From The Principal
As we come to the close of the academic year, I want to thank you for your support. Schools are always most successful when families, pupils, and staff work together, and the feedback from the recent surveys shows how aligned we are and how we all are working to give our children the best possible opportunities to become the people they want to be.
We know that academic attainment is important, and the examination results show how well pupils succeed at Saracens High School, but education is about so much more. Our aim (or our ‘why’) is for young people to grow up living our values (discipline, hard work, honesty and humility), for them to be life-long learners, to have a strong moral purpose, and to want to make a positive contribution to society and their communities. Much of that is learnt outside the classroom, as well as in.
We work hard to help pupils feel known, valued, and cared for. They ‘belong’, and are valued members of our community, making us the school that we are. We have been recognised nationally for our work in this area, with our contribution of a chapter in a book from PiXL called ‘How You Do Belonging’, which will be released in October. You might also have seen the video they made of our school, which was shared on our social media last month and heard about Challenge Partners declaring that our work on our values and culture is an ‘Area of Excellence’. This year we introduced our new Character Passport, which is helping our Key Stage 3 pupils to flourish as amazing young people.
We ran more international visits this year, and they will grow again next year, with our first visit to China taking place. Our enrichment programme, Making Memories visits, our Futures events, and educational visits are an important part of our wider curriculum. This year our staff have run 147 educational visits, and the average number of visits for pupils is 25 over the last three years! And my favourite part of these visits is when I receive emails from members of the public, praising our pupils for their kind and considerate behaviour. Last month, during the Together We Create (Arts) week, I received three emails in two days! Here are excerpts from a couple of them…
“The children were in smart uniforms and well behaved. One outstanding young man invited me to take his seat and to stand in my place. It’s my birthday today and it was such a nice gesture and a great opportunity to rest my tired feet! He repeated the offer after the next stop when another seat he moved to became free.”
“I am a lawyer in the City and often encounter groups of school children but your pupils stood out. They conducted themselves notably well. They offered their seats to people getting on the tube, they engaged with people in a well mannered way when asked where they were going and, on a challengingly hot day, were as smart as could be in their uniforms. Several people remarked what an impressive group they were.”
It is things like this that resulted in Saracens High School being recognised with a bronze award in the Pearson National Teaching Awards ‘Schools Making a Difference’ category. We cannot achieve this alone, so thank you to you and the pupils.
Finally, at the end of the academic year we acknowledge the contribution of colleagues who are moving on to pastures new. Mr Woodward is leaving education (we hope temporarily) and we are grateful for all he has done for the school, the PE team, and particularly those in his year group. We are delighted for Mrs Chawla, who is leaving us following a promotion to become a Head of Maths at a school in Enfield. Mr Kempson is moving to the North of England, having inspired us with his passion and knowledge of music, and other colleagues who are also moving away from the area are Ms Salazar, Mr Bichara, Mr John, and Miss Condon. We also say goodbye to Mr Mohamed, Miss Lutfullah, Miss Hand, and Ms Esteban. We are grateful for the hard work and commitment of all of these colleagues and wish them the best of luck for the future. Finally, we are saying ‘farewell’ to Miss Strunel, who will be starting her teacher training in September, and we hope that she will return as a trainee teacher with us.
We are looking forward to seeing our Year 13s (Thursday 13 August) and Year 11s (Thursday 20 August) when they come to collect their examination results and confirm their choices for their next steps in education, employment or training. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful summer break, and we look forward to seeing everyone else in September.
Doctor Stevens
