Our First Half Term
October 2016
The school has ended the first half-term on rather a
high. The house week provides a
wonderful opportunity for a wide range of students to take part in proper,
competitive sport and I am delighted by the standard of the hockey and rugby
played this week and by the enthusiasm of the students involved. A huge thank-you is earned by the PE
department, especially by Miss Hadley.
The PE department also took our top rugby players to
important national festivals in Ipswich and Norwich. They did not win all their matches – that is
a hard ask – but they did beat Hampton School.
And speaking as a man whose brother-in-law attended Hampton School, this
makes everything pretty worthwhile from where I’m standing. Well done!
And the evenings of our final week have been filled by a
marvellous performance of The Pirates of
Penzance which has been not only a credit to the students involved –
wonderful talents emerging here, there and everywhere – but also to the staff,
led this time by Mrs Perfect and Mr Waring.
A huge thank you to all.
This last fortnight has been the modern languages ‘faculty
fortnight’ with talks to year 9 students, lunchtime films and more. Studying modern languages is essential for
the future prosperity of the country and I would advise all key stage 3
students who are even the slightest bit interested in learning languages to
give GCSE French or Spanish very serious consideration.
We also had a very successful even promoting STEM subjects – science,
technology, engineering and maths – to girls.
Caroline John STEM Manager, Gloucestershire - from Graphic Science, part
of the training group who support public engagement in the research community -
came to speak with girls in years 10 and 11 to inform them about the many
aspirational career opportunities in STEM areas (science, technology,
engineering and maths).
Our guests
including Renishaw, Tata (IT), University of Bristol Research and CLG
Engineering told us about their own career pathways and gave the students the
opportunity to consider their own aptitudes and preferences for the workplace.
We are really grateful to
Caroline John, STEM Manager, Graphic Science; Lucy Ackland, Design and
Development Engineer, Renishaw; Alicia Gonzalez Buelga, Research Engineer,
University of Bristol; Susie Jutsum, Geotechnical Engineer, Tony Gee; and
Maggie Davis, IT Support Specialist, Tata Consultancy.
Students will follow up
this event with a visit to the Skills Show at the NEC Birmingham in
November. Thanks to our careers adviser
Mrs Sarah Beeton and to Head of Progress Mrs Haywood for organising this event.
The students returned to school dressed very smartly. I have had numerous comments about this from
staff, parents and members of the public and I am very grateful for all the
work done by parents and carers to achieve this outcome. Thank you.
Our dedicatory Masses for the start of the new school year
went extremely well. |Our chaplain,
Mandy Baker, and Fr Kevin prepared and led the liturgy expertly, the music was
splendid, and behaviour and focus were of the highest standard.
Our A-level results in the summer were good, and were very
similar to last year’s. Changes to GCSEs
and to the way the school’s success is measured make us look less good overall, though in each
department pass rates and overall success rates remained high. One of the issues which affected us was in
science where, although most students take ‘double science’, quite a number of
our students take a single science to ensure they move on from year 11 with a C
grade or better in science – an important qualification – but this process has
cost us in the final analysis. We have
remedied this for future years.
Mrs Layhe and I have planned a visit to St Paul’s RC School
in Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex, on the 19th October. This is a Catholic comprehensive which in
theory should be similar to ours (admittedly in a different part of the country
and without grammar schools) but which has achieved higher results (84% A*-C in
GCSE). We need to see what they are doing!
As you are all aware, our summer holidays were dominated by
buses. There were some teething
problems, in September, with some routes and with the provision of adequate
buses but these have largely been resolved.
There is I think one key route which has not been sweetly replaced and
that is one that would run through Stonehouse, Eastington and Haresfield. We are trying to put on an extra bus serving
Stroud via those destinations.
Please do not be shy in applying for free travel. Families on low incomes (as well as families
who live more than three miles away from the school but where we are their
nearest school) are entitled to free transport.
We also installed new gates.
The electronic gates have made the school safer. They have, it is true, created work for the
receptionists, and infuriated sixth-formers who are not allowed out during the
day. The gates were introduced to make
the school safer between 9 and 4. I
believe this is important.
I was
getting increasingly concerned by the numbers of sixth-formers who were
registering in the morning and then piling into one another’s cars to drive
off. The register said they were here but
they were not; they were expected in lessons, but they often
came back too late. I am concerned about
the safety of cars filled with sixth-formers, I am concerned that parents may
not have given formal permission for under-18s to drive off in this way. It would be good to think that we can return
to this privilege and allow sixth-formers to manage their time freely, but in
order to achieve the level of confidence in their behaviour which that
requires, we must draw a line firmly now and insist on a different work ethic
in the sixth-form. Study periods are
periods for study whenever they fall and sixth-formers need, in order to
compete for jobs and university places, to prioritise study during school
hours, and beyond. Some sixth-formers
have definitely returned to St Peter’s looking forward to jaunts out in
friends’ cars to fast-food restaurants.
I want that to stop. It is
dangerous and I do think that parents are not all fully aware of where their
children are, nor what they are doing.
Some local schools allow free egress to sixth-formers and some do not;
we need to draw a line firmly before we start deciding on privileges.
I note that attendance in my own sixthform classes has been about 98% with one absence due to illness. This is a very marked difference from last year!
I note that attendance in my own sixthform classes has been about 98% with one absence due to illness. This is a very marked difference from last year!
Our new head of sixth, Mrs Pearce, has made an excellent
start to the year with tighter procedures and a clear vision for improving
standards in the sixth-form. Recruitment
to the sixth-form was good, with over 450 students overall, and retention so
far is high.
We welcomed a number of new staff to the school in
September: Mrs Farrelly in the business studies and
economics department; Mrs Frampton to
teach on the health course, with Mrs Pearce; Mr Versaci the new teacher in
charge of business and economics. Mr
Clayfield, Mr Fox-Smith, Mrs Garner, Dr Piercy, Mr Morrison and Mrs Stephen all
joined the science department. Miss
Foley joined the modern foreign languages department, Miss Graves the design
technology department (as maternity cover for Mrs Lawton), Miss Ridout art, and Miss Gilbert RE. Mrs Knapton is our new library assistant, Mr
Bateman works as a TA in the drama department, and Mrs Szoke has joined the
maths department. Mrs Lee is our new
head of maths. She has already been
working closely with Mr McAteer, Ms Lally and Mrs Melton to ensure that the
department can continue its excellent progress.
Since September, we have appointed Jacinta Norton to teach RE
for Mrs Eakin who has asked for unpaid leave while she fully regains her health
and well-being; Mr James Dart to English as maternity cover for Emma Hilliam;
Mr Liam Gittins and Mr Paul Donovan as TAs, all starting immediately. Mrs Wendy Briggs will start work as in the
maths department, from January.
At the beginning of the
half-term Mrs Gittins and Mrs Layhe are joining the diocesan headteachers’
conference in Rome and are scheduled for an audience with Pope Francis first
thing in the morning. I hope his
blessing of our school will remain with us for the years to come.
When we return after
half-term, we come back on the Tuesday.
Please avoid the temptation to come back on the Monday!
Tuesday is All Saints’ Day and
a holyday of obligation, so there will be Masses in the morning, during period
2 for some pupils, and during period 3 for others. Parents and carers are most welcome. These Masses will take place in the Sports
Barn, which is not the warmest place in early November. Students (and all who come) are encouraged to
wear warm coats. I know that ‘All Saints’
is a popular clothes shop these days and I have seen some of their
clothes. They may not be suitable.
Philip
Rush
