1Good morning and thank you for coming here today.
2I'd like to bring you up to date with changes in the school that will affect your children.
3As you know, the school buildings date from various times:
4some from the 1970s, some from the last five years,
5and of course Dartfield House is over a century old.
6It was commissioned by a businessman.
7Neville Richards, and intended as his family home,
8but he died before it was completed.
9His heir chose to sell it to the local council, who turned it into offices.
10A later plan to convert it into a tourist information centre didn't come about, through lack of money,
11and instead it formed the nucleus of this school when it opened 40 years ago.
12The school has grown as the local population has increased,
13and I can now give you some news about the lower school site,
14which is separated from the main site by a road.
15Planning permission has been granted for development of both sites.
16The lower school will move to new buildings that will be constructed on the main site.
17Developers will construct houses on the existing lower school site.
18Work on the new school buildings should start within the next few months.
19A more imminent change concerns the catering facilities and the canteen.
20The canteen is always very busy throughout the lunch period -
21in fact it's often full to capacity,
22because a lot of our pupils like the food that's on offer there.
23But there's only one serving point,
24so most pupils have to wait a considerable time to be served.
25This is obviously unsatisfactory,
26as they may have hardly finished their lunch before afternoon lessons start.
27So we've had a new Food Hall built,
28and this will come into use next week.
29It'll have several serving areas,
30and I'll give you more details about those in a minute,
31but one thing we ask you to do, to help in the smooth running of the Food Hall,
32is to discuss with your children each morning which type of food they want to eat that day,
33so they can go straight to the relevant serving point.
34There won't be any junk food - everything on offer will be healthy -
35and there's no change to the current system of paying for lunches by topping up your child's electronic payment card online.
36You may be wondering what will happen to the old canteen.
37We'll still have tables and chairs in there,
38and pupils can eat food from the Food Hall or lunch they've brought from home.
39Eventually we may use part of the canteen for storage,
40but first we'll see how many pupils go in there at lunchtime.
41OK, back to the serving points in the Food Hall,
42which will all have side dishes, desserts and drinks on sale,
43as well as main courses.
44One serving point we call World Adventures.
45This will serve a different country's cuisine each day,
46maybe Chinese one day and Lebanese the next.
47The menus will be planned for a week at a time,
48so pupils will know what's going to be available the whole of that week.
49Street Life is also international, with food from three particular cultures.
50We'll ask pupils to make suggestions,
51so perhaps sometimes there'll be food from Thailand, Ethiopia and Mexico,
52and then one of them will be replaced by Jamaican food for a week or two.
53The Speedy Italian serving point will cater particularly for the many pupils who don't eat meat or fish:
54they can be sure that all the food served there is suitable for them.
55There'll be plenty of variety, so they shouldn't get bored with the food.
56OK, that's all on the new Food Hall.
57Now after-school lessons.
58These are very popular with pupils, particularly swimming -
59in fact there's a waiting list for lessons.
60Cycling is another favourite,
61and I'm delighted that dozens of pupils make use of the chance to learn to ride in off-road conditions.
62It means that more and more cycle to and from school every day.
63As you know, we have a well-equipped performance centre,
64and we're going to start drama classes in there, too.
65Pupils will be able to join in just for fun or work up to taking part in a play -
66we hope to put on at least one a year.
67We already teach a number of pupils to use the sound and lighting systems in the centre.
68And a former pupil has given a magnificent grand piano to the school,
69so a few pupils will be able to learn at the school
70instead of going to the local college, as many of them do at the moment.