This is a great school; I feel like we are back in full swing now. All of these opportunities do not happen without great staff. Today’s words are devoted to the great students and the incredible staff that make things happen.

I would like to welcome everybody back to school and I hope you had a wonderful Easter break in the warm spring sunshine.

Time really does fly at our school. Year 11 had their final parents evening on Wednesday. This gave our dedicated and hardworking teachers a chance to impart those final tips and bits of motivation before the exams.

Happy International Women’s Day (for Tuesday). One of the things I get to do as Headteacher is show the prospective parents around our school, and I am always so proud of the focus and atmosphere around the site.

As we move from ‘pandemic’ to ‘epidemic’, we reflect upon what was gained and what was lost throughout this most extraordinary time. The recent article in the TES reminded me that the main thing missing from the lives of our young people was social time. The article advocates longer break times as the most important structural change that will support mental health. As the leadership team meets to discuss next year’s timetable, it is great to know that there is evidence to support our investment in increasing social time for our young people. We have reinstated lunchtime activities (although nobody signed up for my Japanese culture club- sad face), implemented an excellent and improving games afternoon and after-school offer, ran a residential trip for Y9 (and a brave Y8) and an afternoon together in the Thicket for Y8. 

This week we welcomed Year 9 parents into school for their parents evening and options evening. It was lovely to see everybody back in the hall and for us all to have an opportunity to celebrate success and think about the ‘even better ifs’. This event highlighted the importance of the relationship between the teachers, the parents and the students. We had lots of exciting discussions about the GCSE options process and how these were the first steps into narrowing down their curriculum to the areas they want to pursue further. It was nice to see that many of our students have dilemmas as to what to stop learning later this year. It was lovely to hear this thought process, and reinforces how important it is to keep the curriculum as wide as possible for as long as possible because learning is valuable for learning's sake, not just because there are qualifications at the end.