Senior Reflections Week 27 April 2025
Dear parents,
This short week has been a busy one and it has been a pleasure to see your children happily returning to school and quickly settling into the term time routine. We have a small number of new pupils who have started this week too, into both the senior and junior schools and I hope that they have enjoyed their first few days and that they are making friends and starting to get to know the school well.
Nutrition talk
On Wednesday, in the whole school assembly, we had a very interesting presentation from Sodexo, our catering team, on nutrition and food. We are so lucky to have such great caterers and I hope that your children report back to you on the delicious food that we enjoy every day in the dining room. In the assembly, the theme was fibre and we heard about the importance of five a day and fresh fruit and vegetables comprising about a third of our daily intake of food, where possible. Alongside the importance of hydration, we learned about the impact on brain function as well as the importance of fibre for a healthy digestive tract. Pupils in the junior school and sixth form also had a chance to meet team members from Sodexo and ask questions of them directly.
Start of term letter and staff changes
If you missed it, I wrote to parents on Wednesday with a summary of the staff changes both for this term and looking ahead to the start of the new academic year. This letter can be found here, if you would like to read it again. We have a few colleagues who are welcoming new babies into the family this summer, and this has led to some fixed term appointments to cover maternity leave. In addition, we have some changes to working patterns which are leading to part time appointments being made and also a rather larger lower and middle school than we have had in the past. This has led to the creation of additional sets in a number of areas, leading to new appointments. With the financial pressures that the independent sector is facing at the moment, being a larger school is good for us in terms of efficiencies and choice for your children. Of course, we continue to ensure that highest quality appointments are made and we have been very pleased with both the number of applicants for each role, and also the high quality of those candidates, in terms of qualifications, experience and also fit for our Exonian community. There are two more pieces of the teaching jigsaw puzzle to be completed – a part time Spanish teacher and a part time junior school teacher and we will be completing these very shortly.
New prefect team
On Thursday our new prefect team enjoyed their training day, partly at school and partly at St Lukes campus of the University of Exeter. They had completed a personality profile ahead of the day, which they analysed and then considered the importance of certain traits and skills in leadership. We also did an opening session on character, looking at why character matters, what the school offers in terms of character development, and what the new prefect team feel we could do better or more of. This was fascinating and will, I hope, lead to some new ideas and activities in our character education programme.
Just as a reminder, the new team can be found later in the newsletter. We wish them all the best in their positions over the next year.
This weekend
This weekend is a busy one, with Ten Tors training and DofE bronze practice expeditions out. I wish Mr Ben Hall and the Ten Tors team as well as Mrs Kat Ridler-Murray and the DofE team every success with their camping, navigation and teamwork. I hope to see them all at the end of their activities on Sunday. In school on Sunday, Miss Rose is running a Schools Challenge quiz day and I hope that those involved have a fabulous time training their quizzing powers.
On Saturday we have the first big fixture day of the summer term. There are a number of cricket teams playing both at home and away against Queen’s College Taunton, Plymouth College and Wellington School. Best of luck to all the players, and let’s hope that the sun shines on them all.
Have a lovely weekend.
