Pre-Prep Reflections Week 34 June 2024
Dear parents,
It was great to see so many pre-prep families at the Family Society summer fete last Saturday. The sweetie bag tombola was certainly a hit – we sold out early on! This week we have been blessed with warm, sunny weather for most of the week.
Sun safety
Hopefully this is here to stay, so please can we remind you to ensure that your child has a sun hat in school to wear outside. Children are also welcome to wear sunglasses and bring in suncream, but they need to be able to apply this themselves. We recommend the roll-on products. Please ensure the container is named.
House picnics
On Tuesday, Miss Lawrence organised our first ever house picnic. All children (and staff!) brought in a teddy to accompany them. Nursery, Reception and Year 1 enjoyed picnic lunches in our beautiful grounds under the shade of the trees. Meanwhile, Year 2 went over to Exeter School to have their picnic with Form One pupils. They also enjoyed playing in the junior school adventure playground and even had time for an ice-cream!
School council
Earlier in the week, I met with this term’s school council reps from each class. The children were brilliant as always at sharing their thoughts and views on a range of topics, from their lessons and playtimes to school lunches and uniform. A few gems that stood out were requests for salmon and smoked mackerel at lunchtimes, shorter shorts for PE and more teddy bear picnics! There was also much regaling of what they had told the inspectors last week, including “I talked about cheetahs!” and “I found out their names.”
VAT on fees
With the announcement of the general election next month, we know that the imposition of VAT on fees is uppermost in your minds. As you will know from previous communications, we have been planning for this, and there is much work ongoing behind the scenes with leadership and governors at present.
The board is meeting on 26 June and we plan a more formal communication with the parent body, setting out as much detail as we are able to at this stage, at the end of next week. We know that your children’s education is the most important thing to you, and to us, and we do not underestimate the commitment that you show to us as parents. We are working hard to ensure that we continue to provide the very best provision, and the best value to our parent community, and we will continue to do so.
Filming
Yesterday, we were very excited to have Preston Street Films in school all day with the marketing team from Exeter School, to shoot a new short film for our website. The film follows the journey of an Exonian child arriving at school on the bus and follows the journey from Nursery to Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, taking in assembly, forest school, lunch, playtime, music, PE, swimming and lots more along the way. The children were very keen to be involved and gamely did whatever was asked of them, whether it was providing a voiceover into a microphone, close up facial expressions in front of the camera, or repeating the same scene several times from different angles. We look forward to sharing the final edit with you when it is ready.
Next week
Next Tuesday morning, we have our whole school photograph being taken. We would usually do this every two years, but we thought it would be nice to mark our first year as Exeter Pre-Prep School for the archives. We will also be taking class photographs afterwards. See the article below for further details. Reception and Year 2 are out on trips on Wednesday, while on Friday afternoon, we look forward to our annual Sports Day event, which is always a highlight of the year. All parents are warmly invited to attend from 1.30-3.30pm – fingers crossed for good weather!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
