Headlines - 26Sept25

26th September 2025

HEADLINES

By James Saunders

The reality of being in cohort 11 and at the end of an educational journey that culminates in GCSE’s hit this week. On Wednesday our C11 learners attended a careers fair. They had the opportunity to reflect on their next steps and talk directly with employers and training providers. Can you believe they have 100 days left until Easter - and after that we enter the exam season. My advice to these learners is to make every day count; from my experience, the next one hundred days will go by very quickly.

However, reaching the end of C11 does not mean you have finished learning or that the journey is over. Every learner at Honywood will have an individual aspiration; rarely do those aspirations involve a dream of perpetually being a learner at school. Our learners dream of becoming pilots, surgeons, horse riders, athletes, performers, poets, writers and scientists. School is just one of the stepping stones that needs to be traversed to get closer to those dreams. And guess what? There are likely to be many more steps to come. Learning is not something that ends when you finish school.

Whilst at the Careers Convention they explored a whole range of opportunities that are available to them post-gcse. Colleges offering A-Level, vocational and apprenticeship programmes were all present alongside local businesses offering training opportunities. I hope our C11s took a careful and considered approach to their next steps and are sufficiently challenging themselves to get there. It is also the time of year where our C11s begin to write personal statements and fill out their applications.

At the other end of the school we have been conducting tours for prospective learners and their parents. The feedback I have received has been excellent and highlights the hard work that goes on at Honywood to provide a happy environment that creates happy children. I would like to thank the many volunteers who have supported us to guide each family around

the school with such confidence and maturity.

I have always viewed educational outcomes through a dual focus lens - personal development and academic achievement. These outcomes are like keys to the future; they complement each other and they unlock the next step. Qualifications open the door; it is excellence of character and the ability communicate and develop relationships that keeps the door open. At Honywood we believe that true success can only come from the right balance of these outcomes.

I wish you all a great weekend.

James Saunders