer, and we are sure that you will have noticed the commencement of the refurbishment programme to the Bowes building. The new windows and facades have been installed, following considerable digging beneath the surface to improve the drainage system both under Bowes, and to the main playground generally. You will see that new drainage channels have also been dug alongside the Pines building, which will considerably reduce the amount of water flowing across the playground, and will prevent the build-up of water at the bottom end of the playground. Of course, the completion of this work coincided with one of the driest summers on record! Just when we were hoping for a deluge to be able to test the new channels, the sun shone brightly and continued to do so for the remainder of the holiday. However, we await the first Autumn downpours with confidence!
The school’s website has also been refreshed with a new look and additional content, and we hope that you will find information, reports of class activities and special events and indeed, all aspects of school life, easier to find and more current. With more years at Sherborne House than we would care to admit, it was especially lovely for Mrs Cliffe-Roberts, Mrs Lee and me to read the comments of previous pupils’ experiences on our new Alumni page. Their memories of their time here are touching, and their success in all walks of life is much to be both proud of, and inspired by. If you are a previous pupil at Sherborne House, we welcome you to complete the form on the alumni page.
We also hope that information about the routines of the school day will also be easier to find, and there are new pages regarding EYFS, the Pre-Prep and Prep departments, together with information regarding extra-curricular opportunities on our new Clubs page. Please let us know if there is anything else you would find useful that we could add.
We were delighted to welcome parents into school for two workshops just after we started back to school, one with regard to the content, structure and aims of the EYFS curriculum, and a second to explain our new Talk4Writing English initiative. The aim of these workshops was to explain the concepts, structure and overall objectives of the curriculum content, so that parents could understand the how and why of what we are doing, and how children may be supported at home. We aim to offer more workshops during the coming year, so please look out for future presentations. Please do not hesitate to also let us know if there is a subject or aspect of the curriculum which you would like us to consider for future workshops.
On quite a different aspect of school life, I am extremely pleased to announce the creation of a Middle Leadership Team. This is an exciting development for the school, as the Middle Leadership Team will hugely support and enhance the work of the Senior Leadership Team. Additionally, this will facilitate in-house career progression, offering our staff the opportunity to take on a first leadership role within Sherborne House. I am therefore delighted to announce the following roles and responsibilities which take place with immediate effect:
Middle Leadership Team
Miss N Loat, Head of Early Years (Pre-Reception and Reception)
Mrs H James, Head of Lower Prep (Years 1, 2 and 3)
Miss R Williams, Head of Upper Prep (Years 4, 5 and 6)
Senior Leadership Team
Mrs H Hopson-Hill, Head Teacher
Mr M Bennet, Deputy Head (Safeguarding Lead, Behaviour/Pastoral Care and Assessment)
Mrs S Evans, Director of Teaching and Learning (Curriculum and Quality Assurance)
I know that you will join me in congratulating Miss Loat, Mrs James and Miss Williams on their appointments. They will now assume the management of the teaching staff within their departments, so should a Form Tutor not be able to answer your enquiry, please refer to the MLT member for the appropriate year in the first instance.
As you can see, it has already been a very busy start to the new academic year. The staff and I very much look forward to working with you in the coming months and hope to see you all at the forthcoming Parents’ Evenings on October 16th and 17th, booking for which will open on Thursday 4th October.
Heather Hopson-Hill, Head Teacher