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March 2024
Lots happened in March – mostly to do
with the UTC! OFSTED came – so
much stress amongst the staff.
Despite assurances from OFSTED following Ruth Perry’s suicide,
things are no less stressful for staff and inspectors are no less
“assertive” in their questioning.
But that’s acceptable if the outcome is OK and while at the time
of writing nothing’s been formalised so we can’t report it here, at the
end of the two days, we were “pleased” with our outcome.
You’ll recall that Ian mentioned that
he was British Science Week for the RSGB and, lo and behold, BSW came
around. It was cold, raining and
miserable so the planned outdoor activity of working with satellites was
called off and instead Ian set up a radio station at the school. A (Large) group of students took part,
as did some staff, and we had a good time. The students (and staff) all found is
sufficiently fascinating to want to go on to take a course with Ian to
take their exam for their amateur radio licences. Great stuff!
We enhanced our existing roof-mounted
solar panels with a battery system which means that, if the sun shines,
we can run the house into the evening free of electricity charges. Unfortunately the sun hasn’t shined very
much, in fact it has rained solidly for most of the month! Fortunately we can charge the batteries
up when the electricity is cheap – overnight – and then use it when it’s
expensive (peak hours). All good
and the app has kept us entertained for much of
the month! Great big shout-out for
Sustainable Energy Systems of Washington who were great and for Octopus
Energy who provided some excellent advice and made the transfer to export
very easy. (To get £50 off if you
transfer use https://share.octopus.energy/soft-raven-379 We get £50 too!)
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