Dear Parent or Carer
Welcome to our end of half-term three newsletter. It is great to see such a wide range of activities having taken place in this short half-term, including: trips to Woodrow, Year 7 football league cup wins, great art work, students supporting the language skills of Year 2-6 in primary schools, the Young Chef Awards and our three superstar Oxford University applicants and interviewees.
It has been great to see so many of our students making hugely positive contributions to our community by supporting in lessons, helping run after school clubs, participating in a range of extra-curricular activities, completing hundreds of hours of volunteering through our Duke of Edinburgh programme, etc. In particular, our Sixth Form MIND mentors do a fantastic job. They are Sixth Formers who have been trained by the charity MIND to support younger peers. They take great pride in this role and are very keen to be updated weekly on the progress of their mentee and have a fabulous impact on the well-being of the student they are working with and in return themselves benefit through developing skills, but recognising that we get more out of giving than receiving. Thank you MIND mentors.
We are also thrilled to be able to award our first Exceptional Performance Badge to student in Year 8 for her voluntary contribution to the local community. Well done Isabella Haslett.
We are very excited to see our new solar panels, that have been installed this half-term, up and running after it. These are to be connected to our network over half-term and should end up reducing our carbon footprint by 50% bring benefits all round to the environment and finances over-time.
We wish Year 11 and 13 good luck with all their revision as they have their heads down over half-term with GCSEs and A Levels fast approaching.
Reports for Years 7-10 and 12 have just been released which now give parents/carers a clear indication how their child is doing in each subject area in comparison to their peers. We look forward to supporting students make improvements to move up the ranks in their relevant subject areas. At a whole-school level there are really clear links between high attendance, excellent attitude to learning scores and performance in each subject area.
As a reminder, Monday 24 February is a staff training day and all students begin timetabled lessons on Tuesday 25 February.
I leave you with a loose quote from Marcus Aurelius:
“When you focus on being a good person—someone others trust, admire, and want to support—you’re not just building a career or a reputation, you’re building a meaningful life.”
We wish everyone a great holiday.
Ed Hillyard
Headteacher