Posted May 3 - 2024Headteacher's Newsletter
what's happening at Chesham Grammar
Posted on: September 9th 2022
Head's Blog
I want to start by welcoming to our school community all those whose child has started with us this week, either in year 7 or year 12. I hope that your child is settling in well and has enjoyed their first week with us at CGS. I would also like to welcome back existing parents. It has been wonderful to be able to welcome everyone back and to see the school full of life again. I have enjoyed hearing about things the students did during the summer holiday, which, as always, seemed to fly by and likewise, I have enjoyed seeing them get back into the routines of school life and to see sports trials already underway. Please see the list of trials and PE activities for next week here.
At the start of the week, I obviously had no idea that I would end it by delivering an assembly about the death of Queen Elizabeth II. We do not have a venue large enough to hold all students in the school but I felt very strongly that as a school community, we should do something today to collectively acknowledge this. I decided to record an assembly which was played to all students in tutor time this morning (these virtual assemblies became normal during Covid when we were unable to hold in-person assemblies). This was obviously rather hastily written last night. Within the student and staff body there will be a wide range of individual views on the monarchy but I stressed that today was not for discussion about this but rather for coming together to show respect to someone who spent so many years in public service and who has, quite simply and for all of us, just been there. No child or member of staff in our school has known any other monarch. All Headteachers received some information from the Department for Education following Buckingham Palace's announcement last night and I expect there to be more in the coming days. I will of course pass on anything we need to make you aware of.
NEW STAFF
At the start of a new academic year, we always have new colleagues joining us. I will introduce these in alphabetical order. Mr Agius joins us in the PE Department while Mrs Cooper is teaching physics. We have new teachers also in art and drama and they are Miss Day-Haynes and Miss Jochum respectively.
Mrs Knowles joins the maths team as Assistant Subject Leader while Mrs Pearson is our new Exams Officer. In history and politics, we are joined by Mr Selsby. Mr Sterling is covering for Mr Pontin in PE with Miss Cogger, who joined us last term, taking on leadership of the PE team until Mr Pontin can return. We have a new Subject Leader for design and technology (engineering) who is Mr Swart as well as Miss Turner in chemistry and another Miss Turner who is our PE technician. Mrs Tutton joins the English team while Miss Ware will be working with the cover team. To all our new colleagues, we extend a very warm welcome and we wish them a happy and fulfilling time with us. Finally, I would like to congratulate Miss Murphy who got married over the summer. She has returned as Mrs Kirby.
BUILDING WORK
Over the summer holiday, there was a huge amount of work undertaken across the school site. The two biggest projects were the creation of a student services hub and the renovation of our staffroom area. In the former, we have brought together all the staff who work to support the students, from the SEND team to Matron. Our Learning Mentor is also now working in this area and there are several much-needed rooms for use with small groups of students or for 1:1 meetings. The staff accommodation has been untouched for many, many years. We finally have a nice staffroom! We have also created better office accommodation for our Finance and HR teams and have relocated reprographics also. In addition, there has been a good deal of redecoration and replacement of furniture as well as an upgrading of all the PCs in our two IT rooms. I want to say a huge thank you to our site team who have worked very hard across the summer to make all this happen and to the other staff involved in any way. All of this has made a significant difference to our school.
EXAMS
The other summer holiday headlines of course are our exam results. In August, both GCSE and A level results were released. My thanks to the staff involved in getting all this sorted for the students, especially Ms Robinson, our outgoing Exams Officer and Mrs Harding, our Data Manager. We were absolutely delighted with both sets of results. Those doing A levels had never sat a public exam before as their GCSEs were cancelled in 2020. They did brilliantly, with 28% of the entries graded A*, 57% A*/A and 82% A*-B. Our GCSE results were the best we have ever had, even higher than they were last year! This very much bucked the national trend. The government's aim after two years of no exams due to Covid and grade inflation during that time is to move the grading back to pre-pandemic levels. Most schools therefore saw the percentage of top GCSE grades begin to fall this year. For us, the percentage of grade 9s increased and was 33%. The same was true of grades 9-7 which went up to 81%. These results are simply amazing! They did not happen by accident of course and I want to congratulate our students of whom we are immensely proud and thank the staff who worked relentlessly to ensure the students were well prepared and could make the very best use of the advance information made available in many subjects this year.
OTHER SCHOOL NEWS AND INFORMATION
Mr Stoddern has asked me to include information about Young Enterprise which is open to all those in year 12. This is an excellent programme enabling students to gain valuable real-life business experience. Every year, there are business volunteers who guide the students through the process using their own business knowledge and expertise and if you are interested in becoming one of the Young Enterprise business advisers, you can read more here.
There are three letters from Mr Bradbury. One is about the group we have in school to support students who are young carers. If this applies to your child, please read this and get in touch. The other two letters contain information about Pupil Premium funding. This is for students who are eligible for free school meals (FSM), or who have claimed free school meals at any point in the past six years. There is also information about eligibility for FSM. We are pretty sure that we have more children in the school who are eligible than are currently claiming FSM. Sometimes we find that parents worry that there will be some sort of stigma attached to claiming FSM. I can assure you that this is simply not the case and I would urge anyone who thinks they may be eligible to get in touch with us, especially at this particular time when so many household costs are spiralling.
Can I finish with a note about parking. I know that a good number of parents drop off and/or collect their child by car. Before school and at the end of the day, there are over 1300 children making their way to or from the site. Their safety is my foremost priority. Please drive and park in a way which takes this into consideration.â There have been situations where parents have driven onto the school site too quickly and this puts our students at risk. Likewise, there have been cases of parents parking inconsiderately or in some cases illegally in roads close to the school, perhaps across someone's drive or opposite or so close to a junction that it is dangerous to others. By 3.50pm the school site is much quieter and I can guarantee you a much less stressful pick-up experience if you ask your child to wait for 10 minutes before being collected.
Thank you.
BIRTHDAY TEAS
Next week, I will be starting my year 7 and 13 birthday teas and will also report all the 'good news' we have received about our students in the last couple of weeks.
With best wishes for a relaxing weekend.
Annmarie McNaney
Headteacher
