Coronavirus is in the news every day and most countries in the World have been affected by it. I wrote to your parents / carers about our response to the illness. Our priorities in relation to Coronavirus are the following:

1.) to respond in a proportionate and measured way;

2.) to ensure all reasonable steps are taken to keep you safe;

3.) to follow the guidance provided by Public Health England

I’d like to start my blog this week by welcoming you all back to College. I hope you all had a good half-term break and are well rested and ready for this half-term. This half-term, the College blog will be written by different people, including students, as well as by me. This will give you a chance to hear from different students and teachers across our College.

The two items in my blog this week are linked. Internet safety day is 11^th February and this is the theme for our year assemblies this week. The internet, as we know, is a fantastic tool. It allows us to work, shop, book holidays, do research and most importantly communicate with each other. The last point about communication has many positive elements attached to it, but there are also some risks that you need to make sure you are aware of. Mr Thompson talked about these risks in whole-college assembly last week. It is absolutely essential that you make sure that you are the right age to use social media sites. Your privacy settings must also be high, so that you only communicate with people that you know.

We live in a democracy and this week on Thursday, a General Election will take place. We will have the opportunity to choose our leaders this week, including the political party(ies) that will eventually govern us.

Our school community has grown over the last few years and we now have just under 1100 children. One of our values is respect and it is essential that we all show this to each other, all the time.

We want to make sure that you all achieve your very best results in your GCSE and A-Levels. This will only happen if you work hard in every lesson, every day

This blog goes ‘live’ for tutor time every Monday. Therefore, by the time this is read our Armistice assembly will already have taken place. In my assemblies last week, I stressed the importance of the Royal British Legion poppy appeal and that we should support it and remember those who fought and lost their lives in order that we can live our lives in freedom. We owe a debt of gratitude to those people and it right that we show our respect in the assembly and in the subsequent activities in tutor time. I was pleased to see increasing numbers of you wearing a poppy throughout the week. I also know how respectful you always are with regard to marking this occasion and I would like to thank you for the fantastic levels of respect you showed in the assembly.

Welcome back! I hope that you all had a very good half-term break and are ready for the upcoming half-term. As you know, we sent work home for you to complete over the break. We will continue to do this every holiday and while we know that school holidays are a time to relax and be with friends and family, it is also important that you keep up to date with learning and work for part (not all) of the time. There are exams coming up soon and the tasks we set you will help you to prepare for these and there will be some set changes in response to these test –they are important. Please make sure you revise!

We are all aware that drugs can have a huge and very negative impact on health and wellbeing. It was good to have Dave Parvin in College on Thursday last week to talk about the dangers that different drugs present. The content was hard-hitting, quite rightly, as he talked about several young people who had sadly lost their lives due to taking drugs. His explanation about how alcohol can lead to other drug taking, particularly at parties, is something I would ask you all to be aware of – the dangers are very clear and you have the ability to make the right choices; please make sure you do.

Welcome back to a new term. I hope you all had a very good and restful half-term. Thank you to those students and staff who came in over the holiday to work on preparation for the forthcoming exams – it will definitely help you.