Headteacher Update

Dear parents and carers,

I hope families had a safe and enjoyable weekend. Monday represents the beginning of the full GCSE examination season, followed by A Level next week. We are extremely proud of the dedication and resilience that students have shown over an extended period of time and wish them all the very best in the weeks ahead. As ever, our staff have also worked incredibly hard to help prepare students for the demands of these examinations and we will continue to do so over the coming weeks. If families feel that there is anything further that you need from us please do not hesitate to contact school.

Weekly Update – ClassCharts Merits for Week 30
It’s been another excellent week for merits on ClassCharts. 14,341 merits were awarded across the school last week in recognition of all the fantastic things, both big and small, that students are doing every day in school – we as a staff body are all very proud!

Here is an interesting breakdown of the average merits awarded to students in each year group, and the names of some exceptional performers…

Well done to Year 7 for achieving the highest average merit score last week, and a very well done to those individuals who achieved the highest number of merits in each year group!

Many more students have now crossed there 50+ merit marker, and you as parents should have received a message home through the ClassCharts up in recognition of this. If you are yet to download the ClassCharts app or require support in doing so, please contact your child’s pastoral team. When further thresholds are crossed in this final term of the year, parents will be receiving letters home from the school in recognition of these excellent achievements.

Just another reminder – in September we will be launching the Archbishop Holgate’s School ‘Rewards Store’, where students can exchange their merits for prizes, and even make charitable donations in their name if they so wish. We will also have a new systems of letters and certificates ranging from the ‘Bronze Award’ to a ‘Special Commendation’ based on how many merits students achieve. For this first term of Merits on Classcharts, you will receive a notification when your child crosses certain merit thresholds, as well as letters home as recognition for their achievements. Thank you!

Head of Year Awards
Please find the Head of Year Awards for Week 30…

Head of Year Updates
Year 7 – Miss Kincell, Miss Powell and Miss Cooper
We are so proud of Year 7 this week, their work ethos and resilience has been absolutely incredible. This linked very well to our assembly this week about soft employability skills and the importance of learning valuable skills such as reliability and punctuality.

This morning students engaged with their extended form time and took part in a PSHE lesson based on the importance of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality. We discussed how we can base this on our school values, justice, compassion, forgiveness and trust as well as what we can do better to ensure all are protected, respected and celebrated within our school community.

Well done to our Students of the Week:
7Ann – Lucy Norman – For helping others in the form and for being a fantastic partner for other students.
7ASu – Ben Buzasi – For showing great effort and resilience by presenting the News this week!
7Bl – Oliver Temple – always willing to read the prayer in form collective worship.
7Cy – Scarlett Wheatland for being compassionate by helping and guiding a new student
7Gr – Emily Graville – Always being conscientious and hardworking, it does not go unnoticed! Thank you
7Hf – Macie Allan – for an excellent start and learning new school routines. Well Done!
7Hv – Liam Shepherd- Great reading during thought for the day, well done!
7MLn – Emily Cundall – For your humour, your resilience and your positive attitude.
7MPe – Rocus Leung – for living the school values
7Mr – Caio Pereira for his much improved punctuality
7SMf – Lily Casey – Outstanding resilience, humour and intellect shown in all class conversations and Y7 Assessments.

Well done to our Head of Year Awards
Oliver Temple 7Bl – for outstanding resilience during assessment week
Ismay Ambler 7Hv – for living the school values and supporting other students

Mental Health Awareness Week
Mental Health Awareness week is an annual event which focuses on achieving better mental health across the UK. Taking place across 9-15 May, the theme this year is loneliness. Loneliness can affect many of us at one time or another and it has had a huge impact on our mental and physical health during the pandemic. You can feel lonely even when surrounded by others, but you feel disconnected and misunderstood. This week in the library we have been making cards and postcards with positive messages and thinking about who might like to receive one. Lovely cards have been sent to friends and family, others have been pushed through the door of a neighbour. Plus, don’t forget that most everyone enjoys being read to, so if you have a friend/relative that you don’t get to see very often, why not read them a chapter of your current book over Zoom. Even better, read them something you have written yourself.

Congratulations to Isabel Weyman 7Mpe who won the Odd Sock poetry competition. Isabel won a chocolate orange, and you can read her entry below.

Odd Socks by Isabel Weyman 7Mpe

I have odd socks, they are in a box,
‘cause my mum does say, (or rather shout)
You should throw them out.
I love odd socks and know mum does too,
‘cause all her yellow ones are paired with blue!
When someone has a pair, I can’t help but glare
at their feet as they walk down the street.
And, I always think, when my feet are at rest,
That odd socks really are the best.

Year 8 – Mrs Avey, Mrs Mennell and Mr Handley
Attendance has once again been really strong for Year 8 this week – well done. A couple of forms are getting closer to 100% – the reward for which is a Pizza Party.8Ob are the only form to have managed this so far – we’d love to see some of the other forms in Year 8 achieve this before the end of the school year.

This week in our Act of Collective Worship Mr Williams, the Deputy Head for Curriculum, delivered an assembly on the assessment week for Year 8 in the first week back in the next half term. The Assessment week is something all year groups will do and is an opportunity for students to show off what they have learned this year. Teachers will give feedback in the weeks after in a supportive capacity to help students in any area they have found challenging. We understand an assessment week will bring with it some stress for students. Teachers will be giving students plenty of revision beforehand and will support students in their preparation. If you have any questions, please do get in touch.

In form time this week students completed the extended PHSCE session for this half term. This session was about diversity, equality and inclusion. This follows on from our Act of Collective worship last week and is an important part of the education offered to developing students beyond the curriculum. Our school community is diverse and we are proud of this and proud of our students for being inclusive and accepting of others. This links to our school values of compassion and justice. As ever, the contributions made by students really showed their compassion and understanding of how equality plays a vital role in justice, one of our school values.

We have been asked to invite Year 8 students (as well as Year 7 and 9) to take part in a wellbeing survey being offered by the University of Cambridge. We will highlight this in form time to students but parental consent would be needed for students to take part. A flyer will be handed out in form time. Please do get in touch if you would like more information about this.

The Year 8 team would also like to recognise the hard work of some Year 8 students and of Miss Wheater in the PE department for a project they have completed on Leadership. The students involved on this have been working on this since February and are currently completing a presentation about their future aspirations. The work the students have completed has been excellent. Well done to the following (and a massive thanks to Miss Wheater):

• Elisabetta M
• Tamara A
• Aela M
• Sophie B
• Caitlin M
• Hannah B
• Jessie K
• Lilly-Jo H
• Ruby H
• Anna R
• Poppy S
• Ava G

We’d also like to remind parents again about getting logged on and using their ClassCharts account. If you have any issues or need any support with using ClassCharts please do get in touch and we will be happy to help.

Year 9 – Mr Arthur, Mr Deamer and Mrs Deacon
In the blink of an eye, we have reached past the halfway point of the half term! Yeah nine I’ve had an excellent half term so far, and long may it continue!

I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss the issue of bullying. In 2020, our Deputy Head Mr Furniss invited volunteers to contribute to a ‘working party’ on updating our approach towards the issue of bullying and make it more ‘student-friendly’ and easy to understand. The outcome has been extensive, and posters on the working group’s outcomes have been placed all around school. Students will certainly have noticed the rising profile of our approach to bullying, and we regularly address to students through how we can collectively tackle this issue during our weekly Act of Collective Worship. Every student at AHS has the right to feel safe and happy in school, and we are committed to tackling bullying in all its forms within the school community. First, students were taken through a carefully worded definition of ‘bullying’, which we have set out as…

“the repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power.”

This definition comes from the Anti-Bullying Alliance, and we made sure we took the students through this carefully. Key aspects of this to highlight include the deliberate and repetitive nature of the behaviour which happens over a period of time, and how it usually involves an imbalance of power between the perpetrators and the victim. Further to this, we discuss the reasons why people bully and how this is important to tackling the issue. Whilst these reasons do not excuse the behaviour, they certainly help us understand the behaviour in a productive way to help tackle the issue effectively. If we understand why people engage in these sorts of behaviours, it is much easier for us to address directly and prevent it from happening in the future. Finally, we often discuss the different roles that individuals have within instances of bullying, and this terminology is something we will continue to use when addressing these issues with students. There is the initial perpetrator who initiates these behaviours; referred to in this case as the ‘ringleader’. They are supported by the ‘assistant(s)’ who are also involved in perpetrating these unsavoury behaviours. Whilst these roles will be fulfilled by a very small minority of students in school, we also explained the importance of the role of ‘reinforcer(s)’ – these people will not stand up to bullying when they see it, and may even laugh or encourage people to continue their negative behaviour. It is important for students to realise that we need to work as a community to tackle these issues, and we ended with the quote to this effect from Archbishop Desmond Tutu…

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

It is vital that we have more students who perform the role of the ‘defender’ in these instances – someone who stands up for someone who is being bullied. This could be something as small as discouraging another student from engaging in this behaviour, or preferably telling an adult in school so the issue can be dealt with in a timely and productive fashion. If your child has been a victim of verbal, physical, emotional or social bullying, please do either get in touch yourself, or encourage your child to speak to an adult in school and we will work to get to the bottom of the issue.

I also want to take this opportunity to stress the importance of punctuality. Punctuality is also a key contributor to the success of students . It is important that students are sat in their form rooms ready to start the day before 8:45. This means that students must ensure they arrive on school site well before then – form rooms will be open from 8:30 for them to ‘drift in’ on a morning, and there are wellbeing resources available for when they arrive. This will also ensure that any important messages that are passed on to students during morning Tutor Time are given to all of the students. Furthermore, it is also vitally important that students arrive to lessons on time. Studies have shown that re-capping on old content through low-stakes testing is crucial to consolidating their learning. The first few minutes of a lesson is where most recaps take place. It is therefore vitally important that students arrive to lessons promptly and ready to learn to ensure they maximise the input that is given to them by teachers across all subjects. If students are persistently late to lessons, they will be placed in a lunch detention on ClassCharts.

Finally, a big congratulations to the students winning the Head of Year Award last week…

Thank you for taking the time to read this parent bulletin. If you have any issues regarding your child in Year 9, then please do get in touch by emailing aarthur@ahs.pmat.academy (head of Year), mdeacon@ahs.pmat.academy (Assistant Head of Year) and/or rdeamer@ahs.pmat.academy (Pastoral Support Worker); or alternatively, you can call Main School Reception and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you!

Year 10 – Mr Avery, Miss Johstone and Miss Montagu
Year 10 are currently on Work Experience.

Year 11 – Miss Turvey, Miss Reeder and Miss Chambers
After all of the hard work and commitment our students have put in over the past few months, we have finally reached the start of full cohort GCSEs. As always, we are so proud of our Year 11s for how exceptionally well they have done this year and we want to wish them the best of luck for the exam period ahead. All of the groundwork is now in place and we know they are going to absolutely smash it!

A special shout out this week to students who went on the Boggle Hole trip this weekend. This was a roaring success with plenty of sun, some lovely memories made on the beach and lots of meaningful revision completed too. Our students made us immensely proud and Mr Avery has asserted it was “the best group of students he has ever taken” – well done Year 11!

This week, we will be doing all we can to support students for their GCSEs ahead. Students will be in school at the usual times following a bespoke timetable of exams and revision sessions. Students should continue to wear full school uniform as normal with the addition of their Leavers hoodies if desired. We will only ask students to remove their hoodies for the exams.

An overview of this week in Year 11 is attached below. The key message to students here is that they will be arriving in school and going to AM registration as normal every day this week. We feel this will be really valuable to allow students the opportunity to check in with their tutors, ensure they have the equipment they need for their exams and be reminded of what will happen on the day ahead. As these are external examinations, students must be vigilant to ensure they are in school on time every day, they are punctual to all of their exams, they turn their mobile phones off and leave them outside of the exam hall, and they demonstrate impeccable behaviour. If students do not arrive on time or breach the code of conduct for exams there is little we can do to intervene at a school level. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any concerns and we will do all we can to put in place preemptive support.

We are aware of how stressful the GCSE exams are for students and it is important to remind your child that it is normal to feel anxious and tired during this period. Getting a good night’s sleep each night at home, having plenty to eat and drink and having time and space to wind down will be important. In school, we will be providing breakfast every morning in the Courtyard Cafe from 8:15am. The Year 11 team will also be on hand here each morning to answer questions and offer support before AM registration begins. We will also be present at the start and end of each exam as well as break and lunchtime to offer support and resolve any arising issues. Students can also speak to their Form tutors during am and pm registration. If you feel your child is struggling during the exam period, please do let us know and, together, we can discuss a plan to mitigate this.

Once again, we wish your child the best of luck in their exams and hope they will undertake them with confidence and self-belief after all of their hard work this year.

If you have any issues regarding your child in Year 11, please contact school reception who will alert the Year 11 team: Miss Turvey (Head of Year 11), Miss Chambers (Assistant Head of Year 11) Mrs Reeder (Year 11 Pastoral Support Worker) or Miss Short (SLT). Thank you.

Post 16 – Mrs De Lashley, Mrs Walton, Miss Balmer and Mr Charlton
Exams this week

A Level Exams – Exams commence Monday 23rd May and students are required to be in Black Square 20 minutes before the start time to ensure that they have time to check the seating plans in Black Square and get to their exam location in good time to prevent delayed starts.

Y13 Stand-down – A reminder that Year 13 stand-down to commence their A Level exams this Friday. Friday is a full normal day following their celebrations the evening before. Following Friday students are not to attend school unless for exams with the exception of BTEC students that will remain in school until coursework is completed.

REMINDER: Y13 Leavers

• Y13 Leavers Celebration Thursday 19th May (Main Hall 7pm). The archbishop of York is joining us to host the initial part of the evening. Please join us to celebrate Year 13 completing a tough two year
• Prom Friday 24th June (Hilton, York)

Sixth Form Rewards – As we have transitioned to Class Charts we have moved with the rewards system and no longer collect student shoutouts. Below are this week’s rewards. These are positive acknowledgments from staff. When we have been using this a few more weeks we will establish an appropriate set of rewards suitable for our cohort. So far it has been used well and students are receiving lots of acknowledgement. If you have not yet signed up for Class Charts, please do. You can track these rewards live.

Collective Worship
This week our Form Tutor Collective Worship is all about our attitude towards the poor and whether it is one of genuine concern and care. Our daily quotes are all wisdom from Mother Teresa of Calcutta..

Monday – “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Tuesday – “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Wednesday – “Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Thursday – “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Friday – “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta

The Wellbeing Newsletter Issue 53