Uxbridge High School
Summer term 2021 newsletter
A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL
It is with great optimism that I introduce this newsletter. Although the school remains COVID conscious at all times, we are delighted to be planning for more normal times ahead. As I write, the staff are beginning to plan exciting trips and events. We provisionally look forward to welcoming our new year 7 cohort to school for an induction day and we may even be able to run a year 11 prom later in the summer.
Important dates for the summer term
Please note that the following half term is six days long to accommodate our staff training day.
Y10 virtual parents’ evening - Thursday 20th May
Half term - Monday 31st May to Friday 4th June
Staff training day - Monday 7th June
Students return to school - Tuesday 8th June
Y8 virtual parents’ evening - Thursday 10th June
Y9 virtual parents’ evening - Thursday 17th June
End of term - Wednesday 21st July
COVID testing in school
Our return to school in March went very smoothly. During the first eight days, over 3500 COVID tests were conducted on the school site, all of which were negative. Thank you to all staff who were involved in the testing site and to our students and families who have been supportive during this busy period. To date, the school remains COVID free.
COVID home testing
Thank you to all parents who have confirmed completion of the home tests each week. A reminder that twice weekly home testing should continue until further notice. In order to continue to comply with the DfE and NHS requirements, all tests should be logged on the NHS site (details are provided within the testing packs). We also ask you to complete the school's online form to report results back to us each week. We strongly recommend that tests are undertaken on Monday and Thursday mornings before school. If a positive result is received then a confirmatory PCR test should be booked online or by calling 119. Whilst waiting for the PCR result, the student and all members of the household are required to self-isolate. If the PCR test is negative then the isolation ends and the student can return to school.
The tests provided should only be used by the student. Parents who wish for other members of the household to be tested can arrange to collect kits from a local test site or by requesting these online. If, however, you run out of tests due to a void test, please contact Mrs King in Student Services.
Free school meals
If your family circumstances have changed you may now be eligible for free school meals. If you haven't already, please complete this application for free school meals. Once completed, even if you are not currently eligible, the system would notify us if you do become eligible in the future. If eligible this will also attract additional funding in the form of pupil premium for the school to support your children. If your child is in the sixth form, please also enquire with the sixth form team about the sixth form bursary that may be able to support their studies.
Years 11 and 13
We have continued to update parents of these important 'examination year groups' as information has become available. I am pleased that we now have more clarity on the methods of assessment for final grading of students at the end of their exam courses. We have developed a detailed FAQ section on our website that you will want to discuss with your son/daughter. Please do let us know if there are other questions and answers that we can add to this document.
Further details regarding completion dates, the year 11 prom, etc. were detailed in the recent letter from Mr Wolf.
COVID winter grant scheme
Support, including vouchers, will continue to be provided by the council during the school holidays, including the upcoming half term, through the Covid Winter Grant Scheme. The council will contact all eligible parents but, if you have any queries, please contact the council on 01895 558 200 or wintergrant@hillingdon.gov.uk. The scheme runs until 20th June 2021.
Principal's commendations
At the end of every term we ask staff to nominate one student who they believe deserves our prestigious Principal's Commendation award. This award is given to six students each term, one per year group, and celebrates those students who have gone above and beyond in a particular subject and/or shown remarkable effort and attitude in their studies. Students are awarded with a commendation badge, book and certificate. Congratulations to the following students who won awards in the autumn and spring terms:
Autumn term
Francesca - For being very engaged and hardworking whilst doing remote learning at home. Francesca also asked her computer science teacher if she could learn coding.
Abeeran - For being a model student who is always polite and eager to learn. Abeeran is a dedicated student who exemplifies the PROUD values. He has shown great leadership skills and is a supportive team player.
Munisa - For working extremely hard and producing excellent work. Munisa goes above and beyond with regards to her effort.
Victoria - For consistently going above and beyond to improve her literacy and exam skills. Victoria is always very supportive of students around her in lessons.
Daniela - For being an outstanding student whose talent and ability is exceeded only by her strong ethic. Daniela is always polite and humble. She is respected by her peers and has come on leaps and bounds in her confidence. She has also encouraged other girls to be more confident in lessons.
Keira - For her exceptional behaviour and attitude in performing arts. Keira has shown enthusiasm and resilience. She has taken on the main role in the Y12 performance exam and devised her own narration lines to add to the performance.
Spring term
Ethan - For his continued fantastic engagement online and offline in lessons and in tutor time. Ethan consistently gets a high amount of character credits and has, on several occasions, received the highest amount in his year group.
Vachan - For continually going above and beyond in English lessons during lockdown this term. Not only has Vachan achieved 100% attendance, he has completed every piece of work to the best of his ability, requested feedback to support his own development, participated in out-of-class writing competitions and supported his peers to access learning.
Elijah-Ray - For tackling all aspects of lockdown with great optimism. Things have not always been straight forward but Elijah-Ray has done his best and this is something that others can learn a lot from.
Umaymah - For always being very polite, on time to lessons, very helpful and for putting great effort into her lessons, particularly French.
Alfie - For showing personal resilience and empathy for all those around him. Alfie exemplifies the PROUD values of our school consistently. He contributes to all situations with humour and politeness, stepping up to challenges and unfailingly trying his best. Alfie faces every challenge head on and even when he does not always succeed, he never loses his determination and optimism. He is an inspirational young man.
Holly - For coming so far since her mentoring sessions in years 8 to 11. She has achieved so much and now that she believes in herself and her abilities, she is going to go so far. She has received a conditional offer to study at Oxford University and I know that with her new focus on her studies, and since joining sixth form, she will go on to achieve great things. She is a friendly, polite and hardworking student and has grown in so many ways throughout her time at UHS and we, as a school, are very PROUD of her.
Spring term subject awards
Well done to all students who have won subject awards last term. Keep up the good work!
Maths – Oskar, Milana, Dulcie, Lola, Achint, Najim, Zila, Cate, Naeem, Waleed, Archie, Rahul, Umm-E-Habiba, Mahira, Areeba
Music – Joe, Leah, Joshua, Sahaana, Eva, Baheer, Billy, Kanicia, Douglas, Ruhul, Srishti, Stanley
PE – Samim, Abdirahim, Carter, Harry, Mille, Gurleen, Keira, Nazir, Feena, Morgan, Thandi, Anastasia, Hannah
RE – Francesco, Daniel, Sofia, Eva, Umaymah, Princess, Fahmida, Sabrin
Donations of IT equipment
The school was recently very lucky to receive donations towards IT equipment from local charities. Waterloo Road Church in Uxbridge generously donated £1000 which was used to purchase five laptops. Uxbridge United Welfare Trust donated two new laptops to the school. We were very grateful for the donations and the devices were lent to students who were not able to access online learning at home during the lockdown.
Duke of Edinburgh award - Miss Shutkever
On 1st April we started the Duke of Edinburgh award at UHS for our year 9 students. This year they will complete their bronze award. This involves spending three months volunteering, completing a skill and doing regular physical activity. It also includes an overnight expedition, subject to COVID restrictions, which we will complete in July.
This is a fantastic opportunity for the students and the award is recognised worldwide. It helps students to become more well-rounded people, benefits their CV and, most importantly, is an abundance of fun. We can't wait to grow the programme next year.
PE News - Mr Emery
Last term saw PE with a difference as our students endured a tough lockdown period with large amounts of screen time. Our primary objective in PE during this period was to minimise screen time and increase activity levels to look after not only the physical wellbeing of our students, but mental wellbeing too.
Our students engaged with several challenges across the term, from trying to beat the PE teachers’ running distance and time, to the Captain Sir Tom Moore workout! Our student engagement was fantastic and it was encouraging to see students participate in lessons and test themselves with the various challenges.
Students also spent time improving knowledge of various sports, alongside improving their knowledge and understanding of key topic areas such as the benefits of taking part in sport and diet and nutrition. Students were tasked with planning and cooking their own healthy meals for their families to enjoy whilst understanding the nutritional value of the meal prepared to assist general health and improve sports performance. We were extremely proud of the students' efforts and it's fair to say they looked delicious!
The return to school has also allowed us to relaunch our extensive extra-curricular programme. It has been fantastic to see so many of our students enjoying this opportunity and continuing to develop key physical, mental and social skills. This will now continue throughout this term and the remainder of the year where we can now start to enjoy sport and PE in some better weather.
We are now extremely proud to open our new dance studio. This will provide new and exciting opportunities for our students as we continue to develop our extra-curricular programme, whilst also improving our dance option at KS4 and diverse curriculum. Our year 10 dance cohort are enjoying this new facility, which will be essential in allowing them to continue to develop as they progress through the course. Thank you to everyone involved at UHS for your hard work in developing the studio.
We are extremely proud of the efforts shown by our students over what has been a tough period and have been delighted with their willingness to dive straight back into PE now we are back into the full swing of PE at UHS. It's great to get back to normal practical, competitive lessons and seeing all our students continue to develop key physical skills.
Lastly, everyone in team PE would like to wish all of our year 11 students the best of luck in their upcoming assessments, especially our GCSE PE, OCR Sports Studies and Health and Social Care cohorts.
News from the music department - Mr Dawson
Year 10 music bands
Our new music teacher Mr Playford has established two bands in year 10 as we work to 'build back better' in our music making after the many months of separation. With dreams and hopes of a chance to perform some live music together during the summer term, year 10 musicians are leading the way with these exciting new bands!
Year 11 solo music performances
The year 11 music students are completing solo performance recordings as part of their work and deserve a shout out for their determination! Some excellent solo singing and drumming has been beautifully recorded in our wonderful facilities.
Escape from lockdown music creation project
Students in the foundation stage have been exploring how music can describe and explain our feelings and reflections after the experience of isolation that we have been through. Some highly creative and very moving musical expressions have come out of this music project. We are PROUD of all those who took part!
Sixth form news - Mr Churchill
UCAS Discovery Day
At the start of the summer term, Y12 attended a UCAS Discovery Day where they had a chance to meet and chat with a range of universities and exhibitors. Students especially enjoyed the university vs. apprenticeships sessions. Dr Alex, the UK’s youth mental health champion, reflected on the challenges young people have endured this year and how to get back on track.
Moving on
We continue to receive many offers for students going to university next year. Congratulations to Keira for her offer to study education at UCL, Tahmid to read chemical engineering also at UCL, and Precious who has an offer to read psychology at University of West London.
Alumni network
Students leaving us this year should sign up to our alumni network.
Work experience
Students continue to gain work experience and complete their career profiles. Students in the sixth form have recently completed online placements at the NHS, PWC and IBM.
EPQ
Approximately 20 students this year have signed up to take the EPQ led by Ms Hill. The EPQ is an extended project qualification. To put it simply, it is a big independent project where students pick their own topic. They then research, write up and present their project during a presentation.
Head students
This year 21 students have applied for head student positions. Students will be interviewed by Mr Churchill and Mr Kerrisk.
Awards
Congratulations to Sayma and Alina in Y12 who have received outstanding results in The London Institute of Banking & Finance Certificate in Financial Studies. Both students have been offered £500 towards a scholarship towards their degree programmes.
Photos of new playground and field canopies
TWITTER & INSTAGRAM
Please feel free to browse our Twitter and Instagram accounts for up-to-date information and updates on the variety of activities taking place at Uxbridge High School. Our Twitter accounts are @UxbridgeHighSch, @UHSPrincipal, @UHS_VAPA, @UHSPE, @DT_UHS, @UHS_Geography and @MflUhs. Our Instagram account can be found here.
Please note that our accounts are public and you can browse them at any time without having to sign up for an account.
Please see some of our recent tweets below.