April 2015

Dear Newboldians,

Finally, summer is here and oh how I love being able to wake up surrounded by daylight and drive home at the end of the day before darkness descends.I don't know about you, but I often find the weeks after Christmas and before Easter can be dreary and uneventful. However, last term was pretty amazing throughout with a steady stream of enjoyable events, some within our normal routine and others beyond our gates. There was so much positive energy, good news and success throughout last term that I began to wonder how school life could get any better, but it did. 

I must say that one of the most enjoyable aspects of school life is the music. At the start of the term in January, our choir had just experienced marvellous success at St George's Chapel singing for Princess Alexandra, just before Christmas. This was a very formal event requiring a great deal of preparation. Naturally, after such a big adventure, the children needed to relax a bit and sing for the fun of it just for a while - hence the Red Nose Day song was introduced by Mrs Dye. However, the choir is always busy and in demand, so the children continued to perform in church as well as in school - in fact, they will be performing at the ADRA concert on April 25th. It is rumoured they will perform with one of our parents (who's talents have been a very well-kept secret until now). Mrs Dye and Mrs Gungadoo certainly do a fantastic job, not least for bringing such lively, enjoyable songs to our everyday school worship assemblies, which greatly add to our pleasure and well being. Music truly is good for us.

Even more music success arrived last term in the form of Woodley Festival. I am quite sure there is no-one within a hundred mile radius to whom I haven't bragged about Newbold School's Recorder Ensemble. Oh, have I mentioned that our children gained a gold medal at Woodley Festival? 'YES YOU HAVE, MRS CRISSEY!' I can hear you all shout back. Woodley is no stranger to us, though. Mrs Sadakou's piano pupils have been entering the festival independently for quite a few years now, with excellent success, but this was the first year that Newbold School entered. The cherry on the top was being invited to perform at the end of festival concert at Reading University. The standard of performance was excellent; the children worked hard towards these events and Mrs Bay did an excellent job teaching and preparing them. Look on our website if you'd like to see it all on film, courtesy of Mr Daryl Gungadoo. I'm sure you would agree that such events are of enormous value to boost our children's confidence.

Meanwhile, working quietly yet tirelessly in the background without medal or applause, is our PTFA who have been absolutely fantastic. Mrs Bold, and the faithful parents who come along to help out at the various bake sales ('Friday Feasts' would describe them better), pampering days etc... raised enough money to buy a class set of Chrome book computers. Mr Eccles, our IT manager, was delighted. These computers have made an enormous difference to the children's IT lessons. Recent National Curriculum changes in Computing have meant that our computers needed to be more portable and more readily available; the Chrome Books are proving to be an excellent purchase. The SEC were so impressed that they offered to provide some further funds, from which we purchased a storage/recharging unit for the Chrome Books and some digital cameras. 

And yes, even more success arrived - this time in a football. Our coach, Mr J Becejac, arranged a friendly match with one of our local schools, which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone involved. Our PE manager, Mrs Jennings, attended the match too and I think she was more excited than the children, but then she does love sport! It's good for the children to enjoy sport and we hope to continue to explore even more opportunities in the future.

I am really looking forward to this coming term. We have so many exciting events planned, not least of these, more bake sales, the Newbold School Summer Fete and Sports Day. I hope to see you all bright and early on Tuesday morning with your children wearing their full Newbold uniform with pride to show respect for the wonderful school they attend.

God bless you all,


Mrs J Crissey (Headteacher)