Mr Atkinson's Friday Update 23.09.22

Dear Parents and Carers,

Since I last wrote to you, we have had each of our six lower school Information Evenings, Yr 6 Open Evening and we are also having an event on Saturday 24/9/22 with our Yr 7's having the opportunity to show their parents around school. Opening the school like this has been amazing and it has been awesome to see both yourselves and students at these events and we cannot wait to continue building our partnerships with you.  

In respect of partnerships, we must congratulate Mabel and Isabelle in Yr 10 who have been working with the Anne Frank Trust (led by Miss Shah - SMSC lead) and have been chosen to go to Amsterdam to learn about the life of Anne Frank. Mabel and Isabelle will be writing to you in October about their hopes and expectations and I hope this inspires others to follow their lead.

Another partnership which has been launched this week by Ms Mdlongwa (Teacher of Maths) and Mrs Qayyum (Student Support Officer Yr 11) is the Race Chartermark. They have been working together since June in preparation for this with the focus being on lived experiences. This week Ms Mdlongwa gave us all a particular insight into her own lived experiences and we hope this will inspire others to share their experiences so we learn from one another.

Next week our Yr 10 mentors will also be starting their work with Yr 7 starting with joining them at breaks and lunches. They will be there to talk with and support any Yr 7's who want this. Eventually this will build to 1-1's where the Yr 10's will focus on building key skills such as resilience. We are really looking to seeing this exciting partnership develop with our amazing Yr 10 role models.  

This week we also released a snap survey for our students in Yr 7 – Yr 11, thank you to all those that have given feedback. There are aspects we will continue to work on with our students through our Student Leadership group. Aspects we need to address from this are:

1. To report a concern students can speak to any adult in school, this can be done face to face or via email. Students can also speak to yourselves and in turn you make us aware.

2. When students report a concern, we promise to:

- Treat this with respect
- Act on what they say using our procedures
- Keep them and only them informed through the process
- Check back with them following any actions that happen
- We will not publicise what we have done

If a student does not feel this has been done, they must make myself or another staff member aware.

3. It is important to make clear that we cannot always keep matters confidential from parents and carers and we realise that this sometimes causes worry for students, however, our intention is to ensure students are safe and this does mean the majority of the time the need to involve parents and carers.    

Further to this next week Mr Riley (Head of Media) will be bringing together our Student Leadership group to go through aspects of this snap survey as well as preparing for the student-led assemblies this year, with next month's focus being Black History Month. This will also be supported by the Head of Year assemblies who will also be addressing aspects of the survey for example how to report a concern, child on child abuse, (bullying) with our older year groups also focusing on sexual harassment something they highlighted they wanted to address in our last survey in July.

Finally next week it will be the turn of Mrs Spicer (AHT) and Mr Ward (AAHT) to update you regarding Personal Development and Enrichment.

As always, thank you for reading.

Mr Atkinson 

Matthew Atkinson - Deputy Headteacher/Designated Safeguarding Lead