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Dates for the diary Monday 5th November - C11 Post 16 Evening (1) Tuesday 6th November - C11 Post 16 Evening (2) Thursday 8th November - C12 GCSE certificate awards evening W/c 12th November - C11 Mocks commence Friday 16th November and Monday 19th November School closed—staff only W/c 12th November - C11 Mocks continue Saturday 24th November - Duke of Edinburgh local walk Sunday 25th November - Spirit of Honywood Feel Good Fayre W/c 26th November - C11 Mocks continue Wednesday 28th November—C10 Drama Evening Thursday 29th November— C10 Drama Evening (2) Follow up individual photos Thursday 13th December— Christmas Concert Friday 14th December— Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children Fund
By James Saunders 2nd November 2018
This week I would like to talk to you about competition and results. Specifically, athletics and the 100M final. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics Jesse Owens completed the final in a gold medal winning time of 10.03; the first of four wins. Fast forward to 2009, still in Berlin, where Usain Bolt took to the track for his own 100M final. He set the world record with a time of 9.58 - about half a second quicker than Owens. If you ran both races simultaneously Owens would have come in joint last in the Bolt race. Does that make Owens a loser by modern standards? No. You would never make that comparison. Owens is still a gold medal winner and in the context of the 1936 race he was the best. To compare him to Bolt is to ignore the progress that has been made in the world of athletics over the last eighty plus years. But imagine if he were to race alongside Bolt and achieve that time. It would be foolish of him to state that he is still a gold medal runner with that time and has put in a performance equal to that which achieved gold. Why? Because the bar has been raised over that time. Progress has been made. Athletes across the globe have got better whilst the performance of Owens would have stagnated or stalled. This brings me to the exam system that our learners are faced with as I think that the government have created something similar to the world of athletics. Our learners are now entering a world where two of them could gain an identical mark in their English paper but because they took it a year apart the grade boundary shifted and gave one of them a grade 5 and the other a grade 4. Will the person looking at their CV and interviewing them know this? Unlikely. Will they formulate a preconception of academic ability and think one is better than the other. Possibly. However, what the system does is acknowledge the context that learners take their exams in. To compare Bolt and Owens is to say they are both gold medal winners in the context of their day. Is the time really that important? I will leave that for you to decide. This is the system our learners have to face and whether we like it, agree with it, dislike it or disagree with it, it is how we are judged. It is a system with many flaws but one that has raising standards, raising the bar, making progress (in the broader economical, social and physical sense) at the heart of its intention. Each year is another 100M final for our learners that is taken in a different context. Learners and schools for that matter are no longer judged or graded independently but as part of a collective set of runners.
Their ranking or grade is based as much on how the other runners did as it is on their own race. And because the system is like this, our learners, like all good runners, must keep training to better their personal best. However, we must acknowledge that in any race someone will have a winning time, someone will have a losing time and there will be an average time. That means that fifty percent of the runners will be below average no matter what. That is the unfortunate legacy of this system. My aim in telling you about this is not be all doom and gloom but to be realistic about the system our learners are facing. I will not offer up excuses about the system being broken or corrupt or somehow at fault for our performance as a school or for any of our learners. Just like an athlete training for the next race we must all focus on constantly improving our performance and not worrying about the system or how others are performing. Only on race day (exams day) do we find out if it is enough to secure gold. As long as we continue to strive to beat our personal best then that is all we can ask for. In the short space of time I have been working at the school I feel that we have made much progress. We have changed many things; some of them obvious but others more subtle. These changes are already pushing our performance further and positively impacting on the future outcomes of our learners.
C10 Portsmouth Residential Expression of interest letters to be back on Monday 5th November please!
We have now passed the deadline for parents to choose their secondary school. I am really pleased to see that so many parents have demonstrated the faith and trust they have in the quality of education we offer at Honywood by choosing it for their children. Our aim will always be to treat each learner like an athlete: to get to know them; to coach them on an individual level; to understand their strengths and areas to improve; to provide them with support when they need it, and most importantly to run their own race, not for the system, not for others, but for themselves, so that they achieve their own personal best. Our thanks to: Tom Birks 8Rph, Joseph Chappell 8CPe, Phoebe Ellis 9Saa/Ros, Imogen Pearey 11CFr, Finlay Newton 7CHo, Lienke Viljoen 8CPe/LPu who supported a visit this week for Helen Bickford and to Jake Ring 8RPh and Marcia Swain 8CPe who met prospective families this week and gave them a one to one guided tour. The families were very impressed by their confidence and knowledge about our school. Well done to everyone.
Football results: Essex Cup Round 2 Cohort 10 Honywood 1 vs Saffron Walden County 5 Semi Final Direct Cup Cohort 11 Honywood 5 vs Notley 4
Thankyou to our Cohort 8 Duty Receptionists Grace Divine Josh Greensides Amelia Jenkins Lucien Kinsman Harry Lonton Nicholas McKeown
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Parents’ Time Members of the Leadership Team will be available to see parents without appointment: Monday
7:15am—8:00am
Wednesday
3.00pm—3.45pm
Friday
7.15am—8.00am
Tours for current and prospective parents are available on Wednesdays , 9:15am—10:15am.