Newsletters

GHS Connect #23 Monday 17th March

Mia's notes

Thank you to everyone who has signed up to deliver revision sessions with students over the holidays - these last few weeks can really make a massive difference to students.

Thank you very much to Amandeep Phull who hosted our session on parental engagement and raising aspirations and thanks also to everyone else who was involved. This event meant that we opened our doors to other schools in Ealing to come in and see what we were doing and we had some lovely feedback from the Local Authority which I have outlined below.

“It was absolutely brilliant to see the attention to detail and the huge lengths you go to, to ensure that every student has a clear path for their future.”

On a very different note, we are reviewing our lockdown processes in the extremely unlikely event that we need to lockdown or ‘invacuate.’ There will be more information at briefing, but please look out for announcements on this, in the unlikely event that we ever have to lockdown. We will do a rehearsal at some point in the Summer term, but for now, everyone needs to understand the procedures and signals.

Mia

The week ahead

Monday
Normal Day

Tuesday
No Meeting due to subject evening.

Wednesday
Briefing in the library - 8.15am

Thursday
Year 9 Subject Evening. Check your appointments on the School Cloud here.
Pizza, Coffee & Chat in the library from 3.10pm

Friday
Normal Day

Notes
Year 11 Interim 3 due

Learning and Teaching - Pride in our Classrooms

Do any students use a laptop in your lesson? This week, Harpal explains how he helps his students organise their work so that everything is in one place.

• A student should have one ‘Google Doc’ for your subject. This is their exercise book and they should use it in each lesson. If a student opens a new document each lesson, work can go missing. The Google Document should be labelled with the subject and their name.

Consider creating this document for them so that you are the owner!

• Use the tabs down the side to show a thread of learning. Each lesson they should open a new tab (on the left of the document) and write the lesson title and date. This way they can easily go back to previous lessons without having to search through their google drive for their old work. 
• Upload any slides/resources uploaded before the lesson so that students can copy and paste charts/models/diagrams without having to replicate them. Trying to draw these out electronically can waste valuable time.
• Give feedback on the document. If you create the document, you have access to it at all times. This allows you to ‘live mark’ during the lesson from your computer with feedback next to the relevant work. Your marking will be evident and stays at the side of the document. 

As we move towards more frequent laptop use, it is important to help our students learn how to organise their work.

Parental Engagement

Our aims and Objectives for Parental Engagement at GHS

• To enable parents to have the tools to help their child succeed in their journey at GHS as well as be part of an integral part of GHS
• For both parents and students to be proud members of the community, always looking back and having fond memories of GHS.

The Journey So Far:

• Parent Ambassadors
• Parent Fortnightly Newsletters
• Parent Workshops
• Coffee mornings
• Parent Courses
• Parents Evenings
• Parent Surveys
• Transition-Supporting Successful Transitions liaising with Sarah Jay

Parent Ambassadors: Monika, Fuad and Silva

• Regular check-ins with some key families of students/ families who are struggling with education.
• Currently 59 families are in regular contact with the Parent Ambassadors- appropriate action taken after contact. Sometimes the parents just want someone to talk to as they are struggling with their teen.
• Prior to Parents evenings or an event that requires attendance, the parent ambassadors will call key families, identified by pastoral teams, to offer support for their attendance.

Example of some of the logs that are kept for the families that are regularly contacted:

All students/ families that have regular check-in have a note on SIMS

To see examples of our Parental Engagement so far this year and the barriers we still need to overcome, click here.

What can staff do to get involved?

• Let me know if you would like to run any workshops/ coffee mornings or just attend and present at these.
• Let me know if you already run parent events.
• Have any ideas of how else we can engage out parents/ families

Amandeep

Inclusion Updates

Please can we remind students that we have a QR code where students can anonymously share their concerns (see below)

Child Protection

Official Data Trends - Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse

The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse has released their report on trends from 2023/2024. Their reports are annual and focus on the collation of data from the previous year. Their latest report has identified a decline in child sexual abuse reported to children’s services in that period. Their analysis shows that despite this news, the number of people charged and convicted following child sexual offences increased. In addition, the number of children coming under a protection plan fell to its lowest level in thirty years in England. As of December 2024 only 3.5% of new protection plans are related to child sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse is also being detected less, with the number of assessments reaching a record low. Based on their report, the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse estimates 500,000 children will experience sexual abuse every year. The report makes for compelling reading. To find out more please follow the link below:

Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse

Inclusion Heroes

This week I would like to thank Amandeep Phull, Jen Williams, Clare Secombe, Christabel Haines, Monika Sierkowska, Will Halsey and Silva Hiburn for all their incredible work in leading on Parental Engagement through the Festival of Learning. There are photos of the event on our Instagram page - see below for link.

Gurvinder

Student Voice Feedback

Year 11 Student Voice Survey.

Year 11s were very complimentary about how well they’re supported in lessons.

Students made explicit reference to the following strategies to support the progress:

• We like having recall questions as ‘Do Nows.’
• We’re supported when we discuss essay structures as a class.
• We like when the teacher models how to write the perfect exam question.

Students spoke about their revision and gave me the following feedback:

• We want specific revision tasks set as homework.
• Gamified revision tasks in lessons are the best way to engage and motivate us.

Students wanted to thank all Year 11 teachers, but asked for the following teachers to be shouted out:

• Amandeep Phull - Maths: for the way she explains things and breaks them down really well. We like how Mrs Phull holds us to account for our independent learning.
• Lisa Leonard - History: for emphasising recall as we have lots of content and also making sure we have an essay structure.
• Hebe Wescott - English: for modelling and setting regular questions, for both classwork and homework and for also ensuring we’re always given feedback.

Phoebe

Bright Spots 

The first of this week's bright spot is Alex Ray who has been nominated by Will, who says:

We’d like to nominate Alex Ray for his work in Media and across the school. From photographing whole year groups, supporting Year 13 Business events, recording videos for the Ealing Festival of Learning, dressing as a Bond villain for World Book Day or technical demonstrations for Media students, Alex has been consistently going above and beyond for GHS. He is super professional and a joy to work with – thank you Alex!

Phoebe has nominated Clare Rodway, saying:

She works meticulously to ensure that all students are supported with careers education, and really goes out of her way to do this. Our students are very lucky to have her support.

Finally, Andrea has nominated the DT Department, saying:

Friday's Teach First DT event was brilliantly hosted by the DT department.

There were 20 trainees and 3 staff.

At the end of their day (just before 5) I spoke to Jim, who said he really values our partnership and it has been a wonderful day. The DT department had been brilliant and that our facilities are fantastic. Well done DT!

If there are any concerns about Equality and Diversity (staff)  at GHS please contact A Johal (DHT)