Month: July 2021

End of year assembly

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In my end-of-year assemblies this week, I have tried to do three things. Firstly, I have tried to look back over the year that we’ve had. Secondly, I have celebrated the successes of our students – including awarding the House Cup! And finally, I have looked ahead to next year.

The year gone by

SARS-CoV-2 virus

The year has, of course, been dominated by the coronavirus. It is a tiny thing, ≈0.1 μm in diameter, yet it has led to more than 5m cases and 128,000 deaths in England, according to government figures. It’s worth remembering: this is not normal. This is not how we are used to living. And we hope that it will change.

It’s easy to characterise the year gone by in terms of what we’ve missed out on. From October, we’ve missed out on our vertical tutor groups, which make our House system so strong. After Christmas we were locked down, with some students joining us in school for Frontline, but most of them set up at home with laptops, tablets or mobile phones to access Google Meets and Zooms. We missed out on face to face teaching, on seeing our friends, and on seeing our families. We’ve missed out on holidays, on trips to the cinema or the theatre, on seeing live music and sporting events.

It has been a hard year. But I don’t want to focus on what we’ve missed out on. What I want to do is to be grateful for the fact that we are here. We are together at the end of this really difficult year with a lot to be grateful for. If we start with where we are as a country, we can see that many, many fewer people are now dying as a result of COVID-19. We should be grateful to the amazing National Health Service for the vaccination programme they have rolled out, as well as the incredible care they have offered during this pandemic.

As a school we are grateful that, thanks to the efforts and focus of our students during lockdown and beyond, we are seeing that the vast majority have remained on track with learning through this year. In other words, our students are not a million miles away from where we would expect them to be in if they hadn’t spend several months learning through a screen.

Celebrating success

I was really pleased that we were able to complete our Activities Week and Sports Day towards the end of term, despite the pandemic. These were great opportunities to celebrate successes, including learning beyond the classroom in different environments. Of course, Tudor House won through on Sports Day, although Lancaster led the way in Year 8, and Hanover in Years 9 and 10 – so next year it’s all up for grabs!

Over this last week of term, alongside holding the finals of our Bake Off, Poetry and Spelling Bee competitions, we have been sending home our Celebration of Success certificates to students whose attitude to learning, academic accomplishments, and personal qualities shine through day after day, week after week, month after month. It has been a great honour to review those awards and see them added to this year’s Roll of Honour. I hope that, next year, we will be able to hand them out in person.

The established end-of-year traditions have also been disrupted this year – and the House Cup competition is no exception. There have been many fewer inter-house events than we would have normally held, and we are really looking forward to coming back full throttle next year! The competition was still held however, with the following winners:

  • Academics: combination of each House’s attendance, conduct points and effort grades – winners STUART HOUSE and LANCASTER HOUSE.
  • Competitions: combined totals from all the inter-house competitions – winners TUDOR HOUSE.
  • Overall House Cup Winners: combined totals from all the inter-house activities – winners TUDOR HOUSE

Congratulations to all our students – and especially to Tudor House!

Looking ahead

The pandemic will still be with us in the year ahead. However the new guidance on contact tracing and isolation outlined in my recent update letter to parents will, we hope, reduce the disruption caused to education. We are looking forward to what we hope will be an uninterrupted year with our students, to get back to what we do best – inspiring and enabling young people to make a positive difference.

We are so grateful to our students for the positive difference they have made to our Academy community by being part of it this year. In our students I see bundles of potential, just waiting to be channelled and unleashed on the world. Even when things have been difficult, they have been a pleasure to work with. We are so proud of the positive difference they have made to themselves this year: the progress they have made in their learning; the confidence, resilience and determination they have built up as they have overcome challenges; and the kindness they have shown to themselves and others in their actions. As we step forward to next year in pursuit of the priorities laid out in our development plan, we look forward to what we can achieve together.

More immediately, of course, we are looking forward to a well-deserved summer break. After the year we’ve had, our students deserve some time to rest, recharge and recover – and our staff desperately need it too! The Headteacher’s Blog will return in September.

Churchill Academy & Sixth Form, summer 2021

Sports Day 2021

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After last year’s virtual event, this year we were determined to bring Sports Day back “for real” – and the 2021 event delivered! Year group bubbles were the order of the day, with separate sections of the field for each group of competitors. Year 7 and 8 started on the top field for the Tug of War, whilst Years 9 and 10 began the day with track and field events on the bottom field and the 3G. After break, both halves of the school swapped over, before all coming together in year group areas to watch and compete in the the track finale: 100m, 200m, 300m and 4x100m relay.

House spirit was in full display, with the mascots making a big entrance and encouraging their teams throughout the day. Face-paint and glitter was liberally applied – to the extent that some Windsor students began to resemble their smurf mascot! – and the cheering never let up from start to finish. The whole day was soundtracked by Mr Hartley in the DJ booth, including singlaongs to Three Lions and Sweet Caroline in anticipation of the England men’s football team’s appearance in the final of the Euros.

Competitors and spectators were well catered for, with Aspen’s providing all-day barbecue food and the Sixth Form ice-cream stand proving very popular! The Sixth Form provided much support for the day, acting as guides, timekeepers, litter-pickers, umpires and more.

At the business end of the day, the competition was fierce. Peter Skeen (Year 11) and Mr Gale kept the scores and records regularly updated in a magnificently sprawling spreadsheet. In total eight school records and twenty seven house records were broken on the day. You can see all the record breakers on the Academy website here.

The broken records all contributed to the overall competition, which saw Tudor House establish an early lead. Lancaster mustered a late surge with some very impressive sprint performances, whilst Hanover overtook Windsor into second place by one point courtesy of a victory in the final event of the day – the Year 10 boys’ 4x100m relay. Tudor’s lead proved unassailable, and they completed the double by also lifting the Tug of War Trophy.

Our student reporters were out and about throughout the day, and got their newspaper published almost as soon as the winner was announced! You can read The Finishing Line on the Academy website here.

Thanks to all the competitors, spectators and staff who made Sports Day possible. It was just what we needed after the year we’ve had! Enjoy some pictures from the day in the gallery below.

Activities Week 2021

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Activities Week is a vital part of the Academy calendar. It’s an opportunity for us to take learning outside the classroom, to develop vital skills such as teamwork, leadership, creativity and problem solving whilst also building confidence in new environments. This year, more than ever, our students have needed the opportunity to get out into the fresh air and enjoy the feeling of freedom in the summer sunshine (and occasional British summer downpour). Not to mention that having lots of time outdoors greatly reduces the risk of infection with covid and the chance of any more bubbles popping in the final week of term…

It’s normally the time when we are able to get our residential trips away to Europe and beyond. This year that hasn’t been possible, but the staff have done an amazing job of organising superb activities around the Academy site and our beautiful local area. It’s been a big logistical challenge, but we’ve managed it! We’re grateful to Adventure Bristol and Mendip Outdoor for helping us with their expertise, and to the amazing team of staff who have pitched in, helped out and solved problems throughout the week. I must pay particular tribute to Mr Davies, who masterminded the whole thing and then ended up having to call the shots remotely whilst self-isolating at home as a close contact of a coronavirus case. What a trooper!

I have tried to take in as many of the activities as possible this week. On Monday, I spent a fantastic day with Year 7 on their sponsored walk along the Strawberry Line and up to Crooks Peak. I started at the back and tried to power-walk all the way to the front, so I would see the whole of Year 7 walking. I managed it – although I paid for it the next day with very stiff legs! Luckily on Tuesday I was based in school, with Year 7 again on the Adventure Bristol activities and Year 10 on Basecamp with candle-making, nail art, some delicious looking cream teas and plenty more besides…

On Wednesday I ventured out again with Year 10 the water sports day – although half of the day was more like mud sports as the students tackled a tough-mudder-style assault course. Having seen some of our students fling themselves through a mud pit with glorious abandon, I don’t think I’ll ever see them in the same light again!

Finally, on Thursday I was back at school with Year 9 and Year 8 – although sadly I had to spend several hours chained to my desk wading through the latest government guidance on Step 4 of the roadmap and working out how much of what we’d already planned for September we would need to unpick and re-do. Such are the joys of headship! I did manage to get out to most of the activities as well, and even manged to race Mr Sharp over the giant inflatable assault course in the sports hall. I’ll let Year 9 tell you who won.

I’ve had my camera with me throughout the week, and thought readers might enjoy my photo diary.

Activities Week ends with Sports Day tomorrow. There are records to be broken (you can see the current records on our website) and it’s really all to play for. We last had a proper Sports Day in 2019, so we don’t know what our Year 7 and 8 students are capable of in track and field. At the same time, the transfer of some older students to Lancaster House in September has meant that Stuart House’s recent dominance may be under threat. Who will win? Only time will tell!

Academy Priorities 2021-22

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Churchill Academy & Sixth Form is an independent entity governed by the Academy Trust Board. Our Trustees are responsible for ensuring high standards of achievement for all children and young people in the school by ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction; holding me and my senior leadership team to account for the educational performance of the Academy and its students, and the performance management of staff; and overseeing the financial performance of the Academy and making sure its money is well spent.

Our Trustees are volunteers, who give their time willingly and freely in the interests of the students of the Academy. They have been working tirelessly (albeit mostly remotely) to continue their governance of the Academy through the pandemic. The significant investments in our site, our staffing, and resources to keep children safe and learning have all been as a result of the board’s skilful, knowledgeable and expert governance. In fact, as we reflected this week at our first in-person, socially distanced meeting since the pandemic began, our Academy is in a very strong position to ensure that the education recovery from the pandemic continues for our students.

This week we have published our priorities and development plan for the coming year. The development plan supports the second year of progress towards the Five Year Plan which sets our sets our strategic direction from 2020-2025. You can read the full Academy Priorities and Development Plan for 2021-22 on the Academy website, but in this post I will take you through the key areas which we will be focusing on in the next academic year.

Setting the direction

The past year has been dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruption to education, with two years of cancelled exams and two separate periods of national lockdown seeing the Academy closed to all but the children of key workers and identified vulnerable students. Even when schools were fully open, self-isolations disrupted learning, and public health concerns suspended our ability to bring our community together through assemblies, vertical tutoring, and extra-curricular activities.

In the wider world, we have heard the voices of those who have too often been marginalised and oppressed have come to the fore on social media and on the streets. This swirling maelstrom of tension and conflict has resonated at Churchill too; we must do all we can to help our students understand the contexts of inequality so that they can go on to make a positive difference themselves in building a more tolerant, inclusive, just and equal society.

Despite the challenges, 2020-21 saw the realisation of developmental work on the curriculum, teaching and learning, and student leadership. The success of our bid to rebuild Stuart and Lancaster house areas saw the realisation of long-term plans around the learning environment. This year is about the implementation of those long-term plans, with careful quality assurance to assess their impact.

Priority 1: Inclusion and diversity

Our top priority is to continue to develop our values-led culture so that everyone understands the importance and value of diversity and inclusion, particularly with reference to ethnicity, gender and neurodiversity. This means that we will be working hard to ensure that staff and students fully understand the underlying issues relating to inclusion in schools, so that all students feel welcome and thrive at the Academy.

Central to that will be a focused drive to ensure that everybody understands that there is no place for racism, sexual harassment, discrimination or prejudice at Churchill Academy & Sixth Form or in society. These are big issues for us as a country, and across the world, at the moment. If we are to achieve our purpose as an Academy – to inspire and enable young people to make a positive difference – we must work together to ensure that all our students are able to help ensure that we continue to make progress as a society. It is vital that everyone has an equal chance to succeed, no matter where they come from, who they are, how they identify, or how they experience the world. We intend that our education over the coming year, and beyond, will address these issues head on.

Priority 2: Student engagement and leadership

We know that our students are wonderful. Our second priority for next year is to ensure that we give them the opportunity to show the leadership we know they are capable of, in service of the Academy and the wider community. This work has already started this year, with the formation of the Student Council and the introduction of the leadership ladders. With the Academy closed to the majority of students from January through to March, we weren’t able to make as much progress with this as we would have liked – but we have great plans for the year ahead!

At the same time, as we emerge from the grip of the pandemic, we want to revitalise our extra-curricular programme, inter-house competitions, trips, activities and all the things that bubbles and COVID restrictions have prevented us from doing – all the “extra” stuff that makes Churchill special. Our aim is to ensure that every single student can participate in, and benefit from, the experiences that the Academy has to offer.

Priority 3: Teaching and Learning, and Priority 4: Curriculum

Our core business is wrapped up in priorities 3 and 4. The curriculum is what we teach; our pedagogy is how we teach it. We have developed a set of evidence-based teaching and learning principles which characterise effective pedagogy; over the past year we have been weaving those principles through our newly redesigned curriculum. September 2021 will see the roll-out of both these vital aspects. This roll-out will be accompanied by careful ongoing evaluation, to make sure that both what we are teaching, and the way we are teaching it, are working in tandem to ensure that our students make the best possible progress in every lesson.

Priority 5: Sustainability

Our final objective for next year focuses on the fifth element of the Five Year Plan, which has the goal of ensuring we are a sustainable institution financially, environmentally and in human resources. Behind the scenes we will be working hard to ensure we are as efficient as possible, so that every penny possible can continue to be spent on improving the education of our students. More visibly, we will be pushing forward on our Green Churchill agenda, improving recycling provision and driving down our carbon footprint still further in pursuit of our goal of being carbon neutral by 2030. We will be relying on our students to help us drive this part of our work – we want to be the greenest school in the south west, if not the country!

These five objectives are ambitious and challenging – but that ambition is what makes Churchill successful. We have achieved so much this past year, despite the pandemic; I am excited at the prospect of what is possible with a full and hopefully uninterrupted year ahead of us.