Newsletters

GHS Connect #35 Monday 26 June

Mia's notes

The event of the week last week has to of course be the incredible Prom!  The Year 11 team deserve huge thanks and praise for their outstanding planning and delivery of this event - the first one since the pandemic and a massive success.  Well done!! Can I also please thank each and every member of staff who came along to support - I was so impressed with the staff turnout and the commitment from so many people. It was lovely to see and I’m sure that the students will have really appreciated it too.

I know that there is lots of planning going on in the background for other events and thank you to everyone who is putting so much effort into International Day, Moana and World Book Day, to name a few. Obviously, Maya, Dan, Cherish, Ben and Sarah are leading on these events, but I know that plenty of other people will be helping out too.

I thought I’d share a nice, affirming experience I had last week whilst travelling on a very hot bus home on a Friday.  Unbeknownst to me, one of our more challenging Year 11s was sat in front of me and dropped his mobile phone on the floor. He began to turn around and ask ever so politely for his phone to be picked up for him and as he hadn’t fully turned around, he hadn’t realised at that moment that it was his Headteacher he was asking.  The character strengths of community and courage were definitely on display, and I am ashamed to say I was pleasantly surprised at how polite he was! Let’s keep banging away at modelling those character strengths - it must be having some impact!

Finally, well done to Ben Dupres who has been appointed Head of Geography, Chloe Altman who has been appointed as Deputy Head of English and Ellie Navarro who has been appointed as Head of Chemistry.  I will share details of the AHT appointments later on today or tomorrow, via the VLE.

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
Department meetings 3.15pm - 4.30pm
Equality Working Party. See JOH for details.

Wednesday
Briefing 8.15am.
No meeting after school

Thursday
Normal Day

Friday
Common Induction Day

Notes
Year 12 mocks - All Week

Learning and teaching: Spotted!

A round up of some of the great learning and teaching strategies we’ve noticed being used around school recently...  

Uniform

We are continuing our uniform drive by ensuring that all students are aware of our high expectations regarding being ready for lessons.

I wrote to all parents and carers last week, making our uniform policy explicitly clear and detailing what is and is not suitable for school.

Year teams will continue to give clear messages regarding our expectations during assemblies. Please can form tutors spend some time this week going through the unform clarification document with their tutees.

Please see the uniform clarification document here, so that we are all being consistent. Students must always have their ties on, this includes break and lunchtimes.

If a student does not have the correct uniform, please sanction them with a 30-minute detention for uniform. Year Teams will continue to perform uniform checks at the gate in the mornings and where needed confiscate any items that do not fall in line with our policy.

Punctuality

We are aware that punctuality to lessons has become a concern, and we are continuing to give our students clear messages regarding the importance of maximising learning time and arriving to lessons on time. If a student does arrive late to your lesson, please sanction them with a 30-minute department detention.

SLT have been investigating the potential use of a school bell to help the school community know exactly when they should be moving towards lessons. More news on this to follow!

Many thanks,

Mark

Inclusion Heroes

This week’s Inclusion Hero is split 3 ways between the Year 11 Team, for a wonderful send-off for our Year 11s on Thursday, David Clare, for the beautiful video he put together for Leavers’ Assembly and Ange Thomas, for going to the Virtual School Awards for Looked After Children in Ealing last Saturday evening. All of you have gone above and beyond to support our students and for this I say a huge thank you!

Lou