Welcome to our first newsletter of the 25-26 academic year! We have had a busy first half term in school with appointing children in to leadership positions, training our new group of anti-bullying ambassadors and getting ourselves ready for our new OPAL adventure! Our Reception and Pre-school children have also settled in to school life brilliantly.

Thank you to those parents who gave us feedback on the consultation for changing the time of the end of the school day to allow the children to have a one hour lunchtime. We appreciate your input. Mrs Nicholls and Mrs Shaw have been busy getting donations from local businesses for our OPAL activities and will be reaching out with how your donations can support us too!

A big thank you to EH Smith Charitable Trust who have donated many building materials for free, for our children to use in their creative play. EH Smith Charitable Trust

We started the term with Year 6 attending a residential at Frank Chapman. This was a fantastic experience for our oldest children as they developed their skills in climbing, archery, kayaking, high ropes as well as just being away from home for 3 days! Behaviour was excellent and the children developed crucial life skills, learning to live with each other and they showed great independence and responsibility and care and kindness for each other. I was extremely proud of them all. Especially as we had been forced in to making a last minute change due to Astley Burf not being available last minute! True resilience and teamwork shown by everyone!

Our Year 4 children also went to Laches Wood for 2 nights to prepare them for being away for longer when they get to Year 6. They also developed skills in, archery, canoeing and much much more. Again, it is great to see our children facing a different challenge, outside of the classroom and we were all very proud of how they conducted themselves while away from home.

Thank you to all of the children who attended our open event and supported Maidensbridge so well. We had over 55 visitors, all interested in our school for their child in September 2026. We were all so proud of the children and we received lots of feedback from the visitors about how polite our children were and how knowledgeable they were about our school. A special thank you to our Head Boy, Head Girl, Deputy Head Boy and Deputy Head Girl who presented in front of a room full of adults confidently and clearly, with their speeches. Amazing resilience and confidence!

The HSA are busy preparing our amazing bonfire event on Friday 7th November. Make sure you have your tickets ahead of the day, paid for online, because it is usually a sell out event!

If there are any parents who can help us in the day or in the evening, we would be very grateful. Please get in touch via the info@maidens.dudley.sch.uk email address.

Well done everyone who has attendance of 96% or above for this half term, we will be looking for our 100% certificates over the next half term to award in assembly before the end of term.

Just a reminder please that term-time holidays should not be booked and will not be authorised by school. As a 'good' school our attendance should be above National at 97% and we are currently at 97.3% which is fantastic so well done everyone! Let's keep that up all year!

Don't forget your wellies and your raincoats ready for our OPAL journey to start on Monday 3rd November.

Please name the wellies and coats so that they can be in school everyday and will not restrict children's playing time.

The children will have many new zones to play in and we will keep you updated with photos so that you can see OPAL in action.

We would like to share our congratulations for Mrs Price who has secured a promotion as Office Manager at another school, but unfortunately that does mean that she will be leaving us on Monday 10th November. I am sure that you will join me in thanking her for all of her hard work for Maidensbridge children and families and wish her lots of luck for the future. We will miss you Mrs Price!

Mrs Hallett started her maternity leave this half term and we are still awaiting exciting baby news!

Mrs Garner also had to leave us from the Pre-School due to family commitments. Again we thank her for all of her hard work at Maidensbridge and wish her lots of important family time ahead.

Monday 3rd November - Children back at school and new finish time of 3.30pm

Thursday 6th November- Theatre Trip for KS1

Friday 7th November- Maidensbridge Bonfire! Make sure you have got your tickets online before it sells out!

Monday 10th November- INSET Day

Friday 14th November- Children In Need

Thursday 11th December- Theatre Trip for Years 2-6

Friday 12th December- HSA Christmas Disco

Please call: 0300 555 0050

If you are concerned about a child’s welfare please speak to a DSL in school, or call Children’s Social Care on the number above.