Durham High School End of Week Newsletter Issue 15 – January 10 2025
Welcome back! Happy New Year to you all. I hope you have all enjoyed your family time together over the Christmas holidays. I’m sure the snow brought much excitement during the last few days of the holiday for the girls. Our fabulous site staff have done an incredible job keeping the car parks and pathways safe for our staff and girls, for which we are incredibly grateful. We have welcomed a number of new girls and families into our Durham High community this January, and we wish them all a happy and successful time with us. Thank you to Mrs Wheeler and Mrs Lonsdale for taking our Sixth Form girls to Paris for their Christmas trip, and to Mrs Jenkinson, Miss Cartwright, Mrs Middleton, Miss Bingham, Miss Middleton and Mrs Steel for accompanying the ski trip at the end of term to Italy. A huge thanks must also go to Mrs Slane for all her hard work that went into organising the fabulous ski trip. She was bitterly disappointed not to be able to travel, and we are so pleased that she is finally on the mend. We hope you all enjoyed following the activities on our social media channels. We look forward to the Spain trip at Easter, the Year 6 Ford Castle residential, the Year 7 and 8 Paris trip in the Summer Term, and our annual Year 9 Lakeside trip in June. Our Year 10, 11 and Sixth Form students are looking forward to their Projects Abroad trip in the summer holidays to Sri Lanka, and our Duke of Edinburgh girls have their expeditions for Bronze, Silver and Gold to conquer. Pre-Prep and Prep have lots of exciting days out planned for the Spring and Summer terms too. We are already planning our trips calendar for next year, so watch this space. I would like to congratulate our wonderful Upper Sixth and Year 11 students on their exemplary attitudes towards their mock exams this week. We ensure that the process mirrors the procedures in place for their public examinations in the summer, so there are no surprises when sitting their GCSEs and A-Levels. In addition to being awarded Independent School of the Year North East in December, I am delighted to share that Durham High School has been recognised by the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE), awarding us with the ‘I Belong’ certificate for our efforts to inspire more girls to pursue Computer Science. This award celebrates our commitment to continue empowering the next generation of female leaders in technology, breaking barriers in STEM through initiatives such as Robo Queens, She Can Code Society, and InnovateHer Leaders, as well as workplace visits, inspiring talks, and events like the CyberFirst Girls Competition. Thank you to Miss Turner, our Head of Computing and Digital Strategy, for all her hard work to enable us to achieve this accolade. At Durham High School, we know how important it is that the girls know they have a space in the world of tech and STEM. Miss Turner is actively challenging the perception that computer science isn’t for girls, and this certificate is part of that. Thank you for your support regarding the changes to mobile phone usage during the school day in the Senior Department. The girls have all been great at handing in their phones. We fully appreciate that some of our girls travel on buses to and from school and absolutely need their phones from a safety perspective. However, if your daughter is dropped off and picked up after school, please could we ask you to consider whether your daughter needs to bring her phone to school at all, as it will just be locked away for the day? If you need to get a message to your daughter during the school day, please ring Reception, and they will ensure messages are passed on.