Dear Families,
As we approach half term, I wanted to write to you to both celebrate the successes of this term while also providing you with a couple of important updates that will impact the school moving forward.
This has been another busy term at Preston, with a range of clubs and trips continuing to run. In just a very small selection, Design and Technology students in Year 10 visited Numatic in Chard to explore the manufacturing processes behind Henry Hoovers, while Sport Science students visited Plymouth University to find out about opportunities within sport at a university level. Students in Years 8, 9 and 10 attended a Climate Change Conference at Hayesfield School to look at our impact on the environment, while our Flying Start team continued to compete with their home-made gliders.
Next weekend, our ski trip leaves and we look forward to seeing the pictures they post during the trip, while Drama students will attend a performance of Blood Brothers over the Easter break. The Preston Press also continues to work hard on the next edition and have some very exciting interviews lined up for the coming weeks. We hope that the summer term will bring back the sunshine, just in time for the Duke of Edinburgh practice expeditions planned for late April.
This term, our students in Year 11 sat their final mock examinations and, on Thursday, received the results. These are the final assessments they will sit before their GCSEs start in May, and they are a really vital final practice. The year group is now working exceptionally hard on their final revision, and we wish them all the best as they approach their first examinations, which are now just 18 school days away.
There have been a number of updates to our site this term, particularly the installation of a new queue system in our Hub. We listened to student feedback here; students told us that the queue was often too busy, with some pushing and shoving. The new barrier installed has worked well and has also reduced the time that students have to wait. We have also installed upgraded gas and plumbing in our Science labs, increasing the range of practical experiments students can undertake, while our Food rooms have had upgraded taps and plumbing installed to ensure all students can undertake cooking (and the associated washing up!) at the same time.
In terms of wider updates for the coming weeks, this weekend staff email addresses will be updated to move us into the MNSP Trust email tenancy. This means that staff email addresses will change over the weekend, now starting with the staff member’s initial, followed by their surname, and ending with @preston.mnsp.org.uk. My email address, for example, will update to mdoble@preston.mnsp.org.uk. Our old email addresses will forward emails sent to them to the new email addresses for the rest of this academic year, to allow you to update your records. Teacher email addresses can be found on the Student Profile by selecting the relevant subject, and this list will be updated to the new email addresses on Sunday.
The previous ‘Family Voice’ survey that I shared did highlight that our communication is not always as prompt as it should be, and that in some cases families do not receive replies to queries sent to generic email accounts, such as our Office and IT Support email addresses. We are working hard to ensure our updated email system helps to resolve this by reducing the number of email accounts that we use, ensuring that all emails receive a prompt reply. Our IT support team, for example, has worked hard to reduce separate support addresses for Chromebooks, Family Portal issues, generic IT support and more into one centrally managed email account for all queries. Updated email addresses to help you contact the school will be available on the school’s website this weekend.
The Easter holidays bring wider work to the school site, starting with the replacement of the Snack Shack roof, which was damaged by the weather over the winter. We hope to see this reopen soon after the break. Other rooms will see redecoration, while we will also be installing air conditioning in our Art rooms, which become exceptionally warm in the summer. This upgrade will mean we do not need to replace the boiler that recently failed in our ILS block, resulting in a considerable cost saving.
Finally, the school’s phone system will be updated over the Easter holidays to modernise this system and update the switchboard received when contacting our front office. This should allow you to more quickly reach the staff member best able to help you. It will also allow us to enable the ‘Auto Absence’ functionality within Arbor, which will allow you to more quickly report student absence, with this automatically recorded in our school registers.
I hope that our students enjoy a relaxing Easter break when it arrives next Friday. I was sorry to hear that some have had holidays impacted by global events that have led to their cancellation. Sadly, we have also had reports this week of concerning incidents within the local area, including one in which an adult male has offered to purchase alcohol for young girls and followed them when this offer was turned down. In another, an adult male has asked students if they wish to become involved in county lines. Both incidents have been reported to the police, but they do reinforce the importance of our students being vigilant and making safe, sensible decisions when they are out in the community this Easter. While it is important that these issues are shared for awareness, it is also worth remembering that they are rare. Our students are lucky to grow up in a lovely area of the world and should absolutely make the most of their time off.
As a reminder, school finishes at 3pm this Thursday, with Friday 3rd April a Bank Holiday. Students return to us at 8.30am on Monday 20th April.
Thank you for your ongoing support,
Matt Doble