16th September 2016

As a school, we are focussing on making a good start in order to lay strong foundations for the rest of the year.  This includes making sure the presentation in books is excellent and all students have the correct equipment in lessons. Most of all, the students are building good learning habits.  I am pleased to say I have had many positive encounters which confirm that all of the above is happening on a regular basis.

However, we will challenge and deal with students where their standards fall below our expectations.  This includes being late to school, negative behaviour and incorrect uniform, amongst other things.  Our school behaviour management system, Connect, allows you -as a designated parent or carer- to see both positive and negative points as well as monitor homework set.  I urge you to take the time to review your son/daughter’s Connect profile.

It is pleasing to see so many students cycle to school, more so than any other year so far.  In the interest of the safety of the general public and your son/daughter, we expect the students to not cycle in the Werrington centre.  Furthermore, I ask that you remind your son/daughter to be vigilant when crossing busy roads, in particular near the bus lane near the Medical Practice in the centre. 

Members of staff and myself will be reminding students about not bringing in bottles of fizzy drinks and other high sugar food into school.  The evidence is clear that that this is a recipe for hyperactivity and poor concentration when it is needed during the school day.  Water is provided to students before school, during break and lunch times for them to fill up their bottles.  Large bottles of fizzy drink will be confiscated.

It has been a very busy week.  We welcomed the RAF, who worked with Year 7 students to develop their team building skills.  We also had a Year 9 high ability computing event which was well received by the students involved.  I wish to share my appreciation for Mrs Ayre, Mr Chapman and Mr Swift for organising these superb events.

Finally, it was my pleasure to present to nearly 30 Year 10 students their ECDL certificates.  Many of the students already secured either an A or A* grade GCSE equivalent qualification at the end of last term.  I am very proud of the effort and the outcomes achieved by those students.

Best wishes

Bryan Erwin
Principal

The students all enjoyed the robotics workshop, which involved them using Scratch to program and control mBot robots. Starting from a blank slate, and working in small groups, the students created a control system to allow their robot to be operated from a nearby laptop via Bluetooth, as well as adding extra features such as indicator lights, collision detection and even sirens! At the end of the session each team entered their robot in to a race around a short course created by the UCP team, with the fastest time of the day being recorded by a team of GCSE Computer Science students comprising of Ethan Mazurek, Mason Matchwick and Jordan Bull, completing the course in just 36 seconds!

The workshops were a great opportunity for our computer scientists to apply their programming skills to a real world situation, and feedback from everyone involved was very positive. Thanks to UCP for arranging a really engaging and inspiring session and thanks to our students for embracing the opportunity to work with technology usually only available to university students.

Mr Chapman
Head of Computing