Goodbye and Thank You

Posted by Admin on 2 July 2006, 12:00 am

Mrs Johnson at 2006 Sports Day Sixteen years ago I arrived at Northwood Primary School as a new and very excited Headteacher. We had 5 classes (just), 5 teachers plus some part-time teaching assistant help and a part-time secretary.

It seems like another country now! I had never stayed anywhere longer than four years previously to arriving at Northwood, and I still can’t explain what it is about the community that made me stay so long. I know that I couldn’t have asked for a better team. Mrs Hayward, Mrs Peters, Mrs Carter, Mrs Crutcher and Mrs Daish have been here throughout and deserve credit and thanks for coping so smilingly with the huge amount of change that we have all lived through. Mrs Hegarty and Ms Howland have been the best deputy Headteachers a head could wish for, Mrs Airey a tireless and relentlessly optimistic administrator, and they all would agree that the team would be nothing without the exemplary commitment from every member of the team, all of whom have become very close colleagues.

The standard of learning and teaching in the school has made me proud every working day of my Northwood life! It’s not only in the classroom that I feel that pride; our school motto of ‘Good Better Best’ extends to school dinners, organic gardening, after-school clubs, sleepovers from visiting London pen-friends, sports for all, high quality performances, charity work, our Eco-friendly curriculum resulting in the Green Flag status that we hold so dear, relationships and communications between staff, parents, children and the community.

And it is the community that I want to thank through this newsletter. There have been so many wonderful parents who have worked tirelessly for the PTA over the last 16 years and made the school somewhere to make friends as well as somewhere to learn.

The children who come to our school have been a delight and a pleasure; it has been a privilege to work with them. My only regret is that we were not allowed to keep them in our care for those last two controversial years before KS3.

Volunteers such as Mrs Hunt, Mrs Berry, Mrs Richards and Mr Bruin have given up hours and hours of their free time, and they, as well as the many dozens before them, help make the school the success it is.

I have had excellent governors, many of whom served for a very long time. Geoff Ruck steered us through two very successful OFSTED inspections and was a well deserved member of the Beacon team praised by the DFES for the high standards we reached and continue to reach. Wendy Bluestone has continued as chair to support and encourage us, and to all of them and the other long-suffering governors, thank you.

Modesty is sometimes an overrated virtue. Allow me to be immodest on behalf of our school community when I say that everyone of us associated with this wonderful school should feel nothing but a sense of huge pride and satisfaction in a job well done.

I wish my lucky successor every good wish. Enjoy!

Vicki Johnson