Dear Parents and Carers
I hope that your young people have had a good week and have enjoyed what is likely to be the last of the summer sunshine.
It was great to welcome the Police in yesterday to mark so many of our young people’s bikes as a preventative measure and in response to a spike in local bike theft.
Please can I remind you not to drop off/collect young people from the bus park. Managing the number of buses and children each day is a challenge and adding cars to this makes the situation more dangerous for all involved.
I am looking forward to welcoming our prospective new Year 7 young people and their parents for Open Week next week when we will be touring families twice each day.
We also have welcome Parent Information Advice and Guidance (PIAG)evenings for Year 7 and 12 next week, please do contact us if there are topics that you would like covered in these sessions as we are keen to make the content useful to you to enable us to work together in supporting our young people.
Have a good weekend.
Lisa
News Items
Focus On…..
Attendance at Hardenhuish School is a real strength and we are grateful that the three-way partnership between home, our pupils and school helps us to achieve this and ultimately, raise the achievement of all pupils.
One of our fundamental principles is to support all pupils to succeed and good attendance is fundamental to a successful and fulfilling school experience. There is a direct relationship between excellent attendance and successful exam outcomes. Essentially, pupils with lower attendance achieve significantly lower outcomes.
We have a target of 97% as a minimum expectation for all pupils so that, together, we are able to ensure our young people reach their full potential. Therefore, we would very much appreciate your continued support in marking sure your young person misses as little learning time as possible.
You may be aware of the new Department of Education Working together to improve school attendance (applies from 19 August 2024) (publishing.service.gov.uk) that is now statutory for all schools. Please take a few minutes to read the summary of changes document that the Wiltshire Council have asked us to share with you.
Resource Centre news
It has been an excellent start to the new school year with KS3 library lessons now fully underway again and plenty of new titles being added to our shelves – these include the 2025 edition of Guinness World Records which is already in significant demand! A huge range of titles will continue to be added throughout the autumn, with the latest ‘Wimpy Kid’, ‘Tom Gates’, Bunny vs Monkey’, ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ and ‘InvestiGators’ all due before the end of November.
Thursday saw the launch of our Book Group for 2024-25 and this term we are focusing on recent author visitors to the school. Over 35 pupils came along and they were able to select from the likes of Sophie Cleverly, Fleur Hitchcock, Sophie Anderson and Simon James Green, all of whom have participated either virtually or in person at our Hardenhuish Literature Festival events since 2021. If you weren’t able to come yesterday, you can check stock with Mr Southwood over the coming days. Our next meeting will be on the last Thursday of this term, 17th October, so make sure you come along then to give us your thoughts on and discuss our term 1 authors.
Advance warning that next week will see slightly reduced opening times at lunch due to visiting Year 6 parents arriving for Open Week tours – apologies for this and we hope to keep disruption to a minimum.
Look out for more details on forthcoming events, Book Group meetings and the latest titles as we head through the year in future editions of Headlines.
Art and DT are looking for donations
Visit to Bowood
The year 11 Vocational students visited Bowood House and Gardens this week and met Lisa Group Sales Co-Ordinator, Gina The Educational Visits Coordinator, and Bethan, ‘Assistant Visitor Services Manager’ to find out about the variety of roles there, some of the challenges and rewards of working there and the skills and qualities they look for in those they recruit. They also had a brief visit to the Arboretum and it was such a wonderful Autumn day for it. Thank you to the Bowood Team so much for hosting us, it was so valuable for them.
