Wishing you a happy new year! School has now re-started and the children have returned with gusto; displaying all of our school values each and every day. For the term ahead, we are focussing on our school value of “Perseverance” and our whole school PSHE focus is “Dreams and Goals”.

Through talking to the children about their future “Dreams and Goals”, it is fascinating to hear what the children want to be when they are grown up and how the children predict their futures will be. So many careers which the children aspire to did not exist 20, or even 10 years ago and this shows just how quickly the world is changing and how important it is that our school keeps pace and moves forward with the changing times. We want to ensure we equip every child with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed beyond their time at EBPS and to help them succeed in the world; whatever their goal.

You may have read (as I did for the first time!) in the Chronicle & Echo that North Northamptonshire Council’s cabinet have approved the additional top-up spending to fulfil the total budget requirements to complete the long-awaited building work in school. This is a project which has been in the pipeline for many years now (following the Section 106 funding from David Wilson homes as a result of The Wickets development). This has been a long process with multiple revisions and changes in personnel, but it seems we have now, finally, cleared the funding hurdle. The next step in the process is that the designs will be submitted to the planning committee and the planning consultation period will begin. The plans will shortly be available on the NNC planning portal and we will also be hosting an open event for local businesses to come in see the plans and ask any questions you may have. All designs will also be on display in the EB library as soon as we are provided with the largescale architect’s drawings.

Following the merger of the separate infant and junior schools into one primary school in 2017, it has always been an ambition to have one school building and the extension will provide us with five new classrooms in a design which links the two buildings together and means we are truly “one school” and classes will no longer need to get wet when moving around the school! Our two temporary mobile classrooms will be taken off-site and replaced with proper, built classrooms. The other additional three classrooms will be a new custom-designed and fully accessible early years block of three classrooms which can free-flow onto the playground. Overall, the extension will give us much-improved classroom facilities which are compliant with current building regulation sizes, energy efficiency and a significant improvement to our learning environments. There is no plan at the moment to increase the intake number of the school above the current 75 places per year group.

We have re-designed our curriculum to help our EBPS children and to give them the knowledge, skills and cultural capital they need to thrive. Our curriculum now has 5 Curriculum Intent keys at its core which we deliver and weave through all of the subjects we teach. These are:

 Part of our “Horizons” key is to ensure we broaden children’s horizons and ensure every child has the opportunity to access a range of trips, visits, experiences and access to life within and beyond the village of Earls Barton. Part of this is also linked to careers education and hearing from people in a range of fields and careers – if this is something you would be interested in helping with, please do contact us. We are still actively seeking a business to sponsor an EBPS “Passport Initiative” which we would like to roll-out as soon as possible! Please get in touch if you could help.

Wishing you a happy and fulfilling 2023.

Marie Lally

Headteacher, on behalf of the EBPS community.