The Bishop of Southwark, Bishop Christopher welcomed school leaders from across the Diocese for the start of year Eucharist at Southwark Cathedral earlier this term.

During the service, Bishop Christopher blessed the SDBE Vision 2025: Belong, Serve, Thrive. Headteachers and chaplains new to SDBE schools were celebrated. Mr Benn and Mr Riley, Co-Principals for our secondary phase were presented with a Bible to mark the occasion.

We also congratulated the many governing boards who received their Bishop’s Certificate in Church School Governance.

This term, we have been delighted to host author, Mark Ballabon, who is an environmentalist, philosopher, and author of ‘Home.’ Mark delivered talks to our Key Stage 2 students about climate change, which is an underlying theme in his most recent book. He linked his assemblies to our Invention fair, in which children were tasked to create an invention within the theme of ‘adapt and change.’ We found his visit to be incredibly inspiring, especially our Eco-Warrior and Science Ambassador groups who had a specialist workshop with him.

Mark also enjoyed his visit across our schools and said “ …the way that all the children brightly engaged, responded, volunteered, sang and asked intelligent questions, does you all proud. In which all the students who volunteered to read - from Year 6 to Year 3 - demonstrated a natural confidence and got the huge round of applause that they deserved.”

Student voice:

Zoe-Grace, Year 5: “I like that his book was about global warming and climate change and it made me think about my invention and what I can do to make the world healthier.”

Ainsley, Year 6: “If we don’t do things and find ways to change how we use resources, we won’t be more efficient and non-renewable resources will be gone.”

Jeremy, Year 6: “We need to find more creative ways of using our resources because we are running out of plastic and oil and stuff. We are hurting the environment because we are wasting so much resources. “

Ms Battey

Children across the Federation have been very busy over the last couple of weeks making Christmas cards for the residents of Puddingstone Grange care home, in Plumstead. Our Primary students spent a lot of time designing some really creative cards which were then hand-delivered to the care home residents by a group of our Sixth Form students. The residents were delighted to receive their cards and we look forward to working with the care home more in the future. We wish the residents at Puddingstone Grange a truly merry Christmas!

Our Year 5 students from across the Federation had the opportunity to work in our Secondary Science laboratories, taking part in a Science lesson led by our Secondary Science teachers.