Parent Bulletin

Dear parents and carers,

I hope that you had a safe and enjoyable bank holiday weekend.

With just a week before the GCSE and A Level written examinations take place, our Year 11 and 13 students are working incredibly hard to ensure that they are fully prepared. It is important that the students continue to make use of the support that is on offer both academically and pastorally in the lead up to the exam season. We recognise that this can be a pressured time and so our staff are committed to making sure that every student is especially supported within this time. If families have any queries linked to the examination period then please do not hesitate to contact a member of the Year team who will be happy to help.

Last week our Year 9 students were out of school on Friday as part of their final Art Award cultural trip. Students enjoyed trips to the Media Museum in Bradford, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield and the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The trips are a part of the curriculum enrichment available in Year 9 that has been built into the Silver Arts Award.

This week we look forward to welcoming families of Year 10 students as part of the Progress evening that will take place on Wednesday 10 May. This evening is a great opportunity to talk to teachers to find out more about your child’s progress in each subject area. This is especially important as our Year 10 students are half way through their GCSE journey.

Our Year 13 students have their leavers celebration on Thursday 11 May ahead of the A Level stand down on Friday 12 May. We look forward to welcoming families to this event to celebrate and thank them for their achievements throughout their time at Archbishop Holgate’s School. The students have demonstrated themselves to be excellent role models for the younger students in our school community. Our Year 13 students have contributed so much to our school community over the last year and we thank them for making our school a special place to be part of.

Pre-loved Uniform

As we near the end of the academic year, we wanted to appeal once again for any high quality, pre-loved uniform parents may be able to donate to the school. The shop continues to be very popular, and we are welcoming of any items of uniform that are no longer needed or have been outgrown. Please could any donations be dropped off in the main school reception.

Should you wish to access the pre-loved uniform shop, please find further information and a link on our school website.

Wellbeing

Health and wellbeing is an important part of life at Archbishop Holgate’s School, in order to read the wellbeing newsletter for this week – please click here.

Head of Year Awards

Year team messages to parents and carers

Each week, the pastoral year teams will communicate any key messages, successes and upcoming dates to be aware of in this section of the parent bulletin.

A message from the Sixth Form pastoral team

REMINDER Y13 Leavers’ Key Dates:

• Leavers’ Celebration Service – Thursday 11th May (6:30-7:30pm in the Main Hall)
• A Level Stand-down – Friday 12th May (from PM registration)
• Prom – Friday 23rd June Hilton, York
• A Level Results – Thursday 17th August (invites sent this week)

A Level Exam Timetable

Please find below the first two weeks of exams leading up to the May half-term break. The rest of the timetable will follow each week. Students have individual timetables also.

• Students to arrive 15mins before the exam start time
• All students to go to Black Square to check the seating plans and then go to their location

Possible locations:

1. Sports Hall
2. Drama Studio
3. SFS
4. SF Library
5. SF Café

A message from the Year 11 pastoral team

It’s been another busy week for Year 11 as we put the final preparations in place before their exams begin on the 15th May. The students each received their GCSE timetable this week, which gives them the exact date and time for each of their exams. Please keep this somewhere safe, as the exams will come thick and fast once we begin on the 15th. Please also contact the year team if this document is lost or damaged and we can issue a replacement.

It was brilliant to hand put the Year 11 yearbooks and hoodies this week. I know the students were excited to receive them and it has been really nice to see them signing each other’s books with advice, well wishes and support. Some of the pictures from over the years brought a smile to their faces, not least the pictures of the staff from when we were younger! I keep trying to explain to the students that the 80s was not a good fashion decade for anyone, but I don’t think they believe me!

The students have begun to go through the exam plans for week one with their form tutors this week, and this will be repeated again next week. This will inform the students which exams will take place each day and the revision sessions they need to be in if they are not in exams. Attendance at both morning and afternoon registration will be absolutely vital in the coming weeks to ensure students are fully informed for the day. Students have also been spending time revising during form, with the support of their form tutors. Finally, students will receive an assembly from myself and Miss McDermott (Deputy Head) on Friday afternoon, to offer further advice and guidance to students (including wellbeing strategies), as well as a reminder of exam expectations.

Last but not least, we are busy preparing to make Prom a wonderful experience and the Prom committee have made a decision on the theme ‘Under the Night Stars’. As a reminder, Prom will be taking place on Friday 30th June at York Racecourse. Students have indicated whether they will be attending or not and we will be making the final arrangements in the coming weeks. Thank you for keeping up with the payments on ParentPay and if you need support, contact our Finance Team (swillsden@ahs.pmat.academy ).

I hope our students in Year 11 have a well earned break over the bank holiday weekend, and I look forward to seeing them all on Tuesday in school.

A message from the Year 10 pastoral team

Year 10 are still being consistently excellent across the school. I’ve had a number of members of staff say to me they are always the best at break and lunch times when I’m in the hall, which is great to hear. I continue to be impressed with their efforts with uniform, working hard in lessons and excellent behaviour throughout whether it be break or lunchtime, moving between lessons or in class it has been excellent.

Just a reminder that parents evening is this week, Wednesday the 10th May from 3:45 -7:15pm. Students were given a parents evening letter in form time, so please check with your young person they have received this so they can make appointments on your behalf. If you have any concerns you’ve not received this, please get in touch. We are also contacting parents whose children have said you cannot attend to confirm either way.

Another reminder that work experience is now next week. Students who have not sorted placements will be placed in school, please check with your young person. Everyone else who has a placement was given another letter with guidance this week for what to do to reconfirm their place and check requirements such as what to wear and time to arrive etc. Again please can you check with your young person they’ve received this and they are following it to confirm their placement, it is imperative they do this to stop any last minute surprises. Any concerns please get in touch.

Unfortunately I have noticed that the years groups attendance has dropped. We have a number of students who are consistently excellent with 100% attendance, well done to them. 10EWh got the highest attendance last week, well done! But I just wanted to highlight especially in the run up to mocks how important attendance is. Recent studies have shown that absence from school has a significant impact on the success of students, and can have a long-term impact through to their GCSEs. In one of these studies, it has shown that of those students that have 100% attendance, 79% of them achieve 5+ good GCSEs. At 95%, this figure falls to 69%. At 90%, this falls even further to 53%, and by 85% attendance, this figure for success becomes 36%. When considering that 5% attendance is around 7 days absence, it really is crucial that students are in school every single day. To put this into further context, if your child has lower than 96% attendance, this means that they are attending school less than the average child across the country. During mock and exam season if students miss an exam they are unable to resit it and therefore get 0, this can therefore impact results significantly, therefore it is crucial Year 10 are in these good habits now for mocks and next year.

Furthermore, a number of parents have contacted me about mocks, they start the 19th June for two weeks. Students will be given guidance on what to revise and taught revision skills in school which we will start to action in a few weeks. Once received we do expect students to revise at home and prepare well for their exams. We know students will do well and it is a great opportunity to showcase their knowledge.

If you have any queries regarding your young person in Year 10, then please do get in touch by emailing myself (mdeacon@ahs.pmat.academy), Mr McPaul (cmcpaul@ahs.pmat.academy) and/or Mrs Robinson (jrobinson@ahs.pmat.academy) or calling main school reception and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you – Miss Deacon

A message from the Year 9 pastoral team

Again another fantastic, yet short, week for Year 9. We would like to reiterate just how well they have come back from Easter and how they have been coping with the disruption to their week they have been experiencing. Uniform has been excellent and their general behaviour around school has been great.

Friday saw the third and final Cultural Visit taking place this year. Each student has had the chance to visit the Media Museum in Bradford, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield and the Royal Armouries in Leeds throughout the course of this year.

9Lp, 9KCe, 9NTh and 9WNo visited the Royal Armouries. Whilst there they had the chance to visit all four areas of the museum. Students learnt about various periods of warfare, weapons and armour through history, from historical warfare such as Vikings, Anglo Saxons through to the mediaeval period, the weapons used in hunting, oriental weapons and armour, and the armour and weapons used in jousting tournaments.

9Ap, 9CBe and 9ECe visited the National Science and Media Museum. Whilst there students were able to think like a Scientist in Wonderlab, learn about the history of photography in the Kodiak gallery and learn about animation. Students also had a chance to experience the 60 ft tall IMAX cinema learning about the importance of water to African wildlife.

9Cr, 9DBs, 9Ev and 9JDl visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and battled against the inclement weather conditions. The students had a chance to experience works by Damien Hirst, Robert Indiana, Alex Clegg and Annie Montgomerie amongst many others.

All trips were a great success and behaviour was excellent throughout.

As ever, if there are ever any questions please do not hesitate to get in contact with the year team.

A message from the Year 8 pastoral team

We hope that all of our students and their families enjoyed the long bank holiday weekend last week, and are looking forward to another longer weekend with some warm weather.

On Friday, students had a slight change to their routine by taking part in an afternoon assembly to make up for our missed Tuesday slot. This was led by Mr Williams (Deputy Head) to introduce Year 8 Assessment Week, which will be taking place in the week commencing May 22nd. Assessment week is a longstanding feature of our school calendar which involves subjects syncing their end of year assessments to assess and review students’ progress over the year. On the one hand, this helps students to understand the importance of working hard to perform well and we begin to expose students to important rubrics and skills for revision and navigating exam periods such as they will encounter in KS4. On the other hand, we also try to strike a delicate balance to ensure that we have age-appropriate expectations of Year 8 and also avoid causing any unnecessary anxiety for students. The Year 8 team will be holding preemptive check-ins with any students who we feel might be daunted by assessment week, and the tone we will take will be very much light-hearted and aiming to put students at ease. For Year 8 students, there is no expectation to complete any extra revision outside of school and routine homework will be enough to consolidate any revision needed. The resounding message from us is that assessment week is in place to normalise the process of being examined, to help us to build confidence and resilience around exam periods, and that ultimately all anyone can ask is that you try your best when the time comes. If you have any concerns about how your child will navigate this, please advise the Year 8 team and we will be happy to support.

On Thursday 25th May, we have the Year 8 Rewards disco taking place. This will be 5pm – 6:30pm in the Main Hall and Spiritual Garden; students will need to arrive via reception. We hope this will offer a well-deserved opportunity to celebrate Year 8’s achievements and something to look forward to for the end of assessment week. Our Year 8 students have raised a respectable £276 of funds to go towards a takeaway pizza tea, snacks and drinks for this event. I am sure you will appreciate that, with over 300 students in our year group, this does still leave us a little short. As such, if you are able to contribute an optional £2 donation on Parent Pay to help cover the cost of the event, this would be very much appreciated. A staff member has kindly offered to DJ the event and Year 8 students have voted for a ’90s/neon’ theme at the event which should make for really good fun! Mobile phones will be permitted, however staff will be policing the sensible use of these. If your child would like to attend the disco, please complete the relevant consent form on Parent Pay to advise school of your child’s attendance, dietary requirements and photo permissions.

Thank you for your continued support. The Year 8 team are on hand throughout the school day to support students and address any concerns. We try to encourage students to seek us out before school, break, lunch or after school if they have an issue they would like to discuss. If you have any queries or concerns about your child in Year 8, please call school reception to speak to someone in the Year 8 team, or you can email reception@ahs.pmat.academy.

A message from the Year 7 pastoral team

We hope you had a lovely bank holiday weekend and that our students had a chance to get some rest before assessment week. We spoke to year 7 about wellbeing and self-care in assembly last week and how this is particularly important when there could be periods of stress. The Year 7 team will be available this week if students need any extra support or are feeling worried and need some reassurance. We mentioned the importance of looking after yourself physically and emotionally. Below are some useful websites to look at, including our school wellbeing site and some free apps to download:

AHS Wellbeing Website – https://sites.google.com/archbishopholgates.org/4steps2wellbeing/home

https://www.supportservicesforeducation.co.uk/Page/20029

Calm app

BlueIce app

Calm Harm app

Catch it app

Well done to our Students of the Week
ASu – Arlo Gane – For leading The News very well this week
CMm – Aaron Gleghorn for excellent progress in his lessons (particularly in maths) Well done!
Hv – Ruqiaya Imran – For having a positive attitude to learning, well done!
Pi – Ala Cheung – continued high effort levels in all areas.
MPe – Louie Stannard – For looking out for others in the form class and being a fantabulous member of MPe
CSt – Charlotte Brannan- For getting involved in all the school sports teams and doing really well in them. It’s great to see you involved in the teams Charlotte, Well done!
MLn – Joshua Mansfield – For your growing resilience and maturity in school. Well done Josh!
JHe – Florence Michallat – for resilience and perseverance
Bl -David Gobl – for being a delightful member of the form who always takes part in class discussions, giving mature and sensible suggestions. Well done. Keep it up.
ZBl – Iris Oswald – for her contributions to class discussions, especially during the News.
Cy – Soraya Clifton Masters for joining in with the sign of the day

Word of the week

The word of the week for week commencing 8 May is:

Resonance
Noun: the power to evoke enduring images, memories and emotions.
The quality in a sound of being deep and full.
The concepts lose their emotional resonance.

Collective Worship

Theme
Our form tutor collective worship this week is entitled Coronation Reflections. It explores some of the symbolism of the coronation and how it might encourage us to ask questions of ourselves. Our quotes are all by King Charles III.

Quotes

Tuesday – “The future of mankind can be assured only if we rediscover ways in which to live as a part of nature, not apart from her.” – King Charles III

Wednesday – “A nation’s wealth and strength can be found…. in the values that it embodies: mutual respect, diversity, tolerance, fairness and friendship.” – King Charles III

Thursday – “Just as mankind had the power to push the world to the brink so, too, do we have the power to bring it back into balance.” – King Charles III

Friday – “I believe passionately that everyone has a particular God-given ability.” – King Charles III