27 June 2025

Dear Parents

I started the day today in Senior assembly, where 7C reminded us of the power of diversity, sharing their reflections at the end of Year 7 on the role of diversity within our community. I was struck by their perceptive understanding of the power of diversity to encourage creativity, develop inclusion and belonging and make Cranford a happy, friendly community. One of the aspects of school life that I value most highly is the strong voice of our student body, as expressed through our School Councils and weekly form assemblies and the high premium they place on making this a happy, inclusive and diverse school where everyone is welcome.

We were also pleased to confirm in the assembly this morning that a new Senior School social space will be developed in the heart of the Senior School in response to student feedback in School Council this year. This will see three classrooms removed and replaced by a large central social space in the heart of the school. We are also undertaking a significant programme of redeveloping our toilet facilities in Senior School, again based on valuable pupil feedback. Elsewhere, it will be a busy summer for the facilities team as we add a new Junior School Science Laboratory in Willow Court and a new Forest School Area at the Reading Road Site. We are also pleased to be adding a new cloak room for Year 1 and 2 and a new seating area around the Astro to support viewing matches! I I look forward to sharing more details around this later in the Summer.

Move-up Day

Move-up-day is always an incredibly important moment in the school calendar as pupils from Pre-School to Year 6 turn their eyes to the new school year and planning for the future! The day has been full of excitement, laughter and camaraderie and, as ever, I am incredibly proud of the very warm welcome extended to pupils joining the school for the first time today. We are all very excited about next year and the opportunities a new school year brings. It was lovely to welcome Miss Dickson and Mr Sparrow into the Year 7 Tutor Team, who join us from Thorngrove and Moulsford Prep. We know everyone will quickly make them very welcome as part of our Cranford community. In addition to their Year 7 Tutor duties, they will be teaching across the Humanities, Mathematics and PE faculties.

Pirates of the Curry Bean

Our Year 5 and 6 students wowed parents and pupils across three simply exceptional performances of their annual production earlier this week. I was incredibly proud of the 90+ pupils who made up the case of a truly professional and complex production! As an audience, we were whisked away on an incredible adventure full of laughter, wonderful comedic acting, brilliant storytelling, singing and dancing. A huge congratulations to everyone who participated in a truly special performance and please do take a moment to see some of the pictures here! Thank you also to the very many parents who came to support the pupils at the Cornerstone in Didcot - it really makes it a special occasion to have such wonderful parental support.

Elsewhere, it has been an incredibly busy week across the Performing Arts team, with students taking on ABRSM exams, displaying composure and talent to tackle their examinations, whilst rehearsals continue at a pace for our end of year musical extravaganza at the Hexagon in Reading next Tuesday! It promises to be real treat and I very much hope to see you all there!

Clubs

Finally, a huge thank you for all the lovely feedback around the clubs provision at Cranford. This is something we are very proud of; it represents a critical aspect of our school offer, and we work very hard to get this right for our pupils and families. I thought you may be interested in some of the statistics around this! This year we received over 2500 discrete booking requests! Over 98% of these have resulted in confirmation of a first choice club. There are over 198 club sessions each week and over 150 different clubs! A huge thank you to the team that work together to plan, deliver and administer this programme. As ever, if you have more clubs you would like to see at Cranford, please do let us know!

Its been such a busy week in school, and that's before we mention the Year 8 adventure to Bristol, the Year 7 Landscape Detectives day and so much more besides. Thank you for all your support for the school. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to seeing many of you next week for an action-packed finale to the school year!

With best wishes

James Raymond

Head