Dear Parents and Carers 

The term is flying by and it’s time to start welcoming our new joiners to HTPD. It has been a delight meeting all the new Reception families this week; next week it’s time for Year 3. 

On Wednesday, a team of our budding engineers travelled to St Catherine’s School to take part in a SATRO STEM Challenge. The task was to design and build a marble run using only recyclable materials that would keep the marble moving for as close to 10 seconds as possible. The team got off to a fantastic start, impressing the judges with a creative design that earned them nearly full marks. They then worked brilliantly together to build, test and refine their structure. After several successful trial runs, disaster struck during the final attempt when the marble got stuck! Despite the setback, the children thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and we’re incredibly grateful to SATRO for organising such a fun and inspiring event—and to St Catherine’s for being such welcoming hosts. 

The cricket season is well underway at HT, and our pupils have already had some exciting opportunities to develop their skills and represent the school. Last Friday, ten lucky Year 5 pupils were invited to a cricket skills workshop at the Duke of Kent School. They joined children from four other schools to practise their bowling, fielding, and batting. We were incredibly proud to hear from the Duke of Kent's Headteacher, who told Laura how polite and engaged our pupils were throughout the day. 

Following this, on Tuesday, a team of Year 5’s visited Normandy Cricket Club to take part in a Surrey Cricket Foundation tournament. The team played brilliantly, going undefeated in the group stages and making it all the way to the final. Although they narrowly missed out on the top spot, Kayleigh was especially impressed by the way they supported one another throughout the day. We’re now looking forward to the upcoming girls' tournament and the Year 6 competition in the weeks ahead! 

What a day of travelling it has been for Year 2 today who made it all the way to Australia on Pewley Airlines! Captain Lilja and her team of cabin crew flew the Year 2 classes to meet Australian Ben, who told them all about Australia. They had a great day and after learning some new and interesting facts about Australia, created some brilliant Aboriginal Art of the native wildlife. The children also discovered even more from orienteering their way around while there. You’ll be pleased to hear they all returned from their exciting trip at the end of the day. 

A little closer to home, Year 6 are off on their residential trip to Preston Montford next week. We hope they have a fabulous time and enjoy some more glorious weather in Shropshire.  

As we approach the season of summer trips and residentials, can we please remind you that smart tags are not allowed in school or on trips.  They are designed to attach to valuables so that they can be easily tracked and found, not designed to track the whereabouts of a person. There are a number of issues that mean we do not allow these devices in school or on school trips: 

• The device only tells you the location of the tag, not necessarily the child. For example, if a bag has been lost on a school trip, this could cause undue panic.  

• The information provided by smart tags relies upon mobile phones nearby. If it is not able to update the location, or the tag fails in some way, this could cause undue alarm. 

• Staff are in regular communication with the school office about any issues that arise on school trips . Smart tags and parent/carer WhatsApp groups can result in an unofficial feedback loop, which may then lead to the wrong information being communicated.   

• To avoid smart tags being used to stalk people, phones that have an unfamiliar smart tag following them will alert the user. This results in staff receiving worrying notifications when out with children.  

• Other children (and staff) have not given consent to have their location tracked in this way and as such their are issues around consent and privacy. 

We thank you in supporting the school in this matter. Please contact Tom Everard (tome@htpd.surrey.sch.uk) should you wish to discuss in more detail. 

A ParentMail has been sent about non-payment of HT school lunches and extended schools (Breakfast club, PUPS and Clubs+). Unfortunately, the school is currently owed £20,000; we cannot afford to carry this level of debt. This is a plea, to please log into your Parent Pay account and settle any amounts owing for lunches, trips, extended schools and swimming. To ensure this is not an ongoing issue, we are currently looking into enhancing our systems to require payment in advance when booking HT school lunches and extended schools. We hope to be able to implement this from September.  

This half term is extremely busy, please do refer to the dates list that was sent via ParentMail and the weekly JTLYKs. 

Have a wonderful weekend. 

Vicky 

Thought of the week: Take time to be still. Where do you find peace?