Our series of Open Morning tours for the families of children in Year 5 at Primary School have started this week and it is always a pleasure to welcome prospective students and their families to Wallingford School. The tours aren’t staged or choreographed in any way and simply consist of an hour or so walking around the school, popping into lessons and talking with staff and students on a normal morning. This week we have seen Year 9 in Drama, Year 7 in Design Technology – some of whom were cooking some very tasty looking chicken nuggets – Year 8 in Music, lots of different year groups in Maths and Year 7 in PE. We have also seen Year 11s and Year 13s in revision sessions and our Year 12s focused and diligent in their private study. I always enjoy these Open Mornings as our visitors get a flavour of what is so special about our school and I get to see our young people enjoying their learning and thriving across the full range of subjects.

As ever, lots going on with the Houses and a particular highlight at lunchtime this week has been the Year 7 House Football Competition with boys and girls excelling on the Astroturf, some 0-0 draws, a few tense penalty shoot-outs – and a lot of fun. Equally, we are gathering materials for the new House Recycled Robot Competition which promises to be very exciting indeed and will test the Houses in very different ways.

Thank you to the Bigg Band for their contribution to last Sunday’s Wallingford Car Rally and also to the brilliant Wallingford School Association for their fundraising and assembly of new picnic tables for students to use at break and lunchtime – they are fantastic and are already being enthusiastically utilised.

Finally, I wrote last week about our Year 11 Leavers’ Celebration Day and Prom on Friday. I cannot emphasise enough what a great day this was in every way. They are a superb year group and the whole day was an illustration of that fact.