We hope you’ve had a good first full week back at school. To all our fellow students who sat internal and external exams this week we hope these went well, and well done for getting through them! Also, congratulations to the boys 1st XI football for making it into the next round of the ESFA competition, in what was a closely fought match going all the way to penalties at the end.

As your heads of school, we want to send you a weekly update so that we stay in touch with you all and keep you in the loop to show you that we do raise and take action where we can on the suggestions you bring forward to us.

Exams:
We appreciate there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding external exams in the summer. We have talked to Mrs Haydon and Mr Horgan and as soon as school receives concrete information from the government and relevant exam boards, that information will be dispelled to you as soon as possible. Exam timetables are now available on MSP. They are confident that exams will take place in the summer as normal, and while you may prefer them to be cancelled, trust us when we say that it is far better than the alternative. The reality of exams being cancelled is that you will still have to take exams, quite possibly more, and will cause far more work and stress for you and your teachers.

Toilets in A and B block:
In response to many concerns around the gender neutral toilets outside A block, in the near future these will be changed into boys toilets, and a new complex of girls toilets will be built where the toilets in DT are now. Subsequently, the toilets inside A and B block will become gender neutral. No dates for this have been confirmed but there is a plan being put in place.

Possibility of P1 and p2 in house:
Following requests from U6 students to have P1 and P2 in house, this has been raised and is being discussed by Mrs Weston and the houseparent team so hopefully we will have a definite answer on this for you soon.

Campus nights:
We have talked to the Headmaster about the possibility of greater flexibility in regards to campus nights. Following this, we have a meeting with Mr Whatling to discuss this further next week. Please get in touch if you have any suggestions or preferences surrounding campus nights, we would love to hear your thoughts!

Lockers outside the dining hall and keeping valuables safe:
CCTV cameras were requested to try and help deal with the apple pen stealing epidemic! We discussed this with the headmaster and the disvalue outweighed the value due to expense and the fact they aren’t really a very good deterrent. Instead, We are going to talk to the Head of Estates next week to look at better, safer lockers to replace the cubby holes outside of the dining hall.

Categories in the dining hall/ menus on noticeboards:
In the dining hall the categories of identifying food under the headings of, ‘protect’, ‘refuel’ etc are coming back to help support athletes with their food choices. This is not at attempt to categorise foods at ‘fats’, ‘proteins’ etc but if this still makes you feel uncomfortable and isn’t something you would want to see in the dining hall please let us know. As well as this, all the dining hall menus should now be available on your year group noticeboard for you to check what will be served in the dining hall.

The possibility of lacrosse becoming a MAP:
Lacrosse will be available as a MAP option come summer term to see if there is enough interest to consider making it a games option come next September.

Spring term workshops:
A list detailing the workshop timings and availabilities should be coming out ASAP and will be posted on year group noticeboards.

Parity between boarding houses:
This is something we really want to address this term and have raised with SLT. Please if there is something in particular you want parity on between house, e.g. campus nights, please get in touch with us so we can make a list.

If you wish to remain anonymous you can make suggestions through the Student Voice platform via the student council section.

We hope you have an enjoyable and restful weekend. As ever, don’t be afraid to email us or come up and talk to us around school, we want to hear from you!

Your Heads of School,
Anabelle and Sam