Dear Parents/Carers,
Who can believe that there are just over two weeks to go before the end of the academic year? This year really has gone by in a whirlwind! And there is still so much to get through.
Summer Fair this Saturday
Do come along and support our summer fair tomorrow. It really is the most wonderful whole school community event. The weather promises to be lovely and you and your children will have much fun taking part in lots of activities and games on offer. You will also be able to mix with so many members of our parents community, eating and drinking your way through the afternoon. You will of course be helping the PSA to fundraise for our school to enable your children to have experience of lots of fun, challenging and creative activities. Recent trips to London Zoo, the West Reservoir, the Little Angel Puppet Theatre and Willows Farm for example have been real highlights for the children. Year 4 are looking forward to their ‘Go Ape’ visit with Year 1 heading off to Paradise Wildlife Park within the next couple of weeks. These have been made available to your children because of PSA events like the summer fair, so do please come along and support it.
Much Summer Sporting Success
It has been a fabulous summer of sporting success on so many levels. Do read the attached highlights of the recent events as reported by Mr Oakley. Ably supported by Mr Allison, our Sports Coach, the wonderful Mr Oakley is very committed to ensuring that our school enters (and hopefully does well in), every sporting event available to us across Haringey. St Mary’s is making quite a name for itself as a school with great sporting prowess!
You will be able to see your children in sporting action in our whole school Sports Day on Thursday 14th July. This will be held in Priory Part, opposite our Rectory Gardens site from 9.45am onwards. Do come along and enjoy the day with your children.
Staff at St Mary’s – 2022-23
The wait to find out who your child’s class teacher and support staff members are for next year is over! See attached the full staff list for next year. As a result of other teachers deciding to move on and do other wonderful things with their lives, we have a number of new teachers starting at St Mary’s next year.
Ms Fennell leaves us as our Assistant Headteacher after some 16 years at St Mary’s. She has decided to move to a school in Hackney and take up a position as a nursery teacher and early years’ leader. We wish her all the very best in what she goes on to do and thank her for her many years of commitment and hard work to help create St Mary’s to become the school that it is. Replacing Ms Fennell as assistant headteacher, having being recently successfully appointed to this position is Duncan Beardwell. Mr Beardwell has been at St Mary’s for a similar length of time and is very familiar to so many of you and of course, your children. I have every confidence that he will be fantastic in his new role. .
Also leaving our school after so many years is Ms Buckridan, our Year 3 teacher and Middle Phase Leader. Ms Buckridan has made the decision to take early retirement from her position as class teacher and we wish her well in doing so. The inimitable Madame Baker, our French Teacher is also leaving us after several years to retire from teaching and by the end of this term and we are hopeful that we will be able to appoint another French teacher within the next week or so – Bon chance Madame Baker!
Other teachers leaving us at the end of this term are Mr Kennedy, who has decided to take up a teaching position in a school in Islington (good luck Mr Kennedy!)’; also Ms Rossiter & Ms Kahumbu, both of whom have been off sick for several months and weeks respectively – we hope that they both recover well and enjoy the next phase of their lives in whatever they decide to do.
There are also some support staff members who will be leaving us at the end of this year. This includes the lovely Ms Geddes, who works in the Middle Phase and who has decided to leave London for the fresh air and loveliness of Somerset. Ms Brown, one of our previous nursery nurses, and who this year has trained to successfully become a teacher, will also be leaving us, having very recently secured her first teaching position at a school in Enfield – congratulations Ms Brown!
In addition to all of this, there are some other internal staffing changes, which includes for example, Ms Campbell relinquishing her class teacher position and instead becoming our specialist phonics teacher.
We therefore welcome to St Mary’s a number of new teachers, Christina Bellini in Year 1 (Tangerine), Alycia Ingleton in Year 2 (Buttercup), Clarissa Fernandez in Year 3 (Jade), Naomi Toms in Year 4 (Crimson) and Madeline O’Donnell in Year 6 (Violet). We hope that they will settle well into life at St Mary’s and quickly establish themselves firmly within the heart of our school community. In addition, we have also appointed a new teacher who will take charge of supporting and driving teaching and learning across our school. This is Laura Beeson, who comes to us highly recommended and who has a wealth of experience from schools, having taught in Hackney, Islington and Camden as well as having previously been an assistant headteacher. We are excited to welcome Laura and all of the other new staff to our school. With so much to sort out, you can therefore see that it has been a very busy time at school!
Whilst it is always sad to learn that people are leaving us, especially those who have been part of our school community for so many years, it is however exciting to welcome and work alongside new teachers who will no doubt bring their many skills and talents to St Mary’s. I am really excited about the new changes to our staffing structure and hope that you are too.
With very best regards,
Calvin Henry
Headteacher
