Tuesday 4th September 2018
Welcome back to a new school year; I hope you all have had a
lovely holiday and well-deserved rest. Here at school much has gone on
during the summer holiday to prepare for the start of term. The main
focus of the holiday was to receive, issue and analyse the summer examination
results, both A Level and GCSE. I will be sharing more of the detail at
next week’s Upper School Speech Day, but I am pleased to say that the overall
picture was a good one; there were successes in a number of areas, and work to
do in others. We still aspire to do better, and so the developments that
we started last year will continue during this year.
As well as the examination results much work has gone on around
the site, particularly getting the new science and computing building and new
pavilion ready for students and staff use. I am pleased to say they are
fully operational from today. At this point I wish to say thank you to
all of the staff who continued their work during the six weeks’ holiday.
Without their support the school would not be as ready. Thank you.
The start of a new year brings new faces: a new cohort of year 7
students; new students who join the sixth form in year 12; and the many new
members of staff who join the staffing body. We welcome them all and wish
them many happy years ahead.
A new year also brings new procedures. I cannot explain
everything in this blog, but you will have all hopefully seen the letter I sent
out yesterday explaining our new position with mobile phones. In addition
to this change the students were informed today about our new procedures with
homework which are going to support the changes we are making to our assessment
arrangements. Details of this will be shared with parents at the
up-and-coming information evenings, but if you would like to know more please
do make contact with your child’s form tutor. Just like with the
introduction of the new house structure last year, it always takes time for new
procedures to bed down, but over the next few weeks and months your child will
begin to see the impact of them.
There is some good news to share
already. Congratulations to Finley Lodge
of Corpus Christi House who took part in the KSI World Karate Championships in
Stockholm during the last week of the school term. Together with his three team mates from
Kent/Birmingham, Finley became World Champion in the team kata event. He also was very successful in his individual
fighting event achieving a bronze medal, after narrowly missing out on a place
in the final. His next focus will be the
European Championships in Lisbon in October next year. Well done Finley.
Best wishes to all the students in these
first few days of the new year.
