Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome back for another round- up of news and updates, ahead of what I hope will be a very relaxing day for some on Mother’s Day!

Spare Seat Scheme on School Buses

I am aware that a number of families (with children on the CN09, CN06, CN07 and CN11 services) received communication from Oxfordshire County Council’s transport team this week, regarding the spare seat scheme on school buses from September.  I understand that it is the CN09 spare seat scheme that is the most vulnerable, with the other three less likely to be affected. Whilst school buses and transport are a local authority matter, I hope that parents and carers will correctly assume CNS and our partners at the River Learning Trust will always try to find solutions on behalf of families. You will be pleased to know that I have already had a really positive conversation with OCC (who have been very helpful) and they are equally keen to devise some smart solutions. The most likely outcome at this stage is that CNS will procure transport on your behalf, once families confirm their commitment to the scheme and payments. Behind the scenes, we are working on those plans and will update families directly in due course.

BookWeek@CNS

You will be aware that at CNS we continually emphasise the importance of reading for pleasure; including starting every lesson for a short period of silent reading. It will therefore be no surprise to learn that we are again embracing the global push to promote reading and literature during the course of this week. Some of the highlights include:

• Competition to dress a spud in a well know book character. Entries to Ms Bovington by Friday 8 March.
• Murder in the Library. Students encouraged to visit the library each day in order to collect another clue…
• Midweek Book Quiz: This took place on Wednesday – a battle of bookish brains to become the CNS Book Champions.
• Treasure Hunt: On World Book Day itself (Thursday 7 March), there were book related questions dotted around the school for students to hunt and solve.
• Local writer Stewart Foster visited us to talk to year 7s about how to turn their ideas into books, and also delivered a creative writing workshop for enthused year 9s.
• Our reading club members have also produced recordings of bedtime stories to be distributed to our local primary schools.
• And today’s careers interview was with Jo Cotterill – another local author – encouraging students to believe in their own voices and talents.

Our thanks to Ms Bovington and Mrs Blundell for organising these additional activities!

Year 7 Football Triumph

We are really proud of our six-a-side squad that won the Vale & Mid- Oxfordshire five-a-side football tournament at Farringdon School on Tuesday afternoon. The boys beat Bartholomew (0:7), Carterton (0:3), Matthew Arnold (0:2) and Wood Green (0:1), on the way to overcoming John Mason (0:2) in the final. My thanks to their coach, Mr Thomas, and congratulations to: Noah Edge, Gordy Jones, Borys Porada, Dan Sparvell, Sam Stafford, Andrew Taylor and Lucas Ward! This victory was particularly sweet because our current year 8s won the competition last year and so we retain the trophy.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award Schemes

Right now, we have seventy-four year 9 students working on their bronze award, thirty-five year 10s on silver and fifteen year 12s going for gold. They are working hard on a huge range of activities to complete their volunteering, physical and skill sections. The expedition season is now underway as well and students at all levels have completed their expedition training. They have been learning how to pitch and strike their tents, plotting expedition routes, making hot drinks on trangia stoves and planning their team menus for the expeditions. The silver students have also been planning their team’s entry for ‘Trangia Masterchef’ and the bronze students will start their first aid training next week. Many thanks to all the staff involved in helping to run the DofE expeditions and also to the students for the commitment they are showing to complete this prestigious award.

Attendance Matters

We are pleased to see attendance begin to improve in the weeks after half term and hope this pattern continues going forward. You may recall our ‘12 Days of Christmas’ attendance promotion in December that led to one very lucky young man going home with a virtual reality headset. We now look forward to our ‘Extravaganza’ which will be taking place in the last week before we break up for Easter: on each of the first three days of the week, we shall be drawing a raffle ticket and the winner will receive a hamper filled with chocolate. Then, on the final day of term, there will be another Big Draw – with someone taking home the latest XBox X series. We are grateful to local businesses for their donations to make these incentives possible.

River Learning Trust-Wide Stakeholder Surveys

We are again at that point in the year where all schools seek to listen to the views and feedback of its staff, students and families. Your feedback helps us steer our priorities and seek to become a better school each year. All parents and careers are invited to watch this short video led by Paul James (CEO of the River Learning Trust) and then follow the link to the survey itself, here. The survey is live until 26 March.

Have a lovely weekend.

Yours faithfully
Barry Doherty
Headteacher