As we come to the Christmas holidays, life in school is often extremely busy. When you combine that with staff and student illness and absence and a drop of seasonal snowfall and sub-zero temperatures it can be a little challenging – as we have found this week! 

Firstly, thank you for your understanding and patience as parents and carers in managing the adaptions to the school days that we put in place this week to remain open and maximise learning in the face of these obstacles. 

Secondly, thank you to those of you were able to brave the cold weather and join us for the Christmas Concert on Tuesday evening. Despite this being my third Christmas at Warlingham, believe it or not, this was my first Christmas Concert and what a lovely evening it was. Singing Christmas carols, students performing together in the orchestra, trios, duets and solo with a repertoire that stretched from Vivaldi to Wham!  It was lovely to see the tremendous buzz that children get from taking that leap of faith together and on their own to perform and show the products of their hard work and talent. It reminded me what we have missed and how much students have not been able to do in recent years owing to the pandemic. Huge credit to the students who performed and the wonderful Music team here at Warlingham for pulling together such a great programme and rebuilding the confidence and skills of students against that backdrop.

As this newsletter shows, the huge variety of extra-curricular activities, workshops, fundraising and competitive success continue to both showcase and develop the courage, commitment and kindness of our students at Warlingham. I hope you enjoy reading about them in this edition of the newsletter and I would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all here at Warlingham.