Headteacher's Newsletter

what's happening at Chesham Grammar

Posted on: February 11th 2022

Head's Blog

Dear parent

HSM1 On Wednesday evening, our school show, High School Musical Jr, opened at The Elgiva in Chesham. I was lucky enough to be in the audience, along with a good number of my colleagues, students, parents and governors. It was simply wonderful. The students were clearly really enjoying themselves and this was so good to see after such a long time of not being able to collaborate in this way or to perform to an audience. Huge congratulations to all those staff and students involved in anyway and to HSM2 parents who, for weeks on end, have had to collect their child from frequent after school rehearsals. The final show is tomorrow afternoon and I am sure there will be a sense of sadness for cast and crew as it comes to an end. It won't be long before Mrs Neagle's attention will turn to the show for next year... but she and everyone else involved deserve a bit of a rest first!

75th ANNIVERSARY

75 test As you will be aware, this year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of our school. We have a number of exciting events planned and next week, I will be talking to the students in assembly about the history of the school and about the 75th events taking place in school time. We have some exciting things planned across a range of disciplines including art, music, drama and engineering and we have already begun the process of planting 75 trees across the site, led by our Eco Club. We will also mark the event with a whole school photograph and the planting of a time capsule. We also have an alumni event planned as well as a 75th anniversary ball on Friday July 8th, so please save the date. I am very excited about this event and I hope that many of you will be able to join us. We would very much like to have a group of parents who will work with us to organise and prepare for it and some information will come out next week so please look out for this. I look forward to working with you!

ELEVATE SESSIONS

In order to support our students with their learning, we run a series of sessions where students learn about key study skills that they can integrate into their independent work. The study skills sessions are delivered by external presenters from a company called Elevate. They are all young, recent graduates. Next Tuesday, Elevate presenters will be coming in to run sessions with students in years 7, 8, 10 and 11. Mr Patteson will send information home after the session outlining the key messages and how you might support your child to embed these study skills at home.

SPORT

Cgs u19 team Last weekend, our U19 boys' table tennis team competed in the South of England regional final in Bristol. Pranav, Matt, Elliot and Zach, who won their zone final last month, finished a respectable third in a fiercely competitive event. Well done to them and thanks to our Table Tennis Centre for coaching and inspiring them. Last week I reported on the success of our cross country runners and we were delighted to hear this week that we now have six students who have been selected to represent Bucks Schools at the ESAA Championships next month, with Callum in year 9, Archie and Euan in year 10 and Charlotte in year 12 hearing of their selection this week. In other sporting news, we have had a number of fixtures in basketball, hockey and netball. There were some very competitive matches in basketball v DCGS, with the U12 team narrowly losing 24-20. The year 8B hockey team beat Pipers Corner 2-1 while the 8A netball team enjoyed a comfortable win against Beaconsfield High School, with the 7As losing to them. In the draw for the next round of the National Cup, our U18 girls will play Shenfield High School in Essex in the quarter finals and the U16s will face a team from the same school in their semi-final match. Both teams have been drawn away, unfortunately. The matches will take place in the next few weeks. The fixture list for next week can be found here.

CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH WEEK

This week is Children's Mental Health Week and this letter from Mr Bradbury contains some useful information on resources which help parents to support their child. The Charlie Waller Trust, with which we have been working for some time, is running a series of webinars and early booking is advised. There is also some information from Mr Bradbury about internet safety, with Safer Internet Day also taking place this week, on Tuesday 8th. There is a helpful guide for young people which we have put together which you may want to discuss with your child. No parent wants to think that their child is accessing inappropriate content online or posting unpleasant comments but sadly this is all too common so it is important that we work together and deliver consistent messages to our young people to help them navigate the online world. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with us.

SARACENS RUGBY CLUB

Sarries

Saracens Rugby Club will be playing Bristol Bears in The Showdown 2 which will take place at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday 26th March. If any rugby fans in the school would like to attend, you can buy tickets via the link contained in this letter which will raise money for the school as Saracens will give us a percentage of any ticket sales made via this link. The new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is acknowledged as one of the best in the world and as an avid Tottenham fan myself, I can assure you that the Saracens tickets are a fraction of the cost of a Spurs Premier League game and that the new stadium is really worth visiting! The event is about much more than the rugby game and it sounds like a good family day out. All details can be found in the letter.

BIRTHDAY TEAS

It was a pleasure to meet with year 13s during the week who have recently celebrated their 18th birthday. Congratulations to Amber, Abigail, Emma, Lauren, Emma and Jacob. I also enjoyed meeting with some of our year 7s to congratulate them on the excellent start they have made to CGS, following the recent data drop for this year group. Well done to Megan, Yasmin, Noah, Samuel, Lola, Radhika, Libby, Grace, Sofia, Liam, Marcus, Benjamin, Harvey and Rahul. Finally, I must apologise to Elena, Veer, Shaurav and Ryan in year 7 with whom I met for birthday tea last week but forgot to mention in my newsletter. A belated happy birthday to them.

FEEDBACK FROM PARENTS

Feedback we had last term was that sometimes, parents receive a number of emails from us during the week and it was suggested that it would be helpful to streamline communication. Consequently, you may have noticed that many of our whole-school communications now come with my Friday newsletter. It would be helpful to know if this has been positively received so if you any views either way, please do let us know. Thank you.