Welcome to this week’s newsletter.
On Monday we were fortunate to have a visit from an external music teacher who ran a string instrument taster session for our students. This proved very popular and you can read more about this further in the newsletter. There is also information on how your child can sign up for regular string lessons. Thank you to Mrs Peckham for making this happen.
On Thursday 45 students from years 8 and 9 attended the Mandarin Study Day at the BFI in London. A comment was made by one of the organisers – “your students are lovely”. Mr Briscoe was extremely proud of the way our students followed instructions, behaved safely and conducted themselves for the duration of a long and tiring day. They really engaged and contributed considerably and by far the best behaved school group at the event.
Our Pathways Assemblies for year 9 students start next week. They will have three assemblies in the coming weeks and they are an introduction to the new subjects on offer at key stage 4. On wednesday next week they will be hearing about what it would be like to study business studies, sport BTEC, computer science and BTEC digital information technology.This is a very important time for year 9 as the subject they select are the subjects they will be studying for GCSE and their final exams in year 11. There will be a Pathways information evening for students and parents/carers after half term. This information will be sent out at a later date.
Next week we will be sending out an email with links for parents/carers of students in year 11 to book in for the virtual parents’ evening on Wednesday 8 February. Please look out for this as it’s an opportunity for parents/carers to discuss their child’s progress with their individual subject teachers. We are hoping to hold a ‘How to help your child revise’ evening where we can show you all the opportunities available to support meaningful revision.
Online safety is really important for everyone but especially important for our young people. There are many many resources available online, and we have a page of our website dedicated to digital safety, as well as another page for safeguarding children in general. Please take a look and look at the links resources available as it may help you support your child and help them to be as safe as possible.
I mentioned last week how important good attendance is. Whole school attendance for this year has dropped from 90.7% last week to 90.3% this week. I mentioned in last week’s assembly how impressed I was with attendance in year 11. Unfortunately there has been a drop this week. The average year to date for year 11 is also 90.3%. This equates to them on average having one day off a fortnight. This would not be acceptable attendance in a workplace. Best attendance year to date is in year 9 at 92.1%. We are asking for your help in developing a habit of good attendance in our students. School is our students’ first and most important job. Students are learning how to show up for school on time every day, so that when they leave school and get a job, they will know how to show up for work on time every day.
As you are aware our website has been updated and now has a section on careers where we add all our careers related news. Please take a look at https://www.iwef.org.uk/iwef/careers/
Have a lovely weekend.