Welcome to Birkwood An #IncredibleCommunity

I can hardly believe this is the end of the half term and halfway through the academic year.

As always, we have had an incredibly busy week with some real highlights I must start with thanking Miss Taylor and the team for some sterling work for the school disco. This was a superb night and we managed to raise some valuable funds that shall be put back into subsidising the cost of trips and visits.

More ‘thank yous’ to our families who have been absolutely wonderful in supporting the wear red day. This again was a tremendous success and shows exactly the kind of values that our school is all about I salute our #IncredibleCommunity for your incredible efforts

This morning school received a visit from a practising Ofsted inspector in her role as LA School Improvement Officer. This highlighted some of the very hard and skilful work the staff of Birkwood provide in enriching our curriculum. The hard work was recognised as was the success of our children within their day-to-day work in school. This was a fantastic affirmation of what we are trying to achieve at Birkwood and again I thank everybody who was bought into our vision. A very rewarding experience.

This week has marked children's mental health week. I have introduced the expectation that every single member of staff telephones a parent every week to congratulate them on the efforts of their children. Sometimes it is extremely easy to forget to share good news! Of course safeguarding comes first and we contact parents whenever we feel necessary. This however is a positive notice policy that I'm sure many many parents will enjoy. I point out extremely often to all of our wonderful staff, that working here with our children is a pleasure and a privilege. Sharing and spreading the good news of Birkwood is something that I am extremely passionate about. I hope the parents who received a phone call really enjoyed them and have made their children feel special because they deserve it!

The week began with some fantastic road safety awareness work led by our wonderful school council. The most serious messages were conveyed with a sense of fun and ensuring the children's knowledge of road safety is robust is something very important to everybody at Birkwood.

Our focus on safety switched to Internet safety later on in the week. Many thanks to the families who were able to attend our E safety workshop with Leeder Safeguarding. The children were excellent in their knowledge and then their advice on how to stay safe. Please help them to practise what they were preaching at all times; they were superb.

Speaking of our lovely school, the extension is continuing to absolutely fly up. I am very excited for the children to be educated within there, hopefully from the day after the Easter holiday. Not long now!

I finish this week’s notes by saying a heartfelt Goodbye to Miss Cooke - she has been superb to work with and we shall all miss her I wish her happiness with her family and all the best in her new role.

Please have an excellent half term, stay safe and I will look forward to seeing the children in a week when we have more exciting things planned at Birkwood.