Headteacher's Fortnightly Update - 10th January

Firstly, I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas and New Year break with your family and friends. It has been great welcoming all of our students back to the start of a busy term.

Most pupils have turned up in full uniform and prepared for their lessons. We held a reset session with all pupils on Monday morning to remind them about the importance of correct uniform, punctuality to school, being prepared for lessons and our expectations of them around the school.

The expectations we have spoken to pupils about detailed below. The aims of these are to ensure a calm and well organised environment for all pupils to thrive in and to maximise the time that pupils spend in class learning. Please discuss these with your children and explain the importance of them to make sure we can run the best learning environment possible for all pupils

1. Attend school on time.

Pupils should arrive in school at 8:35 for form time which starts at 8:40. We still have a number of pupils who attend school after 9 o’clock and this has a negative impact on the start of lesson 1. This term pupils arriving after 9 o’clock will be supervised by support staff until the start of less than 2 to avoid disrupting learning, we will discuss this with the parents of those pupils to make sure they attend school on time in future.

2. Attend lessons on time. At the end of break and lunch there are two bells; the first bell is a warning, where pupils should start to make their way to their classroom. The second bell indicates the start of lesson, all pupils should be in their lesson at this point. There is no grace period to be late beyond this time. We will be getting a little bit stricter with pupils this term who are still on the corridor beyond this bell without good reason.

3. Use toilets appropriately

Pupils should only use the toilet during lessons in exceptional circumstances. In most cases, this should be pupils with a medical pass. Pupils should use the toilet before and between lessons and at break and lunch. We have improved the quality of toilets available at break and lunch and these are cleaned regularly.

Looking at our attendance for December it is a good improvement from last year which is pleasing.   It was a lovely end to the term, celebrating the excellent attendance of some of our pupils and rewarding those issued with learning legends through the term.  Improving attendance remains our biggest priority.

The start of term has been busy with exam results for Numeracy for Year 11 and we are proud of the achievements gained.  In particular, we are very pleased to see the outcomes achieved from pupils in our Alder provision where we saw some outstanding results.

This term we are improving our school phone line, the system we have is too limited in capacity, meaning that people phoning in find it difficult to get through to anyone.  We are looking to introduce a call queue to provide more opportunity to speak to a receptionist.

Progress reports were sent out to all year groups prior to the end of term. We are aware that some parents did not receive a report as email addresses were incorrect.  This has now been rectified.  If we have an email address on our system that we no longer use, please let us know so we can update our records.

We have made some progress with the plans for the access roads to school. As we start the new term, can I remind everyone of the need for us all to be careful when dropping off and picking up pupils.  Please do not stop on bends or perform 3-point turns.  Please use the space right at the end of the drive to turn your car if you haven’t used the bus bay area.

Thank you for your ongoing support, together we can achieve great things.

Kind Regards, 

Mr D Lawlor

Headteacher