It is VERY important you read the next short section. I know many of you will be replacing uniform over the summer and I do not want parents to have to spend unnecessary money on items that do not meet the school's uniform requirements. I have attached the uniform list below but a few quick reminders:

• COATS- must be black, NAVY blue or DARK grey only
• SHOES - Plain black leather shoes (without any colour, no trainers, boots or canvas shoes)
• SKIRTS - Must be purchased from the outfitters and must meet the knee.
• YR.11 Jumpers - must be black, completely plain and V neck.
• Yr.7, 8,9 only plain t shirt in their house colour.

Friday 2nd September - Year 7 and 12 only

Year 7 - 08:35 -15:25

Year 12 - 10:00 - 14:30

Monday 5th September - All Year Groups

08:35 - 15:15 (Y9-13) / 15:25 (Y7 & 8)

As you know we have trialled a new system this term and the feedback from staff has been excellent in terms of students increased levels of concentration in lessons and behaviour when entering and exiting classrooms. As a result we will be rolling this out across the whole school in September. Please discuss this with your children. There is no reason for a student to need to keep their phones with them during lessons and any student who does not hand in their phone and gets caught with one will have their phone confiscated for 5 days.

At the end of each academic year we say goodbye to a number of staff who are moving on to pastures new. I will introduce our new staff to families in my September newsletter, but for now I would like to say goodbye and thank you to all of the staff who leave us on Thursday. I would like to thank them all for their hard work and support during their time at the school.

I am delighted to be able to announce that, following a rigorous selection process, we have selected our Senior and Deputy Ambassadors for the next academic year. Each of them performed extremely well at both interview with the Chair of Governors and presenting to around 250 younger students, and I am really looking forward to working closely with them next year. Congratulations to you all.

Having been asked by our School Council to have a cultural non uniform day I was delighted to agree and ask our Heads of House to organise a cultural week culminating in a non uniform day. Our staff and students really did do a wonderful job in learning about other cultures, creating a door decoration to celebrate the culture they had focussed on as a form, and then wearing cultural dress clothing on the Friday. I particularly enjoyed listening to our students talk about their cultures. Thank you for your support and I look forward to next year's event.

On Saturday 9th July we held our Year 7 Graduation Day for the first time in three years. It was a fabulous event and I was so proud to look out over our Year 7's who have been such an asset to the school this year. Congratulations to all of our Year 7''s who graduated and particularly to those who received special awards.

As well as celebrating the successes of our Year 7 students, we were once again able to recognise the efforts and achievements of our students through Awards and Sports Awards evenings this term. Two fantastic events where many students were celebrated. Thank you to all those who attended and to the staff who organised the events.

As well as recognising those who really stood out this year for attainment and effort, our end of year rewards events allowed us to celebrate all of those students in Year 8 and 9 who behave well and attend school regularly. This year we held the event on site and the students enjoyed a fantastic two hours of fun. Thank you to Mr Limon and our House Team for organising such a fun event.

Over the course of this term we have held a Summer Solstice music concert and our Back to the 80's musical. They were brilliant events, and I am so grateful for the time and effort our students put in preparing for these shows. But these shows do not happen on their own and I would like to thank all of our staff who spent countless hours planning and rehearsing for these events. Thank you as well to everyone who managed to attend and support the shows.

We held our Sports Day yesterday down at Ashtons for our Year 7, 8 and 9s, which we haven't been able to do for the last couple of years due to Covid. The students had a great time and the winners for the day were Roddick. Well done Roddick House. There are a few pictures below.

Please click on the link below to access all the free or low-cost events available to pupils this summer collated by Essex Partners.

https://www.myhealthessex.co.uk/families

As we are seeing very hot weather at the moment, the natural instinct is to cool off, and you may think what better than in a cooling pond, river, stream or canal. As you will have seen on the news, there have been several deaths recently, with adults, teenagers and children getting into trouble. The main culprit is cold water shock, which causes you to involuntary gasp, get in to trouble and then unfortunately drown. As well as the cold water, most of our rivers have dangerous currents, hidden obstacles and natural dangers, even the strongest swimmers can get caught out.

Please ensure you and your family stay safe. We encourage you to watch the very short video below for more information.

#JustFloat

As I said earlier in my newsletter it's been great to get through a whole academic year at school and to be able to put on so many wonderful events to finish off the year. There were many more events that I haven't commented on, for example our Year 10 and 12 Interview Days, where we were fortunate to have the support of others outside of our community, as well as work experience, English Performances in school and much more.

As mentioned above these events and everything else we do on a day to day basis can only happen with the support of our amazing staff who are so giving of their time and energy. I would like to thank all of them for all their hard work this year and wish them a lovely summer break.

I would also like to thank our Governing Body, led by our Chair of Governors, Adrian Harris, who works exceptionally hard behind the scenes to ensure the school is the best it can be.

Finally I would like to thank our parents and carers for their support over the year. Enjoy the wonderful family time over the next six weeks and I look forward to seeing our students back in September; and to those families leaving us this summer the very best of luck for the future.

Daniel Leonard

Headteacher