The brand new Pinner High School finally opened its doors to its first cohort of young students on Tuesday.

Head teacher Chris Woolf has been chronicling what has been a busy summer for staff preparing for the Beaulieu Drive school’s first ever day of term.

Here he recounts the anticipation and excitement of both students and teachers.

First days at school are often emotional, for both parents and children. And first days, it turns out, are also emotional for a very excited head teacher.

From the corner of my eye as I was giving our hall, named “The Pinnacle”, the final once over, I glimpsed the first student coming down the corridor. It made me catch my breath. The uniform - previously pinned flat on my makeshift office walls, nine months ago an item on the agenda at a governors’ meeting - was suddenly alive in three dimensions, filled with a student walking purposefully towards me.

At 8.25am on Tuesday, September 6, to Pinner and Eastcote, a new high school was born.

With balloons blowing in the breeze, streams of students pouring through the doors, and the smell of fresh paint still hanging in the air: our first, first day of term.

The previous day I had received a handwritten letter from a lady named Margaret Stevenson. Echoing down the corridor were Margaret’s recollections of her time at Pinner County Grammar, for she was a student at their first day, a trailblazer from September 1937, now aged 90, wishing the school every success on its opening.

She enclosed her acceptance letter from Percy Raynor, the first head teacher, reporting the news from the Middlesex Education Committee that she had been accepted into the school.

Hot lunches, the letter said, would be available “for a shilling a day, or 4/6 for the week if booked in advance.”

The letter goes on: “to meet the laundry bill and the cost of kitchen help, a charge of one penny a day, or three pennies a week, will be made on those children having packed lunches at school.”

Mr Raynor asked for a response to his letter by postcard. What would he make of my blog with a weekly readership of over a thousand, or a school Facebook page with more than 8,000 views for the last post?

So to this first day, where my laptop battery died during my first lesson, and the first visitors to sit on the newly delivered reception sofa spilt coffee on it.

But, far more importantly, a first day on which the children were keen to learn, quick to find their way around, and as thrilled as me to bring the Pinner High School values to life.

In the letter inviting Mrs Stevenson to Mr Raynor’s own first, first day, he concludes: “May I express the hope that your connection with the school will be a very pleasant one and that your child will have a happy and successful school career”.

Even with the addition of Mandarin lessons, iPads, and online homework apps, the sentiment remains true today.