Message from the Principal

Dear Parents,

Welcome to this week’s Newsletter.

It has been wonderful to welcome Kevin McNeany, Orbital Chairman, and David Pottinger, Orbital CEO, to Britannica over the last couple of days. They are always keen to see and hear about everything that is happening in our school and provide guidance and expertise. The main focus of their visits was to work with me on the future development of our school, in particular the short and long term school development plan and priorities. They enjoyed seeing, first hand, the refurbishment and upgrades to the site that we made over the summer and also meeting as many of the staff as possible in what truly was the definition of a ‘flying’ visit.

We look forward to welcoming them back soon!

I would like to formally welcome Dominic Scott to Britannica. Mr Scott will be taking over as the 4 Tees class teacher from next Monday. Mr Scott is originally from Manchester in the UK and has previously worked in the UK and Germany. Many of you will know that we have been extremely unfortunate with illness within our Year 4 teaching team this term and I would like to thank Miss Bilski, Miss Sara, Miss Bogi, Mrs Foldvari and Mrs Moreton for all their hard work in ensuring continuity and good learning has continued during this tricky period. We will introduce Mr Scott in more detail through our ‘Teacher Feature’ in a future Newsletter.

I am sure you will join me in welcoming Mr Scott and wish him well.

We are already in advance planning for our traditional end of term Brilliant Britannica Christmas Fayre on the last day of term. A letter will be sent to you all on the 6th December, formally inviting you, but please do keep the 20th December in mind when considering your Christmas plans.

Please note that the school will finish at 2.45 for all students on this day. Worth noting also that there are no ECA clubs during the last week of term.

Mr Barker has warned me not to ‘steal his thunder’ and write about this one! Please do read his section about what happened when the KS3 Boys Team visited Vienna at the weekend. I will simply thank Mr Turnbull and Mr Roberts for their efforts with the team and also the parents who gave up a well-deserved Saturday lie-in to drop their children off. We were all very bleary eyed when we met up at 5.15 on Saturday morning!

Have a great weekend. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, it may be time to consider visiting the Christmas Market or starting to think about what to put on your list for Santa!

Kind regards,

Neil McGarry

Principal