Dear parents and carers

Firstly, thank you for the support with the partial closure on Monday and Tuesday. It is always a hard decision to square even when the necessity is great and sadly the flooding that we encountered during the course of Sunday night meant that we could not operate effectively and safely for all students. I am pleased with the response of all students, and they have been a real credit this week whether they have had a full week on site or returned on Wednesday. The damage has been significant and will take some time to repair. That said, from Monday we will be starting repairs on IT2. This will have some knock-on impacts to students who have lessons in IT2 but also IT1, IT5, LA1 and LA4 whilst we juggle the timetable into available spaces. We hope the repairs will not take too long for these classrooms. If you could let your children know to check their timetables on Sunday evening to make sure they are prepared for any changes that we have made.

I would also like to express my thanks to our great site team and cleaning staff who have done an amazing job this week and maintained their high standards even when the task seemed thankless! Without their work on Monday and Tuesday we would not have been fully operational by Wednesday.

Another consequence of the damage this week has been our decision to move our Year 6 Open Evening to Thursday October 17^th displacing our Year 11 parents’ evening to Thursday October 24^th.  Again, this is a decision that we have not taken lightly but weighed in context of our desire to showcase our wonderful school at its best and also to ensure that we did not clash with other open evenings. We will reissue communications to students who had signed up to help in due course next week.  

PE Update -click here– as much as the weather has been poor, we have seen some successful completion of fixtures!

Duke of Edinburgh Update

Mrs Ayling writes ‘Year 13 Gold D of E participants got back from a sunny lake district on Saturday evening. The weather in the lakes was beautiful, we were so lucky and got some great views. One night we sat watching the supermoon rise and then had breakfast watching the sunrise in the same place. It was quite a shock when we hit the rain on the M6 on the return journey! The teams did brilliantly – 4 long hill days with large backpacks on is no mean feat and they showed great perseverance and determination to power on through the aches, pains and blisters! All should be very proud of their efforts and there were some great memories made. Several pupils are already planning their next trip back to the Lake District when they can drive.’

Key Dates

Monday 1^st October Year 11 Cobblers Trip

Monday 7^th October Year 12 Meet the Tutor Evening

Thursday 10^th October Year 7 Meet the Tutor Evening

Thursday 17^th October Year 6 Open Evening

Thursday 24^th October Year 11 Parents’ Evening

Friday 25^th October End of half term

Best wishes for the week ahead.

Simon Anderson