Well done on another good week in College. In every lesson we visit, we see you working hard, engaged in your lessons and behaving well. A huge well done to you all. Our values of respect, happiness and achievement are apparent in the way you are working, supporting each other and being polite and helpful to each other and staff. Thank you and well done. It is important to do better every day and to work commit to do better than you did today. It’s not an easy thing to do, but if we commit to do this the College will continue to improve.

The above quote is going to be stencilled on the wall on the first floor over the half-term break. I think it is a very powerful and one that we can all learn and take something from. I think it does need a little further explanation, which I will do below.

I’d like to start this week by mentioning Mr Lloyd’s assemblies from the last two weeks, around our push for you all to ‘get ahead, stay ahead.’ You all did so well in terms of completing additional tasks (extra to homework), and handing your golden tickets in for the prize draw. One of our values is achievement and if you are completing all the ‘get ahead, stay ahead’ tasks, you will put yourself in the strongest position to achieve your very best – something we all strive to do.

I’d like to start this week by thanking you all for another really positive week in College. Last week, a visitor from United Learning came to see our College and she was incredibly impressed with everything she saw. She thought you were well-mannered, that your uniform looked great and that you were working hard in your lessons. Thank you for such a positive start to the term – please keep it up and well done!

I’d like to start by welcoming you all back to a brand new academic year. I hope you all had a good and relaxing holiday and are now feeling refreshed and ready for the year ahead. I am hugely impressed, as always, by the way in which you have started the academic year. I have visited several classrooms and in each case, I have seen you working hard, behaving well and making good progress. Thank you and well done.

This will be last blog of the academic year. There is always a lot to reflect back on at the end of the year, but I will start with some thoughts on activities week.

A key part of what we do at MRC is to develop ‘education with character.’ This is where you learn outside of the classroom as well as inside. It is about opportunity, doing the right thing, helping and supporting others (even if you aren’t asked to). It is also about developing resilience, tenacity and determination – learning that even if you have a setback, you just try harder.

Last week was particularly good in College. I say to you in assemblies and through tutor time that you make us what we are. You are showing in so many positive ways just how good you are. Thank you.

Many of you will have seen the incredible footage and scenes from ‘Blue Planet’ recently. I thought the programme was truly inspirational – especially as it tackled pollution from plastic head-on. It was terrible to see the birds and aquatic life struggling to survive due to eating plastic. We all need to play our part to help with this by making sure all our rubbish goes in the bins. If it is dropped, it can be eaten by birds which could cause them serious harm. Our College does look really good, but we can all make an extra effort here. Thank you.