Dear Parents and Carers, 

Good afternoon, 

I hope you and your families are well.

We've reached the end of a productive term, in the main pupils have worked hard and are progressing well academically. Over the last two weeks the Senior Leadership and Middle Leadership team have been involved in teacher coaching sessions. It's been a privilege spending longer periods of time in lessons with pupils and watching staff use a wide range of adaptive teaching strategies to support all pupils with their learning. We've seen excellent attitudes to learning which is impacting on pupil progress.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Year 11 for their excellence in their GCSE Art exams this week, I'm in awe of their artistic skills and creative flare. Their final pieces are stunning! Huge thanks to Mrs Efe and Mrs Ablett for their continued hard work and for the level of support they have provided for our pupils. Once we return from our Easter break, we will move into the GCSE exams season. I know pupils have created revision timetables and will be revising over Easter, but equally, having downtime to relax and enjoy life too! There are a number of Easter revision sessions for Year 11over Easter, they have been informed of this. Study leave begins on June 3^rd 2025.

After Easter, we make the official move from using Class Charts to Arbor for all communication, including behaviour, detentions, attendance, and home learning.  The pupils have spent the last week ensuring they know how to log into Arbor during tutor time.  Some are beginning to download the available pupil app; this login is the same as the pupils' Microsoft account login.  Tutors have also been busy contacting parents who are either not yet using the app regularly or haven't downloaded it at all.  If you are struggling to use Arbor, please do contact your child's tutor and we will do our best to help.

At present, there is very little on the App, so please do not worry that you can't see or don't have access to areas.  This will change on Tuesday 22nd April, when we switch over officially.  From then you will be able to track how your child's day is going and communicate more effectively with us, if you need to.  Please can I remind you that your child's Tutor should be the first port of call with enquiries.

This week we have collected assessment data for Years 7, 8,9 and 10.  Our new reports will be sent to parents and carers via Arbor next week.

As previously communicated, we are moving to a no mobile phone policy after Easter. Mrs Collins has explained the plan to pupils and parents. During line-ups pupils will put their phone in the tutor phone locker, the lockers will be stored in a locked cupboard for the day. At the end of the day pupils will return to line-ups to collect their phones from the tutor locker. We hope this will help pupils focus more on lessons and learning, as well as helping to improve mental health. We have decided not to apply this rule to Year 11s as they only have a few weeks left with us and their phones are locked away during their exams.

We held our LORIC Awards assembly on Wednesday. We've had 14 projects running this term, it's been an absolute joy to visit the projects each Wednesday afternoon and watch pupils develop their knowledge, skills and understanding on something outside the national curriculum. Many thanks to all staff who've run projects, especially to our non-teaching staff: Mrs Childs - British Sign Language, Mrs Ellard - Choir, Mr Draper - Horticulture, Mrs Sturgess - Reading, Mrs Ablett - Fashion Design, Mrs Vincent, Mrs Hawksworth and Mrs Bolton for Forest Schools. If you have a spare hour on a Wednesday afternoon and would like to run a project, please do get in contact. I'd love the range of project opportunities to grow!

This week we said goodbye to Mrs Sandiford. She has been with us for nearly two years and has been instrumental in our school improvement journey. Mrs Sandiford has been part of SLT, working alongside Mrs Collins to implement new behaviour systems and build an effective pastoral team. She has done a fabulous job with us and is moving to work in a bigger role across the Trust, supporting other schools to develop behaviour and well-being. We thank her for making such a difference to our Danebury Culture and for teaching Food Technology. Mr Page is taking on the role of leading the Technology Faculty and will be teaching GCSE Food, alongside Mrs Davey.

Yesterday, we waved our Ski Trip group off as they set off on their road trip to Austria. We look forward to seeing their progress on the slopes as the week progresses. I'm sure lots of lifelong memories will be made on the trip. Many thanks to Mr Thomas for leading the trip, to Miss Macarthur, Mrs Vaughan and Mr Farr for giving up their time and supporting our pupils.

I hope you have a wonderful Easter and manage to have a break. Many thanks for your continued support and for all the lovely message I received last week following my appointment as Head Teacher at Danebury. It's an absolute privilege to work with your children each day and also to have such a supportive parent and carer community. Thank you.

Nicky Goodridge, Head of School