Happy End of Term 2!
It has been a very busy term and I know that we are all looking forward to the Christmas break. The Christmas Celebrations will be lovely today with young people enjoying their quizzes and performances and making the most of spending time together before the holiday.
The Carol Concert last night was joyful and a wonderful display of the talents of our young people. Thank you as always to St Paul’s for hosting us (as well as Year 7 this morning!) and thank you for your very generous donations which raised £311 for Doorway.
I am also delighted to announce that we raised just over £3000 at our Christmas Fayre last week. Thank you for buying raffle tickets, coming along and supporting the Fayre and supporting your young people in Year 7 and 9 to show off their enterprise skills and help us raise such a fantastic amount of money.
Thank you for all of your support this term and indeed this year. I wish you a restful, peaceful and joyful Christmas and very best wishes for 2026.
Lisa Percy
Headteacher
News Items
Focus on Attendance
Attendance at Hardenhuish School continues to be a focus so that all pupils have the greatest chance to succeed, not only academically, but also enjoy a full school experience to set them up for lifelong success.
Please see the table shown here to show when attendance % start to become a concern when below 95%.
For further information, please also see the link below to the updated Attendance Policy.
Attendance-Policy-November-2025.pdf.
If you would further support with attendance, then please contact the relevant year office in the first instance.
Merry Christmas from Sheep Club
We have had a wonderful term and really enjoyed helping our resident flock get into the festive spirit!
Season’s Greetings from the Bilingual Club in some of the many languages shared at Hardenhuish
Year 12 Visit
Year 12 students recently visited the International Meditation Centre in Calne, where they had the unique opportunity to deepen their understanding of Buddhism. They met Buddhist teachers and explored the history of the centre before taking part in a peaceful meditation session. Students were kindly gifted resources on Buddhism and engaged in an insightful Q&A, which helped them connect their classroom learning with real-world practice. The trip was a highly positive experience, with students finding it both enriching and thought‑provoking.
Yr 7 Art, the First Term.
During art in Year 7 we have been exploring core artistic concepts. Our art classes have consisted of investigating the formal elements of design, specifically how tone, colour, and shape are applied in visual art.
We also experimented with various techniques and materials. This included studying the concept of Notan—the use of light and dark balance—and experimenting with watercolour paints and pencils.
We researched the work of an artist named Brianna McCarthy as inspiration for creating our own imagined portraits.
The class were asked to research Brianna McCarthy as a homework task – here is a great example:
A Taste of Christmas
Last Friday, the open area in C Centre was filled with catchy jingly music and Key Stage 3 students. It was our annual A Taste of Christmas event. The EDI and MFL groups worked together to organise a celebration of the Christmas season by learning about, and trying, festive foods from all over the world.
As well as testing out the 10 different festive treats, students were asked to discuss which they had eaten before, which they would recommend to friends. Student favourites this year were Lebkuchen and Speculoos.
We would like to give a massive Thank You to the MFL students that helped, they were great!
Music Exam Results
Year 9 pupil Esther Oldacres recently passed her Grade 5 Trumpet exam with Merit, including full marks in her first piece. Well done Esther!
CEOS Youth Summit
Back on Tuesday 4th November we travelled to Bath to take part in the first ever CEOS Youth Summit. Over the past year we have been taking part in an exciting project organised by CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Satellites) where we took part in two online teams called with international students from South Africa, Canada, Australia and Japan. We then created our own posters where we designed our own satellites or researched other ways satellites could be used. All of this concluded with the Youth summit last week. During the Youth summit, we were able to see our posters on display, meet other UK students and take part in a Q and A with CEOS leaders from UK, Australia, France and South Africa. Two of the students were able to stand up and ask a question of the leaders, and another took part in a video interview. Throughout day we were able to talk to people within the space community and learn about ways of entering the aerospace careers.
The students stated:
‘It was very interesting to learn about the fact it was not only scientists involved with creation of satellites, but other career opportunities such as data, PR and finance’
‘We most enjoyed being able to talk to really important people and seeing the hard work that went into the poster being displayed for CEOS officials to see’
‘We enjoyed learning about satellites and how they can be useful around the world’
The CEOS group will continue to run next term. Excitingly we will again be a part of a poster project, next year hosted by Australia. Although we will take part in next year’s plenary event virtually, this does give students the opportunity to participate in Teams workshops along with international schools.
We run on a Monday Lunchtime in L21 and welcome any new members who are interested in space and the world of satellites for Earth observation.