At the start of every school year, we set up our ‘buddy-system’ between our new Reception Children and our Year 6 pupils. Each child in Reception is allocated a Year 6 buddy, who helps them to settle into life at Beckley. They spend time reading with them in the school library every week, take them to the hall and sit with them every day to eat lunch together, play with them at play and lunch times and visit them in class every few days. The responsibility of being a ‘buddy’ is something that the older pupils really aspire to and it is always wonderful to see the positive impact it has with the children in Reception. We are thrilled to see how fantastic our new Year 6 cohort are embracing their role of ‘buddies’ for our new Reception children.

In addition to being Buddies, there are many other leadership opportunities that our older pupils have, such as Librarians, Worship Leaders and Sports Leaders. Our Sports Leaders have recently completed their first wave of training and have begun to organise and run a range of structured play and sports activities at lunchtimes. Pupils really enjoy the mix of different activities on offer across the lunchtimes sessions every week, and our new sports Leaders are already wearing their ‘purple Sports Leader hoodies’ with pride!