Newsletter

Hello again and welcome to another Wentworth High School newsletter.  They say time flies when you are enjoying yourself and I can hardly believe I’m already writing the introduction to the December edition.

With the events of ‘Children in Need’ still fresh in our minds, I’d like to start by drawing your attention to an e-mail letter I recently received from the Pentecostal Academy in Ghana.  Many of you will recall that, two years ago, Wentworth High School organised a collection of computer equipment, which we subsequently shipped out to Africa, and the e-mail is an update on how they are using the resources we provided.  It’s heartening to hear that things are going well in Ghana and I hope that our relationship with the staff and pupils there will continue to grow in the months and years ahead.  We hope very shortly to begin setting up a ‘pen-pal’ arrangement between the pupils of our two schools and I have asked Mr Riley to begin making some plans.  If your child(ren) would like to be included please ask them to see him.

Now some excellent news from the Local Authority, who carried out a behaviour audit in the school a couple of weeks ago.  They sent a consultant into Wentworth one very wet and windy lunchtime in mid-November, to look at how we manage pupils during the break, and we received the following report:

“Consultant toured the school, observed the beginning of lunchtime in the dining hall and visited the various facilities offered to pupils over the lunchbreak.  Behaviour was excellent in all the areas visited.  There is very good provision throughout the school for all groups of pupils over lunchtime, including sports, specific areas for Year 7,  games clubs, cooking, the learning resource area.  The extent of provision supports children to remain safe and occupied throughout lunchtime. 

Two part-lessons were observed, and behaviour was very good in both lessons.  Both teachers had very good relationships with the classes and the pupils were on-task and fully engaged throughout the period of the observation.  The maths teacher displayed high levels of skill in engaging and motivating low ability pupils.”

Records of this type of visit are supposed to end with recommendations on how we can further improve things but the consultant told me she could not think of anything that we are not already doing.  What more can I say?

I was also delighted by the feedback we received from year 11 parent/carers, following their consultation evening last month.  These parents/carers have seen at first-hand the improvements we have made in the last couple of years and many of them listed high standards of uniform, good pupil behaviour and following up on pupils’ absence as things that we now do very well at Wentworth.  Overall, all of those responding were pleased with the standard of education which we provide, with 93% being impressed by the way in which they are kept informed of their child’s progress, 97% happy to approach the school when they have questions and 96% satisfied with the progress their child is making.  These are very impressive statistics and they provide yet more evidence that Wentworth High School is now a very good school, of which we can all be very proud.  Thank you to all year 11 parents/carers who took the time to complete our questionnaire.

We’ve also established a new cashless system for school meals into our dining hall in recent weeks and this has led to us being able to provide an ever higher level of service to the pupils.  It also means that we will be able to keep a much more detailed track on how our continued drive towards making meals more healthy is progressing.  Early evidence suggests that more pupils than ever are now eating in our dining hall, with the majority making healthy choices, such as pasta or jacket potatoes.  As I regularly mention in assemblies, “you are what you eat”, so we must never lose sight of the importance of ensuring pupils have a good diet.  In this newsletter you will find an article by Mrs Aaron, which gives you more information on how the cashless system operates.

You will also find an article, and some embarrassing photos, of some of the staff who recently took part in a beard/moustache growing contest, in order to raise money for charity.  I’ll leave it to Mr Sherrington to explain!

Then there’s also a piece by Ms Oatey about Operation Christmas Child, another charity that the school has been involved with in recent years, and a report by one of our year 11 pupils on how they raise a large sum of money to support a breast cancer charity.

As I am sure those of you who regularly read our newsletters will know by now, Wentworth High School is fully committed to providing a traditional, all-round educational experience for our pupils.  Academic success is vital; it is after all the reason why pupils come to school.  However, producing well-balanced young people who can behave themselves, enter the world with the right values, and who recognise the responsibility we all have to support those less fortunate than ourselves, is also high on our agenda, and this newsletter contains yet another snapshot into what we do.

Enjoy your reading and, as ever, please do not hesitate to get in touch if there is anything you want to discuss.

J C Keeble
Headteacher

P.S. On Children in Need day (Friday 16th November) some staff came to school in fancy dress and helped towards raising £490.  Well done to everybody!!