Principal’s Blog #1

As New Year resolutions go, I’m a little bit late on this one. A weekly blog is something that I intended to begin writing a couple of years ago now as a further way to communicate out to our community the experiences and successes of each week at school. Something that would support our posts on twitter; the type of things we write about in the Outlook magazine, just more often. So, late as it may be, we start now.

As you would expect we’ve hit the ground running in 2019. Already we have taken a small group of boys Orienteering with Mr Feast, taken part in E-Safety officer training thanks to Miss Robinson and Cheshire Police and seen a large number of our Year 10 students out on Work Experience. I look forward to our newly trained E-Safety team leading out assemblies in the very near future. Great work from the students on such an important subject.

We made the unprecedented step of adding a Deputy/ Assistant Head Girl to our year 11 team this week. Congratulations to Shannon who has surpassed all expectations and blown us away with her commitment to extra-curricular work and events. Staff were almost knocking my door down to get her recognised. We’re proud to have her in the team. It’s exactly this type of extra effort and attitude that gets you success in life. A great student role model for all of us.

Coming up we have our PTA meeting (Monday 21 January at 5.30). I am hoping for a good level of support with this. We have some exciting ideas to take to parents that we need help with making into a reality. Community collaboration like this is important to us growing. It is also Curriculum Enrichment Monday again. If you don’t know what this is have a look on twitter and the website. Is your child involved in this? There is a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities available to students every second Monday between 3.15 and 4.30. Every college and employer tells us that what they look for in recruits at 16 is not just qualifications, but what young people have done outside of lessons to widen their experience. It’s a great opportunity to develop more essential life skills.

There is a very busy term ahead so I will certainly not be short of things to write about. So some key reminders - Whole school reading and spelling tests begin on 28 January, we have another Drop-Down day on 5 February, staff INSET on 11 February and the start of the Year 8 Options process starts in the coming weeks. The Principal’s Review of Teaching and curriculum and qualifications consultation begins next week. Part of this is a huge student voice exercise in shaping future curriculum. Parents and families will also be asked to put forward their views on what we offer over the Spring term. Please use this opportunity to contribute your views.

Getting back to the week - Around the school I have been particularly impressed by Year 11 lessons. The energy and commitment the students are showing is inspirational to us here and I have observed some high quality interactions between staff and students as they work through the last 14 weeks of their secondary school life!

Thanks for taking to time to read this first blog, I’ll try and keep it shorter next week!

Mr Fraser