I can hardly believe that we are at the end of our first half term – it has been such a busy period. We have:

• settled the new children and young people into all of our schools and organisations
• welcomed over 50 new members of staff into our schools and organisations
• continued to work on our revised assessment model
• taken part in a Local Area SEND inspection
• re-established a timeline for the Springboard Project
• recruited a new head for New Bridge School
• dealt weekly with the pressures of more children needing places in all our schools

All of this alongside our weekly and daily challenges. One of the aspects that makes our organisation so amazing is the appetite all my colleagues, governors and trustees have to work at such an amazing pace.

Pace is a really tricky concept to try to explain. Our roles our totally immersive. This isn’t a criticism, it’s the reason people want to work in our schools and organisations. It’s why families choose our schools for their children. It was articulated brilliantly to me this week when a colleague who recently left us emailed me to see if they could return. They missed our children so much, they missed the camaraderie of the staff, they missed our passion, they missed ‘the pace’.

The half term break gives the majority of our staff an opportunity to recharge their batteries. It’s really important that they do this.

I think we will find the rest of the year a really busy time. The SEND area review is likely to ask us to work with our mainstream colleagues in a manner we have never done before. There are so many children and young people who would benefit from our teams’ expertise. This has to be our next stage of development.

I’m going to have a few days in Turkey (at least it gets me away from all the Bury FC jibes!!).

Thank you all for your ongoing support – it means so much to us all.

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous blog entries here