Head’s Letters

Thursday 9 February 2023

Dear Parents

It has been another very enjoyable week as we lead into the half term break. The cold and misty mornings have given way to some lovely sunshine and it has been great to see the children playing outside at break times. It has also been fantastic to witness the proliferation of chess being played by so many of our Year 7 and 8 children too at break times.

We are really looking forward to welcoming many grandparents into school tomorrow afternoon to spend time with our Pre-Prep children playing games and hearing about what they have been getting up to at school. Grandparents’ afternoons are such a lovely occasion and the children are always excited to share their school experiences with them.

It has been a hectic week for our Junior section with Year 4 enjoying a brilliant trip to Ufton Court to learn about Tudor times. This was the conclusion to their unit of study about The Tudors and there was great excitement to see the priest holes and secret tunnel they used to enter and exit the manor house. They found out about secret catholic signs contained within the house and learnt all about vital daily tasks like milking the cows, churning butter by hand and weaving.

Year 3 has been out at Coleshill today, learning all about secrets and spies from World War 2. They had an amazing day and the excitement even before leaving on the minibus was palpable.

For much of the rest of the week, Year 3 and 4 have been rehearsing for their production of ‘The Piper’. We are all very much looking forward to seeing them perform straight after half term.

Year 7 were conducting fascinating experiments in Science this week looking at the process of rusting, using galvanised nails that they first had to sand down to expose the iron and then set up a range of solutions to see how they would rust once they have been left over the half term week. It is always good to see how engaged the children are with their learning and this was most certainly a hands-on lesson.

Wednesday saw ten APS teams in Years 5 to 8 taking on three different schools. It was an afternoon full of goals with our APS teams scoring 49 goals and conceding just 15. The children have certainly been working hard in training and it is paying off in their matches.

After such a busy first half of term, I hope that all of you will enjoy the break, whether staying at home or venturing further afield.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 2 February 2023

Dear Parents

I hope that those of you who were able to join our webinar about staying safe online this Tuesday found the session useful. It really is such a vital part of educating children today and something that we will continue to work closely on with children of all ages moving forward. For those of you who were not able to attend, please do take the opportunity to watch it via the link shared in the mailing today.

Sadly, Anne Parker, our Head of Maths, is retiring from full-time teaching after 20 years of service at Abingdon Prep and will be leaving us at the end of the summer term. Anne will be greatly missed and we will, of course, recognise and celebrate her time at school more formally at the end of the summer term. We will be starting to look for her successor in the coming weeks.

Football matches on Wednesday saw us play Oratory School and Oratory Prep and some very strong results were forthcoming, with 26 goals being scored by APS in just 7 matches and only 7 goals conceded. Our U8s and U9s also performed well this week in competitive round robins with Moulsford.

It was lovely on Tuesday for the children in Year 3 and 4 to be able to share with their parents the work that they have been undertaking this term and on Friday it will be Pre-Prep’s turn to share their work with parents. I know I am very much looking forward to my son showing me what he has been working on recently.

Our Under 11s are competing at the IAPS hockey regional qualifier today. It is the first time we have ever entered this and I am really looking forward to hearing how the pupils got on. I know they will have gained fantastic experience from playing in such a high standard tournament.

Friday will be a busy end to the week. A number of our Year 3-6 children will be competing in the first cross country event of the term at The Manor. We have another full concert platform too and our Year 8s have their first social with Headington in the evening – a cèilidh with live band. I am sure they will have a very enjoyable evening.

Ten children enjoyed a fantastic pottery workshop last Saturday with the potter’s wheel taking centre stage for the first time. There were some very impressive pieces created. This Saturday sees our next workshop with our guest Ruth Swain, a portraiture expert, assisting Sherrey with the session.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend ahead.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 26 January 2023

Dear Parents

This week saw our Chinese New Year celebrations with a fantastic lunch which was greatly enjoyed by the children. Some of our children with a knowledge of Chinese language agreed to write pupils’ names on a red bookmark in Chinese characters. It was lovely to see the younger children marvelling at the complexity of the language. The library was the perfect setting for this with its Chinese New Year display as a backdrop.

Year 1 ventured out on Wednesday for a visit to the Oxford Story Museum, hearing the story of King Arthur in the whispering forest, learning about, and trying out, comic writing and illustrating and ending up on Winnie The Pooh’s poohsticks bridge. It is an enchanting museum and well worth a visit if you have never been. The children had a fantastic morning exploring the museum and they can hopefully use some of the techniques to further develop their own creative story writing. Judging by their enjoyment of the museum, we may well have some budding authors in the group.

In the classroom, Year 5 French classes have been working hard on their adjectival agreements with colours and sizes. For those of you who are Quiz Show enthusiasts, you may have watched ‘Only Connect’. Year 5 has been attempting the ‘Word Wall’ but with key French vocabulary to group together and come up with the connections. The most eagle eyed have even been spotting the masculine and feminine connections.

Our Food Waste project continues to go well and is yielding some very interesting data with the amount left being weighed for the 4 houses, Pre-Prep and indeed the staff. It will be great to be able to analyse the data and link it to popular menu choices so that we can continue to look at how to lessen food waste and improve our sustainability credentials further.

Despite the freezing conditions this week, we did manage to play some football and hockey matches. Our Under 8s and Under 9s took on Oratory Prep and Chandlings with some close matches with all the children being involved and enjoying playing competitive fixtures. Three of our Year 8s took part in the Oxford Cross Country championships and all performed admirably in a very high quality event. We put out 5 senior hockey teams too on Wednesday and the boys acquitted themselves extremely well with an even set of wins and losses.

Good luck to those children undertaking their Lamda exams tomorrow. They always perform brilliantly having worked so hard to prepare their pieces in the lead up to it. I am also looking forward to hearing about the clay art workshop taking place this Saturday, with Martha Evans as the tutor. This is a great opportunity for those attending to further develop their sculpting skills.

Thanks to our JPA team and Rob Shaw (Quiz Master) for tomorrow evening’s Quiz. I am looking forward to seeing many of you there.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend ahead when it arrives.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 19 January 2023

Dear Parents

Hats and coats have been prevalent this week as the heavy rains of last week gave way to the lovely blue skies and below freezing temperatures we have seen this week.

It was great to hear from Mr Windsor this morning, who delivered an assembly to all the children about ‘Awe and Wonder’. The children were absorbed with the questions around the Fibonacci sequence and spirals and please do share with your children what gives you a true sense of awe and wonder in life.

For the first time, we had a group of Pupil Peer Support Leads from Abingdon School sixth form join us at lunch break to talk to some of our Year 8s about life at school and the transition from prep school to senior school. It was great to welcome back some of our ex APS pupils sharing their experiences and answering some of the questions that our children had for them.

Our Reception class have well and truly started their journey to become fluent readers and it has been great to hear them sounding out words and starting to read books for themselves. It is such an important part of their early education and they can all be very proud of their efforts so far.

In an English lesson, Year 3 were reading ‘The Most Magnificent Mosque’, and then undertaking a vocabulary catch, deciding which exciting and descriptive words they might like to try using in their future writings. It was great to watch their excitement as they came across new words and worked out what they meant and how they might use them.

Year 8 in Science were studying neutralisation and experimenting with different substances to see how they reacted when combined, using vinegar as the acid, and sodium bicarbonate and indigestion remedies as the alkali. They were fascinated to see how the acids and alkalis reacted. Hands-on learning like this is so memorable and you could see by the children’s faces how engaged they were with their learning.

The first football fixtures of term took place this week with matches against Chandlings for our Under 10s. They played well and came away with lots of things to work on before their next fixtures. Sadly, frozen pitches on Wednesday meant that our fixtures with Caldicott had to be cancelled and the U11 IAPS Hockey tournament was also postponed due to frozen pitch conditions.

We are looking forward to welcoming prospective parents to our Open Morning tomorrow, and our Year 7s will again act as tour guides which I always feel is the best part of the morning, answering questions and proudly showing our guests around their school.

Phoenix House ran their tombola yesterday to raise funds for their house charity, The Oxford Food Hub. It was lovely to see the children enjoying the event and even winning some prizes with their lucky tickets. Thank you to everyone who kindly donated prizes for this event.

Across all of the year groups, the children have begun their Art Oxford pieces with the theme this year of ‘Power’. I have already seen a huge array of different ideas around this theme and will look forward to seeing their final pieces in a few weeks time.

Finally, good luck to those involved in the U13 and U12 football matches against The Dragon this Saturday.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend ahead.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 12 January 2023

Dear Parents

It has been lovely to welcome everyone back to school this week. I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing from the children about their Christmas holidays and all the exciting things that they have been getting up to and the presents that they have enjoyed playing with.

We welcome four new children to the APS community this term alongside three new teachers. I know that they will all receive a warm welcome and quickly settle into life at Abingdon Prep.

Year 1 and 2 have started the term with visits from the local fire service on Wednesday for Year 1 and a Planetarium visit for Year 2 today. These hands-on experiences are so valuable for the children to fully immerse themselves in their learning about such great topics.

Mr Windsor and I walked around lessons this morning and we were both hugely impressed with the focus that the children were all showing in class, as well as their class pairings and card games! I particularly enjoyed seeing the Year 8 History group creating top trump cards for the key characters in the reign of King John.

It was terrific to have so many children attend pre-season football last week (over 60 pupils), which is a record turnout. Unfortunately, the weather has not been kind for our games sessions so far so there has been a lot of wet sports clothing coming home this week!

We are looking forward to the first platform concert of the term tomorrow and it was so encouraging to see the sign up list full within a few hours of being put up. These are great opportunities for the children to play in front of a small audience, often for the first time, and gain valuable experience of performing their pieces in public.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 15 December 2022

Dear Parents

As we come to the end of the Autumn Term, I always feel that it is a great time to reflect on how much has been accomplished and tomorrow I will share with the children a slideshow of pictures from the term. Please take a look at it yourselves when it is published on the website as it really does show how many exciting things the children have been involved with this term.

Our two carol services took place on Friday and Monday and they were wonderful evenings. The children sang, read and performed beautifully and it certainly felt that the Christmas season was well and truly upon us.

Thank you to everyone who kindly supported our Year 7 business challenge on Wednesday. I know that the children have really enjoyed the process of setting up their businesses and creating their products, culminating in their whole school sales event yesterday. I look forward to seeing how much they have been able to raise for our school charities from all their sales.

Today has been a real celebration of Christmas. There were some brilliant Christmas jumpers on show as the children walked into school and Christmas lunch was delicious – huge thanks to our caterers for that. In the afternoon, Christmas parties took place with lots of different Christmas games and activities. Perhaps the highlight though was our Gifts for Grown Ups event. The children really enjoyed selecting Christmas gifts for family members. Enormous thanks to our brilliant JPA team and their helpers who have been working on this incredibly enjoyable event since January!

Our Reception class ventured out to Cogges Farm to explore Christmas through the ages on Monday and despite the freezing conditions, they had an amazing experience and learnt so much about what Christmas used to look and feel like in times gone by.

Tuesday saw our Year 5-8 debating and public speaking competition, with motions consisting of ‘banning animal testing’ and ‘films are better than their books’. Our Middle section competitors had to speak about their person of 2022, with persuasive speeches about Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Rishi Sunak among others. The standard of speech and debate was brilliant and the children who took part should all be incredibly proud of their efforts.

All it leaves me to say is that I hope you all have a lovely Christmas spending time relaxing and enjoying being with your families. We look forward to welcoming everyone back to school in 2023!

Merry Christmas

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 8 December 2022

Dear Parents

I hope you have all had an enjoyable week. School has continued to be a really busy place with preparation for Christmas events taking centre stage.

Pre-Prep have just finished performing their Nativity this afternoon which was incredibly enjoyable and the children performed brilliantly, not only knowing all their words but clearly loving being on stage and performing to their families. I am sure for some of them that this will be just the start of their drama careers.

Tomorrow sees our Junior Carol service (Year 3&4) take place with our Senior Service taking place at St Helen’s Church on Monday evening. These are always such lovely events and I hope that many of you will be able to attend these services.

Mr Windsor and I enjoyed visiting classes this morning and also seeing our class pairings in action as well. It was lovely to see the children from different year groups reading to each other and discussing which books they enjoyed reading. In lessons, the focus of the children was terrific as they received teacher input or were working away on a particular task. Year 7 were busily reviewing and improving their recent end of term maths assessments whilst Year 5 were working on fractions and making decisions on numerators and denominators.

Wednesday saw our penultimate rugby matches of the term take place against Bruern Abbey. The pupils involved worked really hard and showed great improvement from the start of the term. Our U12Cs scored in the final few minutes of the match to ensure a brilliant 4 try a piece draw which meant they finished their season unbeaten – a fantastic effort. Good luck to our U11s and U13s who take on one of my old schools, Taunton Prep, on Saturday morning, in our final fixtures of the term.

I look forward to seeing many of you in the coming days at our carol concerts and hope that you all have a lovely weekend ahead and stay warm in the chilly December sunshine.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 1 December 2022

Dear Parents

It is hard to believe that we are about to enter the final two weeks of the Autumn Term. There is much to look forward to in the coming weeks and the school Christmas tree is up and decorated in the hall.

Mr Windsor and I were visiting lessons this morning, as we always do on a Thursday, and it was lovely to see the children so engaged with their work. Year 3 were taking on some tricky fractions whilst Year 1 were at the start of their time journey with ‘o’clock’ and ‘half past’ on the dials in front of them. Reception have been working incredibly hard with learning digraphs, ‘nk’ being the key one this week.

Year 6 were investigating solutions and suspensions in Science whilst Year 8 were studying the cause, effect and response surrounding coastal flooding events. There is such a great breadth to the curriculum here and it was lovely to see this very much in evidence.

This morning, the finals of the senior section sonnet competition took place with Mr Phillips, Head of Drama at Abingdon School, kindly coming across to be the adjudicator. The five finalists performed superbly, reciting a range of sonnets to the children in assembly.

On the games field, there were matches against St Hugh’s and The Manor this week, and it was lovely to see our B and C teams performing so strongly and really enjoying their matches.

Year 3 & 4 thoroughly enjoyed their annual trip to the pantomime in Oxford on Tuesday, to see ‘Cinderella’. They came back very excited, and I heard all about the sweets and confetti that were thrown out into the audience at opportune moments.

I would like to thank all of you for your kind contributions to our silver coin trail this week to support our three local school charities, Soundabout, The Oxford Food Hub and The Abingdon Bridge. We are still counting up all the coins (there were a lot!) and I will let you know how much we raised next week.

Finally, huge congratulations to our U11 footballers who performed fantastically well at the IAPS national finals last Sunday. They qualified in 2nd place from their pool for the main competition and lost a very closely contested quarter final. Their results placed them in the top 8 in the country – a fantastic achievement.

I very much look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming events over the next two weeks. Have a good weekend.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 24 November 2022

Dear Parents

It certainly seems that the weather has finally turned this week. The torrential downpour on Wednesday at drop off made for an interesting start to the day.

Six of our Year 5 and 6 pupils competed in the Abingdon School Business Challenge this week. They had to come up with their own brand of soft drink that would be on sale at the Qatar Football World Cup and then present to all the other pupils competing and the judges, explaining why their brand would appeal to the public, the taste and ingredients, and how they were planning to manufacture it. They had a hugely enjoyable day and can be proud of their work and the way they presented their ideas.

House meetings took place today with the four houses in competition to build the highest tower of shoes. Each house split in separate groups of mixed ages and built shoe towers, some more wobbly than others, but managed to achieve heights of almost a metre. It was lovely to see everyone working so closely together on these towers.

In the classroom, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing our Year 7s testing chemical reactions by heating different elements in the bunsen burner. The children were so engaged with their learning, watching the different colours that each element produced and balancing the chemical equation as a result of the element combining with oxygen.

Year 4 visited Christ Church in Abingdon as part of their unit of study on places of worship. It was a real chance for them to explore all the features of a church that they had seen in textbooks and to listen to the curate explaining how christening services and taking communion works when they have a service. Christ Church used to be an old barn before being converted into a church so it was great for the children to see how not all churches have the exact same layout. They were also excited to find the Abingdon School crest there, from when the school supported their new altar.

Our first drama performance of the year took place on Tuesday evening with our Year 6s performing an abridged version of ‘Around the World in 80 days’. This was something that had been put together in Drama lessons this term and it was clear that the children really enjoyed having the chance to perform it to a live audience.

Rugby this week saw our U13As competing at the Pinewood 7s tournament, finishing a very creditable 4th against some very strong opposition teams. All children in Years 5 and 6 played against MCS competing well across the board, whilst the U8 and U9s also took on MCS and performed extremely well.

Our U13s played some terrific football at the IAPS Football national finals last weekend. They finished a fantastic 9th in the country, winning the plate competition, and only conceding one goal in the 7 matches they played. Their team spirit, positive approach and enjoyment of competing at such a high level was clear for all to see and they should be very proud of their efforts.

Finally, good luck to our U11s who compete in their IAPS national football finals this Sunday at Millfield.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster

Thursday 17 November 2022

Dear Parents

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Fireworks last Friday. The weather was very kind and the display was terrific. Thank you too to our brilliant JPA and Annabel Gaskell for organising such an enjoyable event.

It is anti-bullying week across the country and today 5L delivered a fantastic assembly about bullying and what we can all do to stop it from happening. They presented extremely well and delivered a powerful message to the school.

Wednesday this week saw our second ever ‘Big Think’. The children all listened to Mahler’s Symphony No.1 First Movement and were then asked to respond to how it made them feel via a medium of their choice. Some wrote reflective pieces, some drew images whilst others used playdough to model how it made them feel. It was lovely to see the pupils being so reflective and creative with their thoughts and responses.

In the classroom, the children have been working hard. In Year 1 they have been creating their own versions of the story ‘The Naughty Red Bus’, whilst Reception have been exploring what happens when you mix oil and water together, with some spectacular results. I particularly enjoyed seeing Year 3 this week working on the new concept of onomatopoeia in their English lessons with the aim of including some in upcoming writing tasks.

On the rugby pitch, there have been lots of close matches this week, with our U13As and U12As producing excellent wins against Oratory Prep and Abingdon School respectively. It was an even split of wins and losses across all the other matches and as always it was great to see so many children enjoying representing APS.

Our Year 7s are looking forward to a cinema night with their Year 7 counterparts at Headington School this Friday. This is the first joint social event that we have held with them and the children are very much looking forward to it.

Good luck to our U13s playing in the APS Rugby 7s tournament tomorrow and also to our U13s who are competing at the IAPS National Football finals on Sunday in Suffolk. Today we have Matt Taylor, ex premiership footballer and coach at Tottenham football academy, coming in to run a coaching session for these pupils to help with their final preparations.

I hope you all have a good weekend ahead.

With best wishes

Craig Williams
Headmaster