Pre-Prep Reflections Week 9 November 2025
Dear parents,
The cold snap this week has been rather a shock to the system for the adults, but hasn’t deterred the children from enjoying playing and learning outside. We are now fully into hat, scarf and gloves territory so please do send these in along with the usual warm coats and wellies, all fully labelled of course!
Safeguarding
On Wednesday, I attended the Devon safeguarding forum, a meeting of designated safeguarding leads from schools across the county. I try to do this every term as it provides us with useful updates on what’s going on locally and nationally with child safeguarding. On Monday afternoon, I met with governors for our termly welfare and safeguarding committee meeting. One of the things we discussed was our plan to introduce a ‘ready for anything’ policy, essentially a lockdown procedure, which we will begin to rehearse with the staff and children in a similar way to fire evacuation drills. This is now UK law and I will share further details once the governors have approved the policy.
School office
Mrs Salt came into school on Wednesday morning to say goodbye to the children and we presented her with some flowers and a card in assembly. You will have seen my email earlier in the week to say that Fiona Turner has joined us temporarily to cover the school office. Mrs Turner was previously a teaching assistant at the junior school and retired last year. She is helping us out until Mrs Landy can take over the role of school administrator permanently. If you need to get in touch with the school office, please telephone or email preprep@exeterschool.org.uk.
Autumn Reviews
I hope you all received a copy of your child’s Autumn Review, which was sent home on Wednesday. It is always a pleasure to read these and I was delighted to see how well the children have settled this term and are trying hard with their learning. There will be an opportunity to discuss these with class teachers at parents’ evening next week, where you will also receive a written summary of your child’s strengths and next steps to focus on.
Nursery sessions
All Nursery parents have been emailed today about session booking for next term. We still have good availability across most days, but with new children joining each term, we like to give current parents the opportunity to increase sessions as we move through the year. If this is something you would like to do, please respond to the email as soon as possible, as once we reach the capacity of 16 children, the session is likely to be full for the rest of this year.
Parents’ Evening
I look forward to seeing many of you at parents’ evening on Wednesday night. Please come directly to the hall where the teachers will meet you when they are ready. These meetings are intended for parents only and there is no childcare available beyond Late Room, which finishes at 5.30pm. You are welcome to use Late Room without charge for the duration of your appointment(s). It also helps us greatly if you can be on time for your appointment and move on promptly after 10 minutes so that the next parent can start on time.
Next week
On Friday next week, Mrs Rickard will be in all day to teach Reception for Mrs Smyth. Ms Richards and I will be over at the junior school all day on Friday to help with interviews for their new Deputy Head.
Wishing you all a restful and relaxing weekend.
