Dear parents, guardians and students,
I hope this letter finds you healthy and refreshed after the summer break, and ready to commence this pivotal year in child’s education! We have an exciting year ahead, and I’m so pleased to see school life returning to some level of normality.Â
On the back of an excellent year with the previous cohort of Year 11s and a fantastic set of GCSE results, I am now very much looking forward to working with our new Year 11s. As your new Head of Year, I am looking forward to supporting you in making this the most successful year of your education to date!
Year 11 Team
This year we have a great tutor team, who are looking forward to supporting their tutees emotionally and helping to steer all students towards success in their school qualifications.Â
In Year 11 we have:
- Mrs Natasha Johnstone ([email protected])
- Ms Anais Fenning ([email protected])
Please do ensure that the tutors are your first point of communication should you have any concerns throughout the academic year. Your child’s tutor will be emailing you all next week with their introductions.
This academic year
At the start of this Academic Year, our focus will be ensuring that students feel:
- On track and happy in their subjects
- Happy and informed with the options process
- Knowledgeable about how their aspirational targets can be met.
As was the case last year, a big focus for Years 10–13 will involve students creating aspirational targets in each of their subjects. Pedagogical research illustrates how powerful this can be in improving a student’s school performance, and for that reason we will have information assemblies and student–teacher discussions dedicated to the setting and use of these targets.
Another extremely important factor that correlates directly with student achievement is time spent in school. For this reason we look for students to be punctual and aim to achieve the highest possible attendance percentage all the way up until study leave in the summer term.
If your child is to be absent from any lessons, then please ensure that you fill in the JotForm here (this can also be found under the ‘Parent Information’ section on the Hub) so that no follow-up action is taken. Students are also expected to contact each teacher for catch-up work; it is their responsibility to do this for every lesson missed.
Key Dates
Looking to the year ahead (circumstances depending), here are some dates specific to our year group (these will also be communicated nearer to the time).
| Date | Options Event |
| 13th Sep
14th Sep |
A Level Information Evening
SLT interviews with students (an opportunity for guidance and support to assist our students) |
| 29th–30th Sep | Initial Options booklet released, and initial choices form opens. |
| 7th Oct | Initial Options form closes |
| 10th–14th Oct | Student discussions with Mr Moore about options choices |
| 7th Nov | Final Options booklet released |
| 8th Nov | A Level Options evening and Final Options form opens |
| 17th Nov | Final Options Choices form closes |
| Date | Reporting / Exam Event |
| 22nd Sep
13th Oct |
Y10–13 Report Information Session
Short Reports |
| 10th Jan–19th Jan | Mock Exams |
| 9th Feb | Strength and Target Reports |
| 18th Apr | Short Reports |
| 20th Apr | PTSC |
| 12th May (To be confirmed) | Final Study Leave |
Unifrog
We are very fortunate to have a subscription to the Unifrog platform: a comprehensive website that allows students to obtain information about university courses all over the world. Whilst we appreciate that students do not yet need to be choosing university destinations, Year 11 will be exploring this site to help them start getting ideas about university as this may help inform their A Level options choices. I encourage you to discuss this site with your child – there is a vast amount that can be explored!Â
Reminders
Lunchtime reminder
To accommodate the Education Bureau guidelines requirements about students’ eating arrangements at lunchtime, we will have to return to having two sittings, with set year groups having their lunch at certain times.Â
The first sitting will be from 1.30pm to 1.50pm and will be for students in Years 7, 8 and 10.
The second sitting will be from 2pm to 2.20 pm and will be for students in Years 9,11, 12 and 13.
Year 11 Students will be eating their lunch in the Canteen and Globe between 2pm and 2.20pm.
Uniform reminderÂ
As you know, students are expected to adhere to the uniform requirements of the school, including wearing black shoes and not having unnaturally coloured hair. The full uniform list can be found on the Hub under ‘Parent information’ and under ‘Uniform and Stationery’ in the student diary.Â
1:1 tutoring
Students and tutor teachers will begin meeting for their 1:1 sessions from Monday 5th September. Tutors will create and share a timetable for these with students. These sessions are incredibly important and valuable for many reasons and attendance is, of course, compulsory.
If you have any further questions regarding any of these policies, please do reach out to your child’s tutor for further clarification. I wish you a positive, productive and happy academic year ahead!Â
Best regards,
Mr Nicholas Moore
(Head of Year 11)
[email protected]