First, I shared with you last week the news that we would need to be undertaking lateral flow tests again at the start of next term with all students where consent is given.

Start of term - January 2022

We will be undertaking this testing on Thursday 6th January. On this day, students will only need to be in school for their lateral flow test - there will be no other school provision on this day. Students do not need to wear school uniform on Thursday 6th January. We require consent to be given for this testing so please complete the consent form. Times for lateral flow testing on Thursday 6th January and the consent form will be sent home to all parents later today.

The first day of normal lessons will be Friday 7th January, when students will be expected to be in school as usual in school uniform.

Thank you again for your co-operation with these arrangements.

A heartfelt thank you to all our Chilwell school families who have donated Christmas decorations. School is looking very Chrismassy and the spread of merry cheer is lovely to hear around the corridors.

End of term

School will finish for the end of the autumn term on Tuesday 21st December at 12.00pm. Students are expected to be in school uniform on all days up to and including this date, apart from next Thursday, which you will know is our "Wear something Chrismassy" day.

Keeping safe

We are retaining our request that all students and staff wear masks within the buildings unless exempt. Please can I ask that parents ensure that students arrive at school with a mask. We are finding ourselves distributing a lot of temporary masks for students who have forgotten theirs.

We will be issuing more lateral flow testing kits for students to take home next Thursday morning. Please can you continue the regime of twice weekly testing over the break so that we can be assured that our community is as safe as possible.

Pupil Parliament

I had the pleasure of meeting with the pupil parliament today who are representing the views of students very maturely. We discussed a number of issues that are going well and I am really pleased that there is such a positive feel about their learning and the behaviour of students. We were also able to discuss areas where we need to make further developments and we discussed our plans for enhancing toilet facilities and also the provision of meals at school.

We have had a busy term and thank you again for all your support. The interest in the school grows and we are now a very busy site. Today we had a visitor who certainly seemed to be interested in what we had to offer, but was also not quite perhaps as co-operative as our students!