(The full version of St. Mary's Messenger can be found in the password-protected area of the website)

Dear Parents, Children and Friends,

Another week has whistled past, with something exciting happening each day. I don’t suppose that the 11+ candidates would consider “exciting” to be the best word to describe their exam on Monday, but it does represent a major step in their collective path through life. Best of luck with the paper on Monday, after that you are definitely allowed to breathe a sigh of relief.

It may be a bit of a cliché to say that these days we live in a global village, but for all that, it’s true. This generation of children need very much to understand more than we did about the world that they and their children are going to live in, which is why it is so important to have events like Chile Day (when the Head and his wife dress up like cowboys, to be embarrassed in public) or Africa Day when the whole school is doing an East African dance. My special thanks go to Mrs Heal and her team for the delicious Chilean meal she prepared – I want the recipe for the cazuela!

We cannot have major events like these every day as we’d die of exhaustion, but anything that helps the children know more about other people and places is central to our ethos. The upcoming Day of European Languages, kindly organised by Mrs Howard, is going to be another experience for the pupils, I am sure they are going to learn a lot. I’d love to be able to find a slot for beginners Mandarin even though it’s not European…

And today we have been very fortunate to welcome Robert Mash, best selling author of the tongue-in-cheek guide to choosing and rearing your pet dinosaur “How To Keep Dinosaurs”.

Robert Mash sending a stark reminder to all dinosaur owners to keep the fridge locked!

The coffee morning for new parents and the informal Meet-the-Tutor afternoon went well. It is always nice to be able to put a name to a face; it helps a lot with communication. Now that we are getting into the year and the children are settled into the new class and the routine, do please let the teachers know if there is something that you feel needs to be addressed. It is worth remembering that a quiet word on the path in September can prevent major council o’ war in April!

The school website continues to expand and it is time that we let you into the intranet. This area is password protected so that we can use names of the children in the photos and generally make the area more relaxed for our families than the more formal, public sections of the website. I have sent home an envelope with a slip of paper which gives the log in and password rather than publish it here, just in case a copy of The Messenger falls into the wrong hands. This intranet area is quite small at the moment but I have great plans for it. By the end of the year you should be able to get a better feel of what is going on and what an exciting, interesting place St. Mary’s is.

On a serious note, if there are any parents who would prefer that the school does not use photographs of their child in either the public part of the website or the password-protected area (or both), please let the office know as soon as possible.

A couple of reminders: please make certain that all clothes are named – we already have a colony of wild socks living under the pavilion – and please get your child to bring their sports kit home at the weekends. Now that the games fields are getting wet and muddy, the stench of forgotten, mildewy games kit first thing on a Monday morning is not a great start to the week.

Andy Salmond Smith