Dear Parents and Carers
It has been lovely to see the sunshine this week but the weather still remains very changeable as we have seen today. Please support us in our continued high expectations by ensuring that your young person comes to school in the appropriate uniform with a tie and jumper and the correct footwear and coats. If you have any questions regarding this, please contact the relevant Year Office in the first instance.
World Book Day was a wonderful celebration of all things books yesterday and the staff (as always) really enjoyed the opportunity to dress up!
Please encourage your young people to visit the upcoming Book Fair in the Resources Centre and the much anticipated 2026 Carnegie shortlist is published next week – I am certainly looking forward to a good read!
Careers Week has been a huge success with a well-attended Careers Fair on Wednesday and lots of activities on offer to encourage young people to consider their future career plans. Thank you to those parents who have got in touch and have come and supported these events – we are always grateful for the support of our wider community in raising awareness of the opportunities available to them. Thank you to Naomi Silverton, Kim Brown and Hayley Gardyj for all of their hard work in making the week so vibrant and engaging.
Please see below information that we have been asked to share by Wiltshire Council:
The Government’s Household Support Fund (HSF) comes to an end on 31 March 2026 and will be replaced by a new Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF).
This change means that families who currently receive holiday food vouchers, through the HSF scheme, will receive their last vouchers in March. The Government has advised that under the new Crisis and Resilience Fund, there is no provision for automatic Free School Meal holiday vouchers in holidays from 1 April 2026.
The Easter Free School Meal payment will cover two days (30 and 31 March), with a total payment of £5 for every eligible child. Funding will be distributed once schools have confirmed eligible children.
Wiltshire Council is working with Wiltshire Citizens Advice Team to help families who may be struggling. Parents/carers who need help can complete the online form: citizensadvicewiltshire.org.uk and a member of the team will contact them to discuss their situation and provide support.
FUEL continues to provide eligible children with free access to enriching activities, nutritious meals and healthy eating information during the holidays FUEL programme – Wiltshire Council .
I hope that our Year 9s are having a wonderful time in Malaga exploring the Spanish culture and practicing their language skills.
Have a good weekend.
Lisa Percy
Headteacher
New Items
Focus on……. Sheep Club
Sheep club is one of the most unique clubs on offer and is a wonderful opportunity for our young people to learn all about sheep! We run every week, come rain or shine (and there has been a lot of rain recently) for our Year 8 students. Alongside our Hardenhuish shepherd Chris, we learn how to look after and care for our very own flock of Jacob Sheep. Through Chris’ expert guidance we have learnt about worming, hoof care, fleece trimming, weighing the sheep, and proper nutrition, to name a few tasks. It is not only looking after the animal that is important but also ensuring the whole environment is up to scratch. This sees us regularly donning litter pickers to clean up fields, helping to muck out the sheds, and most recently becoming enclosure inspectors and helping to replace broken fences. The young people have become proficient at herding the sheep between the two fields and in and out of the sheds, we only occasionally need the help of Gilly the Sheepdog. The club is a brilliant way to get outdoors get hands on with a key aspect of Hardenhuish school.
Resource Centre news
After a wonderful World Book Day yesterday, we’re delighted to say that the literary events continue next week with our annual Scholastic Book Fair arriving on Tuesday 10th March. As always it will be packed full of the latest novels, modern favourites and even the odd classic, along with a variety of extremely popular activity packs and stationery items. Prices range from absolute bargains of just £3.99 up to standard book prices, and you will be able to use your World Book Day token for the duration of the Fair to get £1 off any book.
The Fair will be here through to Monday 16th March and every KS3 English class will be visiting during the week. Combined with break, lunchtime and after-school sessions, there are therefore plenty of opportunities for students to come and have a browse.
Payments can be made through cash, debit card or even pre-paid vouchers from the Scholastic website www.bookfairs.scholastic.co.uk/gift-vouchers
Last year we took a record-breaking total of just over £1500, which enabled us to boost the library shelves with over £750 worth of new books. Can we beat that in 2026? We look forward to seeing you next week and hope lots of pupils can find their next favourite read.
Cern Visit
On the main day of our trip- after a late night, an early breakfast, and a pit-stop at a Swiss supermarket we were finally CERN-bound. Our visit to CERN was split into two parts – or three depending on how much time we spent in the gift shop.
The first part was the ‘museum’ aspect of CERN. We had a couple of hours to look around the exhibitions, some showing the key aspects of CERN itself like the science behind the particle accelerators and others the discoveries researchers there were hoping to make- such as determining the origins and fate of our universe. The creative use of LEGO, projectors and camera equipment really stood out and allowed the exhibitions to be as immersive and interesting as possible.
The second and more exciting part of our visit was the incredible opportunity to travel a few miles down the road into France and have an expert-led tour of one of the particle accelerators itself: the CMS or ‘Compact Muon Solenoid.’ This accelerator and the researchers operating it deal specifically with trying to discover “new physics” such as understanding Dark Matter or observing the interactions between two Higgs Boson particles. The teachers with us remarked that this particular experience was rare as there are so many requirements to be met before visitors could see the accelerator. We were incredibly lucky to have been able to see it in person and learn about how it was built, and how it works at a fundamental level.
Overall, this trip truly was an inspiring experience for all of us students, especially those of us hoping to pursue STEM in higher education, to see our studies applied in a tangible way, and what the future holds for future research in the field of particle physics.
School Calendar – Hardenhuish School