Natanya Milner – Head of Primary School

It is wonderful to feel like we are back on campus in a more permanent manner. COVID provided us with an opportunity to re-evaluate what is most important and we all became very focused on the health and safety of those around us. Whilst this will always remain most important, we have noticed some impacts of the past two years and feel it is now time to address these. 

The children have been moved around a lot and seem to be taking less care and pride in their appearance as well as the appearance of our campus. The Primary School staff are working together to take action and address some of these issues. In the first instance, we will be looking at uniform and neatness around the campus.

We will be addressing and expecting:

• Children to be in full uniform (either sport or school uniform) every day. Some common areas to improve include wearing sports uniform only on the correct days, wearing no (or only approved) jewellery items, wearing the correct shoes and socks. Students who have an Emanuel-based sport commitment before or after school are permitted to wear full sports uniform. This exception does not apply to sport clubs and activities that are not part of Emanuel. Please support us by demanding these high standards of your children. For further information about the schools uniform requirement, please head to the uniform section of the parent portal.
• Children to keep their playground and bag areas tidy. We will be working together to achieve this on campus, but I thought I would let you know in case you wanted to harness this skill in some children’s bedrooms too 😊.

The goal of these first steps is to improve the standards we are encountering each day. We feel confident that this will benefit many areas include pride in oneself and school and generally more settled behaviour. 

There will be some motivation for the children along the way so we will be in touch if your child’s class achieves certain rewards such as a mufti day.

Something else that I would like to address is the need for children to arrive at school on time every day. The number of late arrivals has increased and suggests that people are not leaving enough time in the morning to get ready and get to school. ‘Traffic’ may be a one-off reason for lateness on a particularly bad day, but ‘traffic’ as a regular excuse suggests leaving home earlier is the solution. I would really appreciate if these families could prioritise improving in this area. I see the children arrive awkwardly to sign in, hunt around for their class who are often out of their room doing something else and try to settle themselves into a group of already settled peers who are part way through an activity. It really does not set them up well for a positive day.