We’ve had a great last day of term at Churchill, celebrating Christmas and seeing out 2023 in style. The Sixth Form led the way with their fancy dress parade, carol service and revue, whilst the main school had their carol services at local churches as well as enjoying a range of house and tutor activities – including the Headteacher’s Christmas Quiz! Many congratulations to this year’s champions STUART HOUSE, and the winning tutor group, SLH.
Enjoy some photos from today below – and check out our newsletter for more.
This year’s House Cup competition has been fiercely contested! The House Cup is the trophy of trophies, with every other competition across the year feeding into Mr Davies’ super-computer to arrive at the final result. Every day’s attendance, every reward point, house match, inter-house competition, participant in Sports Day, commendation and contribution ultimately counts towards the House Cup total.
Sports Day is a big part of the House Cup, and this year Tudor’s dominance was finally broken! Hanover won the tug of war competition, thanks to dominant performances from their girls’ teams across the year groups. House captains Zoe and Beth lifted that trophy on Wednesday afternoon, before the final result was announced. It came down to the final two relay races for Lancaster to overhaul Tudor’s lead – by only three points! – but Katie and Erin were delighted to raise the Sports Day cup.
Following Sports Day, we were able to calculate the House Cup totals. Several other competitions had already concluded: Windsor were victorious in the Head of House Challenge and the Senior Trek, so House Captains Evie and Joe were able to receive the trophy and the shield on Thursday morning, followed by Theo and Liam for Tudor in the Academics Cup.
Finally, it was time for the main event. This year, I typed the results live into our Daily Notices Google Doc, with the students in their tutor rooms watching eagerly for the result, knowing that the winning house would process through the Academy to the Hall to receive the cup. It was a real thrill for me to actually hear the “oohs” and “aahs” coming from Windsor and Stuart as I typed into my laptop outside the Hall! But that was nothing to the cheer that went up as Lancaster House were announced as the winners, and gathered in the July sunshine to hold the cup aloft and celebrate with Mr Thomas and the returning Mrs Taylor. A great way to celebrate the end of the year!
Today we have said “farewell” to the Year 13 and Year 11 Class of 2023 as they both head off for study leave around their exams.
The journey of these young people through education has been disrupted on an unprecedented scale by the global pandemic. Although those lockdown days are already fading into memory, it’s important to remember that Year 13 did not sit GCSE exams, as they were cancelled due to COVID. Both these year groups undertook a significant proportion of their secondary education remotely. Whilst many of them continue to feel the impact of this disruption, their resilience and determination is to their huge credit.
The Year 13 Class of 2023
It is also a challenging world that these young people are inheriting. The cost of living crisis, war in Ukraine, political and economic instability and uncertainty, and climate change have an impact on all of us – and that’s only scratching the surface. But our mission at Churchill is to empower and enable our young people to make a positive difference, and – looking at the young adults in the class of 2023 – I feel very hopeful and optimistic about the future. If anyone can make that positive difference, it is them.
The Year 11 Class of 2023
I would like to pay tribute to all those who have supported the class of 2023 on their journey. Their families and friends, and the staff at the Academy, have all helped to shape these young people and guide them on their way. But ultimately it is the students themselves that deserve the credit: their hard work, their kindness, curiosity and determination have enabled them to overcome the barriers in their way and achieve all that they have so far – and this will continue to carry them forward into the future. We’re proud of them: they should be proud of themselves.
I have been really proud this week to see our Academy’s vision – “to inspire and enable young people to make a positive difference” – manifesting in our students’ achievements.
We often talk about the education we provide at Churchill helping our students to make a positive difference to themselves, to our Academy community, and to the wider world around them. This week, I have seen this in three wonderful examples of our students building their confidence, pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, and finding a way to express themselves – finding their voice – through the opportunities offered at Churchill.
Dance Live!
On Wednesday night, our dancers and their support crew were in Portsmouth for the national finals of Dance Live! Having won the semi-finals, we knew our ensemble would now be up against the very best in the country. Since that triumph, they had listened carefully to the feedback and honed their performance to perfection, synchronising their movement to the huge video display screen behind them. I was following – along with hundreds of others – the Instagram Story updates as they rehearsed and prepared in the prestigious Guildhall auditorium. And then…it all went quiet. Until an email from Mr Buckley confirmed that their incredible performance had won them second place – and top state school in the finals! This amazing achievement was accompanied by a healthy £500 prize for Team Performing Arts.
Video of the semi-final performance
We know, from long experience, that the arts are essential for enabling students to find a way to express themselves. Whether it be through dance, or drama, or music, or painting, or sculpture, or installations, or film, we do all we can to help our students give expression to their ideas. To see that come together, in such a triumphant way as this, is breath-taking. I am so proud of the students, and the staff, who helped put this together.
Poetry Competition
Also this week was the final of the inter-house poetry competition. In this event, our students found their voices through the language and layout of poetic forms, expressing themselves using the rhythms, rhymes and interplay of words. The themes of this year’s competition were social media, and Churchill Academy & Sixth Form, and our students found new and unusual angles on both subjects. You can read more on our website, but here is the winning poem:
You Only Get One Life By Melissa Otero-Zambrzycka
Open the app, shut the door, Time after time, coming back for more, Another swipe, another scroll, Another notification on the phone, A nagging need to know every hit, Every detail, every bit, “What are they saying?” “What do they think?”
The need to feel that acceptance, From a group of strangers, you don’t even know, The feeling when that comment, Makes you hit an all time low, The toxicity of the fact, “They don’t care how you feel,” Putting your heart out there is a gamble, Yet you chose to spin that wheel.
And so you isolate, compensate, For people you’ll never meet again, When in reality, waiting outside that door, Is only the truest friends, But your eyes cannot leave that screen, It’s a vortex you cannot reverse, You cannot leave, even if you plead, And every hateful comment hurts,
But you’re stuck in this matrix, And “Who cares, you’re all alone,” But it only takes one move to escape it all, Go on, turn off your phone.
Get out into the real world, Write your own story in colourful ink, You’ve only got one life, “Who cares what people think?”
I just love what Melissa has done with her poem here. The use of the “who cares what people think” refrain at the beginning and the end, with the twist in meaning from the changed context, helps to reinforce the message of the poem: that it’s all about perception. Your own attitude towards things is what really matters – not what other people think. I think it’s fantastic that our students have these opportunities to hone their craft and get their words out into the world in this way.
The Gabblers Club
On Monday, I returned to the Bristol Hotel for the finals of the Gabblers Club competition for the first time since the COVID pandemic. Gabblers is a long-standing tradition across Bristol schools, where Sixth Form students meet together to practise the art of after-dinner speaking. There were twenty competitors from state and independent schools, with our entrant – Gemma Partridge – dazzling the audience with her witty and thought-provoking speech on the topic of “Soaps.” Gemma – who won the Raymond Hayter Song Prize in the Churchill Young Musician of the Year competition in January, and was part of the crew for Dance Live! – is a shining example of a student who has made the most of the opportunities offered to her, and thrived as a result.
It makes me so proud to see our students achieving such highs across this range of disciplines – with the confidence to express themselves. This is exactly the positive difference our vision statement talks about.
There are many fantastic Christmas traditions at Churchill – and this year we have added a couple of new ones into the mix! Firstly, hats off to our Hanover House Captains, who organised a whole-school non-uniform day on Monday with donations to food banks instead of money for charity. The Academy community responded with characteristic generosity, bringing in over 800kg of donations which were delivered on the same day to the Weston Foodbank Warehouse. Well done team!
Students remained focused and attentive in lessons, as we ran up towards the last day celebrations. The Sixth Form outdid themselves with their traditional fancy dress parade and revue.
The main school enjoyed celebrations and competitions within their houses, as well as making the trip to local churches for our Christmas assemblies.
The annual Headteacher’s Quiz also went down a storm – congratulations to winning tutor group SRS and the winning house: Stuart. If you fancy a go yourself, you can find the quiz here.
One the best parts of my job as Headteacher at Churchill is the time I get to spend with our students. I try to make time to talk to as many as possible during the day, whether on duty or on my daily “walk the school” when I visit lessons and see how things are going. I am always impressed by our students’ achievements, their humour, and – of course – their kindness, curiosity and determination.
One of the real highlights is when I get students sent to me so I can congratulate them on their achievements. These can be things they’ve achieved in and out of school, academically or personally – but, most regularly, it’s when students hit the milestone to be awarded a Headteacher’s Commendation.
The Academy’s rewards milestones
A Headteacher’s Commendation is awarded when a student has amassed 125 conduct points in a single academic year. Conduct points are the sum of reward points (positive) and concerns (negative). We always want to see students with positive conduct points scores, as this shows their rewards outnumber their concerns – but the higher the positive score, the better!
Rewards can be earned for anything from good homework or classwork, contributions to lessons, showing the Academy’s values, participating in activities or representing the Academy. Amassing 100 points or more is quite an achievement – so hitting 125 is extra special.
I was delighted to hear that the first six students had reached the Headteacher’s Commendation milestone this month. This achievement means they have racked up conduct points of a rate of three every two school days! Last year, I was handing out certificates virtually via email – but this year, I have had the pleasure of being able to meet our commended students in person again.
Now that I have given out my first certificates of the year, I know that more will follow. That means I can look forward to weekly visits to and from groups of students whose dedication, effort, application and contribution has earned them the right to receive their certificates. I can’t wait!
Nothing says Christmas like two inflatable dinosaurs following Scooby Doo, Scarlet Witch and a group of nuns down the Academy concourse! Our Sixth Form have excelled themselves this year with a fantastic fancy dress parade and a brilliant end of year revue. Merry Christmas!
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.
This week was National Thank A Teacher day, on Wednesday 23rd June. It is always lovely to receive messages of thanks, not just on one day of the year but at any time! One of the things that has sustained us at Churchill through the past fifteen months has been the stream of positive comments from parents and families, showing their gratitude for the work of all school staff – not just teachers – for working through lockdowns and beyond to keep education moving forward for our students. It was particularly gratifying, when the Secretary of State for Education suggested that parents should report schools to Ofsted if they weren’t doing well enough during the pandemic, that the schools inspectorate was overwhelmed by 13,000 messages praising schools – and only 260 complaints.
I would like to add my thanks to all those positive messages of support. The staff at Churchill – all the staff, not just the teachers – have been amazing. We have got through the most difficult year that any of us have known as a team, looking out for each other and supporting our shared purpose of keeping our Academy community strong, no matter what. It has been a privilege to be part of it.
Thank A Teacher Day reminded me of the teachers who made a difference to me. There are many, but two in particular stick in my mind.
Mrs Chamberlain: Mrs Chamberlain was my teacher in Year 5 at Elmgrove Primary School in Harrow. The difference she made was that she made be believe in myself. I’d always loved learning, but she opened up my eyes to what was possible if I worked really, really hard. She set us projects, and encouraged us to push ourselves. Our whole class flourished – and I’ve never forgotten it. When I became a teacher myself I wrote to thank her for the impact she had on me.
Mr Rattue: Mr Rattue was my English teacher in Year 8 (I think…or it might have been Year 7?!) and again in the Sixth Form. I always loved English because I loved stories – reading and writing them – but in Year 12 Mr Rattue taught us a unit which took us through the whole history of English Literature from Geoffrey Chaucer through to the modern day. We studied a couple of poems or extracts from key writers from every period. It wasn’t on the syllabus or the exam, but he wanted us to be able to put our understanding of texts in context. This unit gave me an overview of the subject which allowed me to make connections between ideas, writers and movements that otherwise I would have learned about in isolation. This made a huge difference, helping me to understand English Literature as a subject, rather than just learning about individual writers, books or poems. Mr Rattue had also studied English at Oxford, and helped me to believe that, maybe, that was something I could do too.
We can all remember the teachers who shaped our school days – for good and for bad! If there’s a teacher who has made a difference to you, make sure you say thank you – it makes a big difference to them, too.
Today we said farewell to the Year 13 class of 2021. These students – whether they have been with us for seven years, or joined us in the Sixth Form – have made a huge contribution to the Academy through their time with us. Their Sixth Form experience has been shaped and scarred by the coronavirus pandemic, but they have borne the trials and tribulations of self-isolations, two national lockdowns and cancelled exams with huge resilience and courage. We hold these students in such high esteem: their potential to go on and make a positive difference in the world is palpable. We wish them well.
Year 13 Class of 2021
Today has also been the “last day” for our Year 11 class of 2021. Although many of them will be returning in the Sixth Form, today marks the end of their time in the main school and they celebrated in style!
This year group holds a special place in my heart, as they are the first year group to come through the whole of the main school under my Headship. I visited some of them in their primary schools in my first months at Churchill, and welcomed them to the Academy as my first full Year 7 cohort. Many of them wrote to me before they joined us about their hopes and dreams, fears and wishes for the future – letters that I took great pleasure in reading out to them in their leavers’ assembly today!
The Year 11 Class of 2021
Our Year 11 students have also been disrupted by the pandemic, but they are far from the “lost generation” that the media is discussing. They are full of purpose, of positivity, and of potential. They will go on to accomplish great things – of that I am certain.
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