Dear parents of Year 11 students,
It has been fantastic to be able to start this academic year in a much more normal manner than we were able to last year and we look forward to being able to support your children’s effective learning throughout the year.
I am writing to you all at this stage about our Options process to explain how I would like to gather some initial information from you, and your child, before we start our official two-stage process in the coming weeks. I have explained more about the official process for Options below and I hope that you have also seen an earlier communication from your child’s Head of Year, Mr Moore, about the dates for this as well.
To support us in gaining a better understanding of the subjects that your child would like to take in Sixth Form, I am politely asking that if you are planning for your child to move into Year 12 next academic year that you complete a Jotform (link below) to let us know what their intended subjects would be. Please complete this by next Monday the 6th of September. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to offer all of those subjects but the more information we have at this early stage the more we can consider the possibilities that we can offer. We appreciate that some students and their families are either unfamiliar with A levels or are not sure of what subjects they would like to take in Sixth Form. Please do not be concerned about not knowing what their subject choices are at this time as we will effectively support your children and their families to enable them to make well-informed subject choices over the coming weeks. However, all of the information we are able to gather at this time will be valuable in allowing us to tailor our programme to the interests of our students.Â
Link to Year 11 Options Jotform
Dates for the Options process
These dates were shared by Mr Moore in his Welcome to Year 11 Parent message earlier this month.
- 13 September – Parent Information Session (Year 11: Preparing for IGCSE examinations, Target Setting, Report Guidance and Options process)
- 13 September – Initial Subject Choices openÂ
- 27 September – Initial Options close
- 20 October – Final Options open
- 21 October – Options evening before final choices
- 1 November – Final Options Close
- 10 November – Options Confirmed
For those whose children were at DBIS in Year 9, I hope that you will remember that every Year 9 student met with either myself, Stuart Bridge, or Ben Loran (the former Deputy Head of the whole school) to provide feedback on the strengths and areas for improvement in the secondary school. Along with the Secondary Leadership Team (Peter Roberts – Deputy Head; Karen Hartcher – Assistant Head; Louise Tyrrell – Head of Sixth Form), I would like to have a similar set of conversations with every child in Year 11 on Thursday the 2nd of September. This will cover their learning, what is going well and how we can support them better in the future as well as having their thoughts on their subject choices for the future. This information will inform us about where we can look to develop as a school as well as in terms of our Sixth Form Options.
Your support and engagement with the school continue to be integral to our development and I am sure that your feedback will shape our continued growth.
Kind regards,
Simon