“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning; 

We will remember them” 

The words of Keiron S, one of our Year 10 students, who volunteered to read those famous lines from the poem “For the Fallen” last Monday.  Kieron was standing in the middle of our school library surrounded by the entire school population of students and staff – over 1400 people – dressed proudly in his cadets’ uniform to represent our nation’s uniformed services.  Keiron’s words were followed by a two-minute silence – impeccably observed – and the Last Post played by Jamie O’Brien, one of our Trust Shared Services colleagues. 

It was a hugely touching few moments and a rightful recognition of the sacrifices made by a generation long ago, and by many others since.  As I stood, I watched the faces of our students and tried to wonder what it meant for them but also reflected upon the importance of continuing to mark the remembrance event in a solemn and collective way.  In the week since we returned from half term, many students have volunteered to sell poppies and even more have gone out of their way to buy them.  Whether they feel a close connection to the fallen or not, there is no doubt that our students recognise when they truly need to pay respect to something that is greater than they, and they never let us down.  I was extremely proud on Monday morning and really moved by it all. 

***  

It continues to be a very busy term for educational trips and for guest speakers in school.  In recent, or coming, weeks, students will experience the following: 

• Year 13 Geography trip to Hull University 

• Year 12 Physics trip to The Royal Institute, London  

• Year 9 Art trip to the Tate Liverpool (with a Beatles tour thrown in) 

• Year 10 trip to Motorcycle Live at the NEC, Birmingham 

• Year 9 trip to the National Video Gaming Museum in Leeds 

• Year 11 visit to see Othello at the RSC in Stratford 

• Year 11 careers visits to Bishop Burton, Calvert Lane Fire Station and Hull University 

• Year 10 Photography trip to Hornsea 

• Year 11 trip to Barcelona, Spain 

• Year 10 Art trip to the Hockney Gallery in Salts Mill 

Across the year, our aim is for all our students to have at least one educational visit opportunity and, across their time in school, for all students to have the opportunity for an overnight visit and possibly an overseas trip. 

This takes a huge commitment from our staff to organise these events as well as the colleagues who then cover for them whilst the trips take place.  I know that you appreciate these experiences for your child because you get in touch to thank my staff for offering them.  I am also conscious that – for financial reasons – you may not be able to support all the experiences we are offering and would always urge you to contact us where this is the case.  We do try to offer a wide breadth of experiences and aim to keep the cost as low as possible.  Your feedback is always welcome. 

*** 

We continue to focus on raising attendance and we are pleased that this continues to improve but one of the biggest obstacles we face, aside from illness, is term time holidays.  

I fully appreciate the financial difference in the cost of holidays in term time but, as your child’s Headteacher, I see the impact of broken attendance on student progress and personal development every day. 

In Year 10 and 11, students with attendance below 90% (that is the equivalent of two weeks holiday, plus just one day off per month with illness) achieve an average Grade 3 – not enough to access the next stage of education. 

Those Year 10 and 11 students with attendance above 95% achieved an average Grade 5 and those with 98% or above (just 4 days off all year) averaged Grade 6.   

In the younger years, the impact is more developmental.  Students that miss periods of learning often return to school showing greater anxiety and reluctance to attend.  The impact of a week’s holiday is huge; 25 missed lessons means that every subsequent lesson becomes more difficult to manage and deal with. 

It also means a disconnect with friends.  The daily stories, laughs and gossip is a key part of growing up.  Missing out on this can cause students to find it difficult to reconnect friendships.  

For all these reasons, I urge all families not to take term time holidays.  My discretion to authorise these is extremely limited and is only ever applied in a very small number of cases.  

***  

This week has been notable for the change in temperature and the nights drawing in.  As I write this on Friday afternoon, it is already getting dark at 3.30.  From Monday, we will also be closing the field to students at break and lunchtime and asking them to share their social space more closely with each other.  The next ten school weeks (until around February half term) are usually the most difficult in school and we will be setting out our expectations around behaviour and conduct in assemblies with the students next week.  As ever, your support in maintaining our high standards of behaviour and uniform are greatly appreciated. 

***  

After last week’s trip to Surrey, I am looking forward to quieter few days at home this weekend.  Time to relax, spend time with the kids and then plan for the week ahead.  Except for Sunday afternoon, when we are going to the cinema to see the new Paddington movie.   

Enjoy your weekend, whatever you have in store, and thanks again for your support.    

Mr Groak

Headteacher

“You must be winding down this week, aren’t you? With half term coming next week?”

These are words that are always sure to make any teacher bristle with barely concealed fury.

There is no such thing as ‘winding down’ in a school.  Any notion that a school full of teenagers become any easier to manage or engage in the final days before a holiday is for the birds.  To give you a sense that this is not the case, let me share my week. 

Monday began with our Senior Leaders meeting at 7.45.  This is an operational meeting where the arrangements are organised for any staff absence, where daily duties are checked and adjusted and any important information that has reached us over the weekend is shared and assessed for impact.  Incidents that may have taken place in the community, or even within families, can have a big impact on a school and so our pastoral leaders share news with us, and we determine which student may need to be checked in ones are organised.  A similar check is run across our staffing, especially at the end of a busy term where some staff may need a little extra support.

From here, we go out on duty in front of school.  This is a busy area and takes a large staff presence to ensure the safety of all our staff, students and parents as they arrive on site.  Within twenty minutes, over thirteen hundred young people, six buses and around a hundred and fifty vehicles pass in and out of the school site and well-drilled routines ensure that by 8.40, all the students are in their tutor classrooms and the front of school is quiet and calm again.  It is a feat of intense organisation and commitment from all our staff, as well as the cooperation of our students to pull it off.  But it happens every day, day in and day out.

I normally start my week with a meeting with Mrs Price, Deputy Head.  In this meeting, we plan our quality assurance activities.  This involves around fifty lesson drop ins per week which we share between us.  This work ensures that the quality of education is always of a very high standard, and it is a great privilege for us to be able to see so many fantastic teachers at their work.  Through this, we also identify especially strong practice which we can then share amongst the staff.  At this time of year, we are also looking ahead to the next school year, and we have already started to plan our staffing requirements and tweaks to our curriculum.

At ten o clock, I go on break duty; this involves joining the team of staff monitoring around four hundred students as they line up and use the canteen.  The vast majority of our students are highly self-regulated and need minimal supervision, but the presence of several staff is reassuring for students and gives them someone to talk to, and to share their learning and highlights of their day.

At 10.30, we were visited by Mark Brown, our Trust Director of Education.  It being Year 11 mock week, we headed for the exam hall so that I could show him how impressively our students were settling into their mock exams; we then dropped into a few lessons and did the second break duty together. 

This year, we have seconded two of our talented middle leaders onto our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and, as the term ends, I wanted to check with them how they were benefiting from the experience.  So, at 11.30, I met with Mr Sellers, Assistant Head of Science, to discuss his leadership development and how we can further support him in his work.  Talking about leadership is something I always enjoy and, later in the week, I had similar conversations with Mrs Phetla, Deputy Head of Maths, who is also seconded to SLT this year.

At 12.20pm, it was back into the canteen for the first lunch duty and then, at 1pm, I met with Mr Minns, one of our school’s teacher union reps.  I am proud that we have a harmonious working environment at Hessle, but it is helpful to have staff representatives to bring me any concerns or issues that I need to be aware of.  Managing a school of over two hundred staff is quite daunting and I have to make decisions that don’t please everyone but good dialogue is the key to getting it right more often than not. 

At 1.30, I had a meeting with another member of staff and then, at 2, I did my share of the lesson drop ins that I had planned earlier in the day with Mrs Price.

By 3 o’clock, the school begins to empty and I was back on gate duty once again before leading the whole staff meeting at 3.15 during which I summarised the achievements of the term to date and thanked them for their work. 

There was still a couple of hours of work to do, to read and reply to emails and prepare for the next working day.

The rest of the week followed in similar vein but also involved hosting a visit from another headteacher in our trust and a Year 10 Parents Meeting on Tuesday.  The days are relentlessly busy but I would not have it any other way. 

When I left university, I spent a summer working in an office where my job was to transfer a heap of manual finance records onto a computer system.  Our breaks and lunches were taken at fixed times and nobody moved or spoke whilst working.  It was mind-numbingly boring and although I only worked there for a month, the days lasted weeks and the month seemed to last a decade.  I vowed that I would never work in a role where I ‘clock-watched’ again. 

Working in a school is hard and leading it occasionally brings pressure that I had never known before; but it is never dull and every day brings laughter, joy and immense satisfaction.  I am very lucky.

Just to underline how fortunate I am, I had an interaction with a family on Tuesday which I will never forget.  Their child had been out of school for almost two years for reasons that are too complex to go into here.  As a parent myself, I can’t imagine how anxious I would feel if one of my children was unable to attend school.  Anyway, six months after joining Hessle, their child is now attending school every day, gradually building confidence and starting to enjoy being a teenager again.  “Everyone in the family is happy again,” they told me.  They singled out one individual member of staff for praise (which I couldn’t wait to pass on the next day) but this kind of work goes on in schools all of the time.  And it is life changing.

As I write this, the sun is shining and the students have left the school site.  All of our staff will be at Wolfreton School tomorrow for our annual Trust Conference.  It promises to be an enjoyable day meeting colleagues and learning from one another.  And then, it will be half term.

On Saturday, I will be in Derby watching Hull City, at the behest of my son who is chalking up visits to as many sports grounds as he can.  From there, we are heading further South to my wife’s family in Surrey for a few days which, on Monday, involves a trip to as many London-based football grounds as we can fit in.  My son believes we can visit thirteen and has a highly detailed itinerary already planned.  We’ll see how that goes when it meets the reality of the London transport network!

By midweek we will be back home for a few days of ‘life admin’ - visit from a plumber, haircut, dentists, car MOT – before getting ready to go again for another seven weeks.

It has been a very successful half term for us at Hessle High School and I thank you, as always, for all of your support. 

Enjoy the weekend.