Things are moving so quickly, that I have been remiss and not written anything for a few weeks. So, let me make amends.

We have begun to visit schools to meet students joining us in September. It will take us a good few weeks to see everyone as our intake has reached our expected number of 180. It is a real delight to see the enthusiasm and engagement of students as they complete their SATs and look forward to transition to secondary school, the next step in their education journey.

Last week I spent a day with one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors from Ofsted as she looked at all our plans for opening in September. It was a really enjoyable day because I got to talk about all our values, our hopes and the passion of our staff, parents, students and the community to ensure this school supports everyone to exceed their own expectations. Kier allowed us to set up base in their committee room on site and you would be forgiven for thinking that the soundtrack of heavy machinery rumbling past thoroughly suited the discussion about developing students to thrive in a changing world.

When I’m not visiting schools to meet our first student intake, I’ve been appointing support staff. As I hoped, people of exceptional quality have been watching and patiently waiting to offer their considerable skills to drive our school forward. It’s been a delight to appoint a Chief Financial Officer, senior administrator, school administrator, receptionist and finance manager, all joining us between now and September. It has also been humbling to say no to some exceptional candidates, whom I sincerely hope remain interested in working with us as we grow. In the coming weeks we will advertise for teaching assistants, caretaker and cleaner.

We are working on a new version of the website which will go live in the next couple of weeks. It will have all our policies, curriculum, behaviour expectations, how we will handle students medical needs and much more. Alas, it won’t have photos of our students but we will remedy that in September.

On 27th June, we will hold a parents’ evening for our ‘founding’ parents, whose children join us from September. We will provide more information on our Camp Wilderness adventure, music lessons, how to purchase a Chromebook through the school (we hope to encourage every student to have one) and Katherine Warington School Transition Day on July 11^th.

Finally, the building programme is running to schedule and Phase One is on track for hand over to us on 19^thSeptember. Phase Two remains on track for completion in the summer of 2020.