Head’s Letters

Thursday 26 June 2025

Dear Parents

It was a fantastic turnout to support the children on Sports Day last Saturday and huge congratulations to Griffin House on their win. All the pupils competing deserve great credit for their efforts in the warm weather and the camaraderie they showed for their friends; it was wonderful to witness them encouraging each other in every event. Meanwhile the Pre-Prep Sports day was won by Unicorn House. We are getting near the point where we add up all the final merits and house competition points for the overall yearly trophy so every point really does count at this stage of term.

Our Year 8s are all having a brilliant time in Dorset on their outdoor adventure trip. They have been paddle boarding, taking on the high ropes course, and the very tough water based assault course. It is a great way for them to be celebrating the end of their time at APS and making memories that will last a lifetime.

Our Year 4s have had a lovely day of activities based around school, and their tents are up ready for their campout tonight and their fire roasted smores. I think there is a strong possibility of a midnight feast or two. Given that I too am camping out tonight with them, I am rather hoping that there is a midnight feast!

Year 3 has spent the day out in Oxford at The Ashmolean, seeing first hand their amazing Egyptian Collection to support their studies in History. They are acting as detectives, trying to uncover the mystery behind the curse of Tutankhamun.

Pre-Prep have been busy this week rehearsing for their Summer Concert, with the theme of Animals. I know that it will be a lovely way to celebrate all of their achievements over the course of the year and, having heard small snippets of the rehearsals, it promises to be a terrific afternoon of music, followed by picnics outside afterwards – all with their favourite Teddy Bears of course!

Finally, I wanted to say an enormous thank you and farewell to our amazing Chair of Governors, Professor Mike Stevens, who relinquishes his tenure at the end of this term after serving for 10 years on the board. Mike has been a wonderful Chair, putting the children of the foundation at the forefront of all decision making. I have valued his counsel enormously since joining Abingdon Prep eight years ago and he will be greatly missed by everyone. We look forward to welcoming James Sporle as the new Chair of Governors, someone who many of you will already know as a current APS parent.

I hope you have a good weekend ahead and, hard though it is to believe, it is the final weekend before the end of this school year.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 19 June 2025

Dear Parents

With the hot weather we are having this week, it has been great to be able to move to short sleeve order and the children have really enjoyed being outside, especially with a number of teachers using our wonderful grounds to undertake some outdoor learning with them.

I must start by mentioning the brilliant performance of ‘The Lion King JR’ last week from our Year 7 and 8 pupils. It was great for them to be playing to an enthusiastic full house at The Amey Theatre and I know how much everyone enjoyed watching them on stage, and also how much the children enjoyed being a part of it.

Our Year 8 pupils were treated to a fantastic careers event on Tuesday, with 10 very kind parents coming in and running a carousel where our pupils could go and talk to them to find out more about certain careers, such as architecture, medicine, dentistry, and forensic toxicology. Afterwards, the children were genuinely excited about what they had heard and it has given them so much more food for thought about their futures.

Pre-Prep have been enjoying their week with Reception and Year 1 undertaking a ‘Wheels Day’ at school today, bringing in bicycles or scooters to practise their skills on these and also to develop their all round knowledge and understanding of how to keep themselves safe on roads and when out and about. They had great fun with this and have certainly developed their confidence, whether on two or three wheels. Tomorrow, they are all off to Cotswold Wildlife Park, and having very recently been there myself, I know they are in for a spectacular day of wildlife spotting.

Year 2 have spent today in the woods at The Earth Trust site in Wittenham Clumps, undertaking a series of forest school based activities, whilst also developing their teamwork and generally having a brilliant time exploring and making dens, alongside memories. It was great for them to be in the shade of the woods too given the warm weather.

Cricket, athletics meets and tennis matches were played in great spirit this week and there were numerous strong individual performances alongside fabulous team efforts. Very unusually, two of the cricket matches were lost on the final ball by just a single run, but these are the types of matches where so much can be learned and taken forward into future games.

Finally, after Pre-Prep’s hugely enjoyable Sports Day at the end of last week, we are looking forward to the Year 3-8s having their turn and competing at Tilsey Park in their Sports Day on Saturday morning. I very much look forward to seeing many of you there, supporting all the children and getting right behind the four houses. In line with Elliot’s letter earlier today, with the hot weather predicted, please do bring water, hats and suncream.

I hope to see many of you on the playing fields after school on Friday for the summer JPA picnic. Last year was a very relaxed and enjoyable event, with children playing and parents chatting, very much enjoying each others’ company.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend ahead.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 12 June 2025

Dear Parents

As always in the summer term, every week seems to be full to bursting with exciting events and activities, but this one seems busier than ever.

Excitement is building for tonight’s performance of ‘The Lion King Jr’ by our Year 7 and 8 pupils at The Amey Theatre. Rehearsals have been going well all week so I am hugely looking forward to the performance. I know the children will do themselves proud and the costumes and masks, created and made by both staff and pupils, are a sight to behold. I look forward to seeing many of you there tonight to watch.

Year 5 is today at one of my favourite venues for a trip, HMS Victory at Portsmouth Historic Dockyards. They will be exploring Nelson’s flagship and continuing their study of the British Navy in the prime of its life. It is an inspiring venue and well worth a visit in the summer holidays if you find yourself near Portsmouth.

Year 6 spent Tuesday at Oxford’s Botanical Gardens on an Art trip where they not only learnt a huge amount about plants, but also produced some wonderful drawings from real life specimens in front of them. What a great way to develop their Art and Biology whilst out on a trip.

Some terrific improvement has been shown in cricket matches this week by our U8s and U9s who performed very strongly despite succumbing to narrow defeats, with particularly impressive bowling throughout. Our U10 and U11 teams also acquitted themselves very well in their matches too.

I also wanted to update everyone on our sponsored swim from half term. We have now raised over £4000 for Down’s Syndrome Oxford which is fantastic and thank you so much to all of those who kindly sponsored the pupils swimming.

Our Pre-Prep children will take centre stage on Friday afternoon as they come together for their Sports Day. We have made a number of changes to the format this year and all the children will be competing for their houses in a broad range of events, and I know they will receive a huge amount of support from the spectators cheering on to the finish line.

Finally, thank you to those Year 7s who are acting as tour guides for our final Open Morning of the year on Friday morning. The children are our greatest asset and never fail to impress our guests as they tour them around school.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend ahead.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 5 June 2025

Dear Parents

I hope that you all enjoyed the half term break and were able to spend time with friends and family.

Our Year 7 and 8 pupils have been working hard all week with their exams and I know they are looking forward to finishing tomorrow. Next week sees them off timetable to pull together their musical, ‘The Lion King JR.’, with the performance on Thursday evening at The Amey Theatre at Abingdon School. If you have not yet bought tickets for the show and would like to come, there are still a few seats available for anyone who would like to watch it, no matter which year group your child is in. It should be a fantastically entertaining evening if the brief snippets that I have seen being rehearsed are anything to go by.

Friday morning sees our poetry recital competition for Years 3-6 taking place. I know that the form and English teachers have had a very tricky time deciding on who to put through to the finals with the standard being so high once again. I am very much looking forward to hearing the children deliver their poems, with a range of themes including family, comedy and the environment.

On Wednesday we were visited by two of the Nasio Trust’s representatives who delivered an inspiring assembly to our pupils about the children that the school sponsors in Kenya. It was great to hear about how they were getting on at school in Kenya and also to hear about the book that our Year 4 pupils have written stories for. These have now been published alongside those of their Kenyan counterparts.

Congratulations to our four Year 5 and 6 cricket teams who performed admirably on Wednesday coming away with a clean sweep of wins against Hatherop Castle. Our B team were especially impressive with some tight bowling and swift running between the wickets. Our senior tennis team thoroughly enjoyed their matches this week and our U11 tennis team are also in action later today. Swimming finishes off our sporting calendar for the week tomorrow with the Year 7 and 8 house swimming gala taking place at Abingdon School.

Finally, I wanted to take this opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to all of the children, parents and staff who came along to our sponsored swim on the last Sunday of half term. We welcomed 32 children and their parents, who were counting lengths, alongside Hannah, a 17 year old medal winner in the pool from the recent Down’s Syndrome Olympics, who not only swam lengths alongside our pupils but also brought along her medal to show them. So far we have raised an incredible £3000 for our school charity, Down’s Syndrome Oxford. Thank you to all those who have generously sponsored the children to enable us to raise such a great sum of money.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend ahead.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 22 May 2025

Dear Parents

It seems hard to believe that we have almost reached the half term break. The children have accomplished so much already and congratulations to our Year 3-6 pupils who have successfully completed their assessments this week.

I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on some upcoming staff changes for September. We will be very sad to see Roger Owen leave Abingdon Prep at the end of this term to take up an exciting new teaching role at Radley College. I know you will join with me in wishing him all the very best in his new endeavour and thank him for all his work with our pupils over the past 11 years. Charles Newbury will be taking up the role of Head of History alongside his Deputy Head Academic post.

Rebecca Robinson-Slater, an experienced primary school teacher across Key Stage 2, will be joining us from a primary school in Newbury as maternity cover for Danielle Campbell. Rebecca loves teaching all the core subjects and is really excited to contribute to our Other Half programme as well.

We will be welcoming Aimee Whitehouse back into our Pre-Prep in September after her maternity leave. I know that you will also want to congratulate Rachael Freese, our Acting Head of Pre-Prep, and her husband, on their exciting news that they are expecting their first child later this year.

Year 7 and 8 are taking part in our public speaking competition tomorrow morning and it will be terrific to hear them putting forward their arguments across a wide range of topics, in front of the other pupils. It is a wonderful skill to be developing at such a young age and I am always delighted to see so many pupils attending the lunchtime debating club every week.

House meetings took place today which were based around the theme of playground games. Mixed year groups played games like French cricket and foursquare and I know that the children thoroughly enjoyed the chance to play with children they do not normally get to play with at break times.

Cricket fixtures this week were sadly rain affected for the first time this season. Despite starting on Wednesday, all the away matches were rained off, but we did play all of our home matches, with the highlight being a 2nd XI victory after scoring an impressive 144 – 1 off 20 overs. Good luck to our 1st XI who travel to Millfield Prep today for the second round of the IAPS National Knockout, and also to our U8 and U9 teams playing this afternoon.

Our first swimming gala of term takes place tomorrow at Abingdon School for all of our Year 5 and 6 pupils. I know that they are looking forward to competing against their friends and earning points for their respective houses.

Finally, huge congratulations to Arthur in Year 8 who performed brilliantly in the IAPS National Triathlon finals in Bath last weekend, finishing on the podium in an incredibly impressive 3rd place.

I hope that you and your children have a wonderful half term holiday when it arrives.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 15 May 2025

Dear Parents

The sun has continued to shine this week at school with the pupils enjoying their break times in the beautiful weather.

The children in Years 3-6 have been working exceptionally hard at the start of their assessment weeks. A mix of computerised tests and exams are taking place and it is great for our younger children to get used to the process of assessments, becoming more comfortable with them every time they undertake similar tests.

It was lovely to welcome so many of you into school on Tuesday evening for our Artsweek exhibition, showcasing the childrens’ Art, DT and even Drama. Every child in school had their work on display and it was amazing to see such incredible creativity in so many different areas of the arts.

Consent workshops took place for our Year 7&8 pupils with the Head of Wellbeing at Abingdon School delivering thoughtful and informative sessions to the children. It was great to see our pupils so engaged in the topic and prepared to ask and answer questions throughout the session.

On Wednesday, our Year 1s and Year 3s had a wonderful talk from a Thames Valley Police Community Support Officer, telling them all about the work that the police do to keep everyone safe. The children came up with some brilliant questions too and I think a few of them may add police officer to their possible list of future careers!

At the start of the week, we undertook our first ever strategy games fixture against MCS with Chess, Abalone and Quoridor taking centre stage. It involved pupils from Year 4 to Year 7 and they performed extremely well in all the games and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Cricket, tennis and athletics fixtures all took place this week, with 2 terrific wins on the cricket pitch for our 1st XI and 2nd XI against our friends at Abingdon School, alongside a first win of the season for our U11A team too. Our U8s continue to show great potential for the future with their cricketing skills coming along strongly.

I hope you all enjoy the weekend when it arrives.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 8 May 2025

Dear Parents

I hope that everyone enjoyed the long bank holiday weekend.

The children have been working hard this week and it is great to hear from many of them about the revision they have been doing in the lead up to their assessment weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed popping into a number of lessons earlier today and was impressed by what I saw them working on.

In a Year 8 PSHCE lesson, the children were discussing what the role of a Peer in the House of Lords was, as opposed to an MP in the House of Commons, and how these two groups of politicians work to ensure that the government of the day is held to account and new laws are debated and approved or otherwise. They also discussed the purpose of local MP surgeries and how Prime Minister’s Questions works. It was great to see them showing such an interest in how the country is run.

Year 4 were creating their own 13th Labour of Hercules, starting with a storyboard setting out their plot, focusing on the characteristics of Hercules, such as determination, strength and willpower, leading to a well thought through moral of the story at the end. There were some extremely interesting mythical creatures that were featured in their storylines too!

Reception have been incredibly busy this week learning all about shapes. They were able to tell me all about rectangles, triangles, circles, squares and even what a parallelogram was! In Art this week they have been creating collages based on Henri Rousseau’s ‘Tiger in a tropical storm’ and I am very much looking forward to seeing their finished pieces which they have thoroughly enjoyed making.

On Wednesday and Thursday this week the children have been throwing themselves into our ‘Think Big About Science’ activities. They were asked to think about the question: What makes people who they are? Our Year 5s were having a fascinating debate about ‘Nature vs Nurture’ and coming up with examples of when one might have a stronger role in the outcome of someone’s abilities. Overall, they felt that nurture was likely to be a stronger determinant of future success than nature.

This week we have put out 14 cricket teams to get the season off to a flying start against Cheam and Moulsford. Our Year 3 children showed some great potential with both bat and ball and our 1st XI produced the result of the day with an enthralling tie, taking a wicket off the final ball of the match to achieve the result.

Good luck to our U13 and U12 cricketers who are playing in matches this weekend, with our U13s joining their counterparts at Abingdon School for joint foundation fixtures.

I hope you all have a good weekend ahead.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 1 May 2025

Dear Parents

I cannot remember a year when we went to shirt sleeve order before the end of April but it has been brilliant to have such warm and settled weather at the start of this term. The children are certainly making the most of their break times outside and enjoying the sunshine.

Our Year 7s returned safely from France late on Monday evening and have not stopped talking about the activities they tried and how much they enjoyed their time away. Year 6 departed yesterday for their Bushcraft residential and I know that they too will be thoroughly enjoying developing their outdoor learning skills and teamwork.

The cricket season began this week with a fantastic victory for our 1st XI against Sunningdale in the IAPS National Cup competition, and the first half century of the term being scored by our captain. Our U10 teams also enjoyed their first match of the season against Chandlings, showing great promise with their bowling but with work to do to further develop their batting.

In the classroom this week, I really enjoyed seeing our Year 7s working through some tricky Ordnance Survey map work questions about Edinburgh, whilst our Year 5s were thoroughly engrossed in the 5 minute story starters, with some lovely expressive language grabbing the reader’s attention straight away.

Year 2 have been working hard to produce a piece of persuasive writing, using rhetorical questions, alongside expressive and persuasive language, based around the book ‘Wild’ by Emily Hughes. It was lovely to see how engaged they were with the task and the story in general.

I wanted to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for all the very kind comments and messages following on from the announcement on Monday about me moving on to Wrekin Prep in January. We truly have a wonderful community here at APS and my family and I are very grateful to have spent 8 years in such a special place.

I hope you all enjoy the bank holiday weekend ahead and I look forward to seeing the children back in school on Tuesday.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 24 April 2025

Dear Parents

I hope that you all enjoyed the Easter break and made good use of the lovely weather that we were treated to in the holidays. I have very much enjoyed hearing from the children about their holidays and all of the exciting things they got up to.

It has been lovely to welcome all of our pupils back into school this week after a very enjoyable day of staff inset training where we learnt more about how AI can support teachers and children at school, and I know that a number of staff will be utilising some of these techniques to support their lesson and resource preparation. I myself used it to help produce this week’s assembly which was based on the theme of time management and the importance of sleep.

As always at Abingdon Prep, we have started the term at full speed with our Year 7s travelling to France this morning for their residential trip. I know they will have a fantastic time abroad undertaking activities and trying to improve their spoken French.

Elsewhere in school, Year 2 were straight back into their Maths work with a hands on lesson weighing and measuring, making predictions and recording their results in table form. Year 1 went straight into some creative writing, impressing with their descriptions of hummingbirds.

Year 3 are off exploring Coleshill today for their ‘Secrets and Spies’ field trip, working out ciphers and journeying through hidden bunkers to help them crack codes.

Class pairings took place this morning with paired reading and it was great to see the younger children reading to their older peers with such enthusiasm and being encouraged and supported by them so well. Books are such a wonderful way to help develop a child’s imagination and such a key part of school life in general.

Cricket, tennis and athletics take centre stage this term on the sports field and it was great to see so many of our pupils enthusiastically bowling, fielding and batting at our pre-season training and first games sessions of term. As a cricket fanatic myself, I am very much looking forward to the matches ahead and watching the children developing their skills in the weeks ahead.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend ahead and good luck to our senior tennis teams who are competing in their first tournament of the term on Saturday.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head

Thursday 27 March 2025

Dear Parents

We are coming to the end of another hugely enjoyable term and the children have excelled in so many different areas of the curriculum, whilst at the same time having a great deal of fun!

It has been lovely to see the children enjoying their Easter egg hunts this week. Thank you to all of you who so kindly donated Easter eggs for the children to hunt for. I doubt too many of the eggs made it home though!

The whole school was out on Wednesday afternoon participating in the House Cross Country competition. It is a real highlight of our sporting calendar, seeing everyone giving their all and cheering on those who are coming in at the back of the field just as loudly as those who are winning. We have a proud tradition of great cross country runners at APS and this year did not disappoint with some terrific runs from children across all year groups. Huge thanks to all of you who were able to attend and cheer on our runners in the beautiful sunshine.

Our Under 8 and 9 footballers completed their season on Tuesday with some round robin matches against Hatherop Castle. Their performances over the season have got stronger and stronger and they can be proud of their final week victories and the improvement to their footballing skills over the course of the term.

Good luck to our senior section pupils tonight who are performing in their concert. It is a genuine musical highlight of our calendar with choral singing alongside ensembles and solo performances. There will even be a sneak preview of the opening number from ‘The Lion King’, our Year 7&8 musical for the summer term.

I hope you all have a lovely Easter holiday and the children enjoy a well deserved rest. Many of the children have excitedly told me about their upcoming holiday destinations and I hope that if you are travelling at home, or abroad, you stay safe and have a Happy Easter.

Best wishes

Craig Williams
Head