Message from the head

Goodness only knows whether anyone reads this bit in the newsletter but, as I’ve explained before, I like writing it on a Thursday night as it gives me a chance to reflect.

Huge ups and downs this week. Our Y11 and 13 teams look set to complete their duties as teacher AND examiner as we reach the end of our exhaustive attempts to produce fair and balanced TAGs (teacher assessed grades). These took place in lieu of formal examination hall style tests this year and it has required enormous levels of work from a range of staff for which I can only say thank you. I also attended a series of meetings about exclusion. This is, without doubt, the worst part of my job and I hate it on every level. Its only consolation is that exclusion often results in the further protection of our students’ emotional and educational wellbeing. We work as hard as we possibly can to avoid any kind of exclusion. When we reach that point it is because we have run out of options.

By Thursday morning I was flagging a bit and, in front of a large group of students, I absentmindedly picked up a stick which had made its way onto one of our colonnades. My intention was to throw it into a nearby bush but, my hand to eye coordination being what it is, I missed by some thirty feet and the stick went straight through an open window (safely missing anyone inside). When Iwas a student there may have been a roar of appreciation for this ‘fail’. In fact our students generously ignored me apart from one student who, obviously feeling some pity for me mouthed, as if to an incapable three year old, ‘it’s ok, at least you tried….’

Even in busy weeks I can’t stay out of lessons because that’s where the magic happens. In food (Y8) I hung around for long enough for Miss Poundall to take the hint and offer me a cheese and tomato pinwheel. Students then set about their own pinwheels (or palmiers) but I got distracted and forgot to go back and claim a couple of them. In maths I managed to simplify three equations successfully (students were not in the least impressed, obviously). And in DT/engineering Martha was waiting for her CADCAM clock design to download to one of our laser cutters.

Finally, on Wednesday as students were coming out of school staff and two parents combined to help a member of our community who collapsed. This person was eventually airlifted from Starkholmes fields to hospital where medics suggested that those on the scene had potentially offered lifesaving intervention. As the helicopter lifted off one of our senior team members thanked those present. A parent who had provided assistance responded, ‘that’s what Highfields is all about’. When this was recounted to me later that evening I felt unutterably proud to be in some small way associated with this very special school.

We are, most definitely, Highfields.

Have a good weekend.