Dear Parents

Welcome to this week’s Newsletter!

Spring Fayre

What a fantastic time we all had at the Spring Fayre last Saturday! When I woke up and saw the rain on Saturday morning, I was very anxious about how the event would run. Fortunately, the PSA and the school had been on ‘weather watch’ for most of the week and had a plan in place ready to action in the eventuality of poor weather. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the event has taken place inside the school and I felt certain aspects were actually better than usual as a result of being inside. The community felt very much together and close due to the location on the corridors and the musical performances and dancing were definitely enhanced by taking place in the auditorium with its better acoustics. Much larger audiences were able to sit and enjoy the student’s fantastic talents.

One of the highlights for many people was the food available in the canteen. A sterling job was done by the ‘grill gurus’, ‘cake captains’ and ‘curry connoisseurs’ to keep us all energised and fed throughout the event. The raffle was also spectacular this year with so many prizes that we ended up over running by around half an hour, such was the array of prizes on offer.

I would like to thank our tremendous PSA team, led by Ray for the incredible amount of time and effort they put in to making the event such a huge success. My thanks also go to our external vendors and sponsors who provided great stalls and super prizes for the raffle. I hope that you managed to win a prize?

Congratulations go to our big prize winners, Guilia in year 5, Elsa in year 8 and Lilli in year 4 who managed to scoop 2 x 250 vouchers for flights with Wizz Air (Elsa and Guilia) and a two night stay at the Marriot Hotel (Lilli) respectively. They accepted them with real humility which was great to see.

A final point on the Spring Fayre is to say a big thank you to all my staff, in particular the maintenance team led by Balint. To move the location of such an event at such short notice is no easy task. I am already looking forward to next year. I know that Ray and the team are very open to any suggested improvements or simply a note to say that you would like to be involved in some way. Please feel free to get in touch.

Marketing and Admissions Team

You may well have seen two of our staff running around taking lots of photos and helping out (as well as winning their own prizes!!) at the Spring Fayre at the weekend. It was only then that I realised that I had not formally introduced them to the Britannica community in a Newsletter. During April, our former team of Kati and Rita, left the school due to maternity (Kati) and relocation (Rita) and we found ourselves in the difficult position of trying to replace two extremely hard working and knowledgeable members of staff in this area simultaneously. Lotti Biro and Kitti Boldog, who many of you know from her time working in the front office, have stepped in seamlessly and within a matter of weeks turned this area, once more, into a real strength of the school. I look forward to seeing how they develop over the next twelve months.

Meet SLT

With a hectic few weeks coming up, I wanted to give an early invite to you all to the final Meet SLT of the academic year. This will take place on Wednesday 5th June at 9.00 in the Auditorium. At the meeting, I will be talking about the ongoing extension plans, summer works, staff changes and several other long term school projects. I hope you will be able to make it

UK

Finally from me this week, you may have noticed that I have not been as visible as normal around the school site this week! Since Tuesday, I have been in Manchester discussing the future plans for the Orbital group with the Board and the other Principals. It has been great to catch up with everyone in the team and see the exciting plans for Britannica and the other schools in the group over the coming years. One thing of particular interest to you may be that between 16th and 21st June this year, we will become the first school in the group to host students from two of the other schools as we welcome students from Quito in Ecuador and Moscow, Russia for the first History and Culture Trip to Budapest. Exciting times!

Kind regards

Neil McGarry

Principal