October 12, 2018

Dear Students, Parents and Colleagues,

It has been awhile since my last entry since we had staff training day and our annual Residential Trips. Staff training is very important to us as teachers, as we wish to continually learn and grow as professionals, setting good examples to our students. This year’s theme was mindfulness and gave us some new skills to incorporate into our very busy days as teachers. Ultimately we will be able to pass on many of the ideas to students.

The campus was very quiet last week as all our students and teachers were out around Thailand undertaking their Residential trips. They take a huge amount of organisation and I am very grateful to the trip leaders for the incredible amount of work they put in making the trips so successful and safe. I am sure washing machines were used non-stop once students returned and that you were regaled with many fantastic stories. We were very pleased with our use of Firefly to give you updates and had 3940 hits from 926 unique users. The Year 7 page proved to be the most popular. Our Residential trips are very important to us as they help students develop their independence alongside their self-confidence, whilst developing their relationships within their Year group. As a school with a strong community this is very important to us.

We now have nearly 70 student leaders in school who were either selected or voted in depending on their roles. These roles cover the areas of Houses, Student Council, Prefects, and the Head/Deputy Boys and Girls. I am very keen on students taking an active role in school improvement and we have asked Student Council for their input to our Academic Mentoring programme and International Week. To help students develop in ‘leadership’ we had all our KS3 leaders undertake leadership and team building training today with the international provider “Jump!”. I am sure we will see the fruits of their training in the months to come.

Have a fantastic long weekend and don’t forget that school is closed on Monday.

Nigel Wilsonlock

Head of Secondary