Message From The Principal

This term has flown by and you will see from all of the events that have been celebrated on the website how packed it has been.

Some of the highlights have included numerous Futures visits related to different careers and apprenticeships. Our Year 12s have attended a UCAS event to start the process of thinking about their future step, while the Year 13s have enjoyed receiving offers from universities and are planning for the summer exams and what comes afterwards. The Year 11s are in the final stages of preparation for their GCSE exams and the T Level students have performed brilliantly in their Occupational Specialism assessments. These are grueling projects that are completed over a series of days and involve real-life work-related problems to solve based on everything they have studied throughout the course.

On the personal development side, events this term have included an author visit for World Book day, Year 9 pupils going out on Duke of Edinburgh bronze expeditions, while a Sixth Form group are on their gold expedition at the moment. We celebrated an Iftar together during Ramadan, our choir sang at The Royal Albert Hall, and all of Year 10 took part in a programme aimed at preparing young people for employment led by a partner charity ‘Leadership Through Sport and Business’, who were introduced to us by Saracens.

This Easter we are delighted that our first international visit is taking place, with 39 pupils and 5 staff heading to Italy for a week of skiing, and we are looking forward to more international visits to Spain and Germany in the next year.

We had another extremely successful Making Memories day where the feedback included the comment ‘it was the best day of my life,’ and I again received an email from a member of the public to say how our pupils are wonderful citizens while travelling on public transport. I receive one of these lovely emails most Making Memories days, and I am always so impressed that a person has taken the time to research the school and find an email address to write to. Clearly the pupils make a big impression to prompt someone to do that.

Earlier in the term we welcomed senior leaders from other schools to help us in a review of our school. Challenge Partners is an organisation that facilitates schools working together and learning from each other, and we were delighted with the experience of the three day review in our school, as well as five members of our SLT visiting other schools for three days. We were also proud to host a day at Saracens for other leaders, which was facilitated by Partners in Excellence (PiXL). Over 20 senior leaders from around the country visited us to see how we support pupil premium children to make exceptional progress.

We know the importance of attendance to school, and we are proud to have been in the top 7% in the country to this point, with Year 11 in the top 2%. We know that attendance to school is the biggest predictor of outcomes, so great attendance, along with living the values of discipline, hard work, honesty, and humility, will lead to great results in the summer.

Our Saracens partners have played in some big games recently and I was delighted to see so many families at the ‘takeover day’, the ‘women’s cup final’, and ‘the showdown game’ at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. With the women’s season completed, the focus now turns to the men’s final games of the season and the playoffs. Hopefully we will have more games to attend and celebrate.

This Easter break sees two members of staff moving on from Saracens to pastures new. Mrs Baptista has led Computer Science for the last two and a half years, helping to establish a fantastic curriculum and introducing the A Level and T Levels courses. We wish her well in her new role at a school in Enfield. Mr Sylvester has been Assistant Year Lead of Year 7 for the last 18 months and is now moving into a new job out of the education sector. We thank them both for their contributions to the Saracens community.

I hope you have a relaxing and safe holiday and look forward to welcoming everyone back on Wednesday 24 April for the first day of the summer term.