What an incredible Autumn term! Our Year 9 students have absolutely dazzled us with their enthusiasm and dedication to learning. We have seen an incredible number of students participate in extra-curricular activities this term, including our first SWA panto in two years! It was such a treat to be able to run this again and I know our Year 9s very much enjoyed both taking part and coming to watch. 

It has been lovely to see so many students take part in our Whitbread Winter Challenge 2021. I can already tell that I and Mrs Linehan face a difficult task when it comes to deciding the winner! Please do keep encouraging your child to take part. It’s a wonderful opportunity to have some festive fun, with many of the challenges involving quality family time together. 

As we start to think ahead to the New Year, please take the time to talk through our new behaviour expectations with your child. We have been really pleased with the fantastic behaviour demonstrated by our Year 9 students so far this academic year and want students to return in January feeling empowered to continue getting it right. Please also check uniform and equipment, ensuring your child is prepared to return fully equipped and ready to learn. 

Lastly, we would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a restful break, from everyone in the Year 9 team. 

We have reached the end of Year 10 students’ first term in their GCSE subjects. Overall it is fantastic to see how well so many have adapted and embraced their subjects with enthusiasm. With progress reports sent out last week, it was fantastic to see so many really positive reports. Students worked with form tutors last week to review these and steps needed to improve when we return in January, and there were some very constructive conversations. To help students understand the data in the reports, I went through some frequently answered questions with the students in an online assembly on Friday. I have recorded a parents’ FAQ version of this, which can be viewed here. Hopefully it answers any questions you may have had and allows you to have constructive conversations with your children about their progress.

It was fantastic to see so many of our Year 10s performing leading roles in the pantomime last week and the Christmas concert this week, alongside some excellent fun had in house sports this week. We really want to encourage this positivity outside of lessons, getting involved in clubs and wider school contributions – it helps students engage in learning when in classrooms and gives them a positive attitude towards school, whilst enhancing really important skills around teamwork, determination and ingenuity, three of SWA’s values.

Please can I take this opportunity to thank you all for your support and wish you all a happy and relaxing festive period. It has been a long, challenging term and it is incredibly important to now get some well earned rest, ready to return in January.

As we reach the end of what can only be described as one of the most turbulent years in education I would just like to take the opportunity to wish staff, parents and most importantly the students the warmest thank you. Thank you for coming back to school after a three month lockdown ready to put your all into everything. Thank you for getting involved in sports, competitions and extra-curricular activities to help us all feel a bit more ‘normal’. Thank you for reassuring your teachers that you didn’t forget everything you had been taught previously! And thank you for your smiles, laughter and chatter which filled the deafening silence that we unfortunately got used to when we were working from home. Without you we couldn’t do our job - so thank you for making us your teachers. 

I hope you have a restful, warm and loving time over Christmas and we will be ready to see you back in the New Year. 

We finish this term with some real success stories. This we celebrated the fantastic achievements and progress of our Year 12s and 13s in our virtual Christmas assembly. The amount of outstanding results in the last prediction cycle made it difficult for departments to choose just one student for the ‘achievement’ and one for the ‘progress’ awards. We would usually host this assembly in the hall and encourage a celebratory and festive atmosphere, so it is shame we are not able to celebrate in the way we would like.

When we return students in Year 12 will need to submit their placement work experience forms by Friday 28^th January. So it is imperative that students are sourcing these. I am running a project in the week of work experience to immerse the Year 10 in the Sixth Form, giving them a taster of what it is like. If any Year 12 would like to help, we are running this as an in house work experience option. These students will need to come and see Mr Tonking to sign up.

Merry Christmas from the Sixth Form team.