Dear Families,
As we reach the end of school week 5, I wanted to contact you to outline some of the successes seen already at the school this term, and to thank you again for your ongoing support.
As outlined at the start of the year, enrichment and rewards were one of three key priorities I set for the school this year. I am delighted that over the last fortnight we have awarded 10,291 merits to students seen demonstrating our GREAT values. A huge well done to Lewis in 9LST, who has achieved a brilliant 37 merits over the last fortnight. We have also seen a really significant drop in behaviour points, which are 40% lower than during this week last year.
Attendance continues to be a priority for all students, and I am pleased that our current overall attendance of 94.1% puts us a full percentage point ahead of the national average for secondary schools. It is also great to see over 640 pupils remain on 100% attendance, while others have significantly improved their attendance compared with this point last year.
Last week saw our Open Evening, with over 200 of our students on site acting as tour guides and subject ambassadors within departments. As always, they did us proud, with visiting families describing them as polite, confident and knowledgeable. Every student who helped should be exceptionally proud of themselves and will receive an SLT commendation next week. They were a credit to the school.
You may have seen that we have recently launched a new school website which, while still a work in progress, provides a wealth of useful information to families. As part of this, I am pleased that we are today launching our extra-curricular calendar for term 1. We have 36 clubs already in place, the details of which are now available to view via our website. These range from academic support sessions, sport, STEM, wellbeing and much more. I really would encourage all students to make the most of these opportunities.
One I am particularly excited about is the new Preston Paper, which is a student-run group working to create a termly school newspaper. I was interviewed by the group on Tuesday for a feature in the first edition, which they hope to release in November. To help celebrate this, keep an eye on our Facebook page, which we will be using to share images from the Preston archives. One of these is a copy of the very first Preston School newspaper, released on 18th March 1966.
Next week sees our Year 9 and 11 students visit the Somerset Careers Fair, while groups of Year 11 students will also undertake the UK Senior Maths Challenge. On Friday, we host our second Pupil Premium support drop-in session for families.
I would encourage all of our students to continue their brilliant start to the term as we move into next week.
As always, thank you for your ongoing support.
Matt Doble