Headteacher’s message

We’re cautiously hoping that the Y7/8 self-isolation acted as a mini fire break because since then cases have reduced markedly (I type this nervously and ready to respond to the next spike).

I spent some time with Mr Cole working through your responses to our survey and both of us were extremely touched by the level of support you have shown for our attempts to handle this crisis. We hold ourselves to high account and are never complacent. We noted that there were suggestions on our risk assessment. Mr Cole will give you a little more of an insight into how we reflected on your survey responses and will provide some responses to questions and concerns regarding bubble sizes and other Covid risk assessment based questions (see overleaf).

We have a suite of strategies designed to help students catch up after lockdown and these include investments in laptops, software, Lexia Literacy Support, extra time from staff and various other plans. The strategy in which we have most faith is to ‘make every lesson count’. That’s what we focused on in our CPD session on Monday and it was great to see teachers sharing ideas that we hope will squeeze every drop of learning out of the time we have with our students.

In lessons this week I’ve seen a food teacher use a strategy from our improvement project known as Operation Word Power. This project involves trying even harder to encourage students to use the language of specialists. In this case the teacher adopted our team strategy of using red to highlight these words.

And in technology, Jenson in Y7 had almost completed his automata. In case you don’t know what an automata is, it looks like this (just before you complete it).

The other day I tried to put a vegetarian meatball in my mouth without removing my mask. I looked around hoping that no students in the dining hall had noticed. Luckily, only a very small group of very polite Y9 girls had, and after a while, they managed to stifle their giggles. The thought that caused me to be so distracted was the latest setback to the all-weather pitch project the school has been waiting for since prehistoric times. Our excellent chair of governors, Angeline Ellson, has provided a short update in the newsletter (see page 13), but the thrust of her message is that this project WILL HAPPEN.

What are you doing this weekend? If I find myself with time to spare in the absence of having to trace close contacts for new cases of Covid I am hoping to continue painting my hallway. I began this job so long ago that the paint colour I am using, which was all the rage when I started, has apparently gone out of fashion and is no longer being produced. My daughter says that it looks ‘a bit February 2020’. I don’t know what that means.

Whatever you get up to, I wish you and your family a peaceful weekend.

We are Highfields.

A Marsh Headteacher