It was a pleasure this week to welcome Sir John Rowling to Roding Valley High School. Sir John heads up the PiXL organisation which is focused on School Improvement and he was visiting to look at the work that we are doing in order to raise standards in terms of student progress. As a former Headteacher of an Outstanding School, he was knighted for his Services to Education so he was certainly someone we were keen to invite in. He was very impressed with the work that is going on in Year 11 with the tracking of the students throughout the year and the focus on each individual to ensure that they all make their expected progress at the very least. He also commented on how much work we have carried out to support students throughout their time at the school and we were able to show him how the students are making excellent progress in every year group. He also had the chance to meet a number of students who had achieved the highest Attitude to Learning grades across the school. He was full of praise for their efforts and presented them with their certificates and you will be seeing some of the photographs in the forthcoming newsletter. Sir John visits a huge number of schools throughout the country and it was lovely to hear how impressed he was with our work, the students and the school in general. We will certainly continue to work with PiXL as we have been invited to take part in several projects designed to provide students with a range of opportunities to further their learning. We are signed up to take part in a Debating programme which will see the winners have the chance to take on Eton College in a debate in their famous halls. In addition we are looking to share our outstanding practice with a number of other schools which is certainly a feather in our caps. I would also like to congratulate Sidney Jethva (Year 10) and Conor Tyrrell (Year 11) both of whom have been selected to represent Essex at Football in their respective year groups. The competition for these places is fierce as Essex Schools football is highly competitive and highly rated. It is testament to the hard work of these boys and their fantastic attitude that they have been chosen to represent the county. Very well done to them. Lastly, following the recent Parent Governor Ballot, I am pleased to advise that you have elected Sharon Famiglietti onto the Governing Board of Roding Valley High School by a majority vote. Full details of the numbers of votes are available upon written request to the school. J Luck Headteacher
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