It’s very impressive that you have formed such a large Eco-Committee. It shows that young people in your school are aware of environmental issues and committed to being active and creating positive change. This knowledge and attitude has provided your school with excellent foundations for the many successes that you’ve achieved this year this year. It’s brilliant to read that you paired young and older Eco Councillors to complete the Environmental Review and involved a variety of stakeholders to discover the answers. It’s a great way to get everyone involved and raise awareness within the school. 

Your Action Plan shows that your Eco-Committee have carefully considered how they can involve their entire school in their planned Eco-Schools’ activities to achieve maximum impacts and raise awareness amongst their school community. We love the idea of sending the children home with 5 activities for tackling the energy topic. 

It is fantastic to read that Eco-Schools and environmental issues have become an embedded part of your learning, and from the examples provided it’s also clear that staff members have used this environmental focus to enrich learning in your school. Your Eco-Committee have used a wide variety of methods to inform their school community about their work including, this shows they take pride in their achievements and are working hard to involve and educate all around them. We love a digital Eco-Board here at Eco-Schools, well done ~ yours is a wonderful example and we love the addition of an end of year report. 

Time is a common challenge, familiar to all educators. It creates a pressure and takes resilience to keep going. With this context, your achievements are even greater and we feel lucky that you’ve committed to our programme and delivered the achievements that you have. This is a big achievement. Your statistics for monitoring and evaluation are impressive, well done on raising £250 for charities. We loved the poster hunt idea. We can’t wait to see pictures of your fostering skills with hedgehogs next year! Your acrostic poem Eco-Code is beautifully designed, and easy to follow with a powerful message. It’s a great reflection of the ethos your Eco-Committee have created, well done to all involved! We loved reading about your environmentally-themed week of learning, this is a great way to make eco-education a community event. Thank you for your question suggestions for next year’s Environmental Review, they’re intelligent ideas that we will take into consideration when compiling next year’s review. 

Lisa Rutter-Brown will be replacing me five days a week next year as Kingsmead's second headteacher. Like me, she's been here since day 1 in September 2004. She has been a huge part in shaping our ethos and vision from being our first Reception teacher to SENCo and deputy head. Our work on inclusion and pastoral care has been under her leadership and guidance. I can think of no one I'd rather take up the reins at Kingsmead. I came to Kingsmead to set up a brand new school; it really has been like my baby. So it was as much great news for me as for other staff, children and the wider school community when the governors announced her appointment. I know there will be changes ~ good! But I also know that what makes our school what it is, our core ethos and values, will continue. The waters we are in will of course change, but what is our core moral purpose, the education of future generations and development of children's characters, needs solid foundations. I look forward to hearing and reading about the school's evolution and development.

Mrs Debbie McHugh will take on the role of deputy headteacher. Mrs McHugh has led Upper Key Stage 2 and PE and Sport for many years. She has seen us sustain our School Games Mark Gold and ensured that participation in sport is something Kingsmead has an excellent track record for. Like Lisa, Debbie not only talks the talk of our values but lives them, every day from the smallest interaction with a child to the big things her leadership has brought to our school.

I would like to thank Governors for their considerable wisdom and support in ensuring such effective succession planning. By a focus on staff development and training the school has retained some outstanding colleagues who might have otherwise left us for new challenges. School staff recruitment and retention is a concern across the country and by investing in the people working with us, from support staff to business manager to teachers to headteacher when  posts become vacant the school is assured of a strong candidate and not rely on luck. This doesn't mean roles are guaranteed but it does place us on a secure footing. 

In the office we said goodbye to Mrs Oliver. Michelle has been a part of our community since September 2004. As a parent of Kate and Chloe and member of the office team she has made an outstanding contribution to school life. Michelle has been a meticulous organiser of school trips and enrichment; it's only when you work in a school that you really understand the work that goes into taking children off site. As attendance officer Michelle has been diligent in attention to detail and ensuring that Mrs R-B and I have timely information to help us make attendance in school as good as it can be. The organisation of Night Owls and Early Birds has been developed and led by Michelle too. The systems, attention to detail and commitment to doing the right thing will be Michelle's legacy. We hope she will enjoy and long, happy retirement, one filled with term time holidays! If anyone were heaving a sigh of relief in the term time holiday department I'm afraid it's out of the frying pan into the fire as the equally vigilant and committed Mrs Visscher will be taking on the role of attendance officer ;-) Mrs Hodges also leaves us this year. Helen too has worked in the office from the very earliest days. She has ensured we are well stocked with pencils and books etc, she has ensured that bills are paid and school fund and dinner money are all in order. Never underestimate the importance of great 'back office' support, it is the oil in the machine. Helen has also been very much front of house, providing help and a welcome for anyone visiting the school or having a query. 

Kate Smith will be leaving our teaching support and SEN team to work with the Local Authority SEN team. As a qualified early years teacher we know how lucky we were to attract Kate to Kingsmead. She will now be developing her career supporting families with children with high needs across Stoke. We wish her every success and will miss her and Joey.

Mid Day assistants Mrs Julie Lee and Miss Katie Konca left us this term. Our midday team do one of the trickiest jobs in school; helping children navigate the unstructured times of day. It involves watching their play, interacting and offering guidance and support for the hustle and bustle of over three hundred children playing together. If any parents or carers are interested in this work, please get in touch with Mrs R-B. Some parents have found it a useful introduction when considering a career as a teaching assistant or teacher. If you can enjoy the one and a half hours supporting our children at lunchtime there's a good chance a career in education is something for you! 

Thank you for reading stories to your children and developing them learn the joy of books. Thank you for reading with them when they bring books home. The pleasure and sense of belonging in a book this brings gives them the resilience for the cracking of the phonics code and determination to succeed.

Thank you for all the conversations you have with your children. Not just about what they did at school but about politics, culture, the world, nature and the family they come from. When speech and language go beyond the transactional (Have you brushed your teeth yet?) children's curiosity and intellect are triggered and they listen and achieve better in education and life.

Thank you for understanding that when things here in school aren't quite to your taste or preference, there might be a good reason for them anyway. Thank you for preferring that we spend our time focussing on the quality of education we provide over explaining every small, not so very important decision we make. 

Thank you for getting that if we want high standards of behaviour for other people's children, we expect them for our own children too. Thank you when you don't require detailed investigations and debriefing should your child's behaviour require a little support or challenge.

Thank you for knowing we don't have 'good' children and 'bad' children, just an array of beautiful nippers, each with something to offer and each with something they might improve upon. We have no 'bullies,' 'racists,' 'sexists', no -ists at all. Our children are young; their characters aren't formed yet. Thank you for supporting us when we expect your children to practise usefulness and kindness to themselves, others (unlimited) and the environment. Thank you for supporting us when we do not allow them to practise what would be unacceptable in their future adult selves.  

Thank you for bringing your concerns and suggestions to us with kindness and respect. So many of your ideas can be seen in school: from the Friday email to the homepage of the website; how children in UKS2 go in for lunch and the book awards (for children who read above and beyond what we expect); the uniform exchange and healthier school deserts. All these and many more routines in school come from your ideas respectfully shared.

My working life has included babysitting, cleaning, bakery, shop and bar work, being an architect's technician, graphic designer and illustrator and fresco restorer in Italy before happening upon teaching as as career a bit later than many. Each job has brought its joys, its frustrations and each has taught me much. But taking on the headship at our wonderful primary school has been, I can say without a moment's doubt, the job of my life. Which means I sign off with mixed feelings. There's never a right time to leave but there can definitely be a wrong one. I hope you feel I have sustained the joy, interest and energy our children deserve right up until the last day of term. 

I am delighted and relieved to be able to leave a school I joined before it opened in 2004 in such capable hands. When I started at Kingsmead I was relatively new to headship and was sustained by the usefulness and kindness of colleagues, governors, children and their families. I have learned such a lot along the way (and very much so from my colleagues who will be with you all in September). I made mistakes for sure. I might do things I did nineteen years ago differently today. That is life: we live, we learn, we know and understand more with experience and years. I do know we have an intelligent school community who, together, have great capacity to do what the Kingsmead team (helped a bit by my leadership I hope), has tried to do every year since September 2004 ~ think more deeply, act more effectively and with that learning and experience, do the very best we can for the children we serve in the situation we find ourselves in. 

This is, I believe, what school improvement really is. Not to 'top' a league table which ranks schools against one another, blind to each school's individual cohorts, their strengths and vulnerabilities. Nor  has it been to bind ourselves relentlessly to the latest Ofsted framework, serving one external master in a tail wags dog manner, leaving other important matters until after inspectors have been to ace only what mattered to them on that day. A school's quality and the matter of their improvement is more complex than that which can be measured over a few days. More complex maybe, but more interesting and joyful too. 

Our work has one core purpose: to improve our school year on year. Our work is to do the very best for the particular children we serve, in the context in which we find ourselves (including years of pandemic). Our work is to focus on school improvement which puts children first. To put children first we must care for our staff, being useful to them in their career aspirations and progression, in respect of their family commitments and individual strengths and interests. As children are children first, 'learners' second, so our adult colleagues are people first, employees second. Our job is to avoid complacency, whether from being oversubscribed, successful Ofsted inspections or academic outcomes for particular cohorts. Our work has been to do this within the values and ethos of of our school so that improvement sits comfortably within our culture, always congruent (or fitting without gaps) with our moral purpose. 

I know that Lisa, Debbie, senior leaders, pastoral, business and subject leaders will lead the Kingsmead team in this endeavour. Much will change and that change will remain true to our values and core purpose ~ the development of intelligent, useful and kind young citizens on who the future of our community, our country and indeed our world will depend. 

I am so incredibly grateful to the governors who appointed me, way back in 2003, for allowing me to have been a blade of grass in the field that is our school community. 

With love, 

Ms Catriona Stewart :-)