We are so proud of the diligence and commitment shown by our Year 7 and 8 students on the Mandarin Excellence Programme as they participate in a series of national Chinese exams. Only 76 schools across the country take part in this prestigious programme, and we are so impressed at the levels our students are reaching. We wish them all the best of luck as they show off what they have learned.  These tests present a fantastic opportunity for our students to familiarise themselves with the format and experience of taking GCSE in a lower stakes setting 3-4 years early!

A few green fingered Year 10s volunteered to help improve the environmental quality of the school this week. Under the guidance of their teachers they learnt how to plant new flowers, construct a new flower bed and even clean up the school pond.  Mr. Smith commented that “The teamwork and positive attitude of the students was magnificent and the transformation in such a short time was nothing short of remarkable.“

Next week is 'Walk to school week'. Please encourage your child to walk to school.  If they would usually travel by car, please encourage them to be dropped further from school to reduce congestion and pollution around the school.

‘Solutions not Sides’ came into school yesterday and hosted a workshop with some Year 9 students on the Israel/Palestine conflict. They hosted a Zoom call where students could speak to and ask questions of both Israeli and Palestinian people. The programme that they offer gives a critical approach to education on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, aiming to tackle Antisemitism, Islamophobia and polarisation around the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the UK. The programme has been formulated with the input of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as senior members of Jewish and Muslim communities, and is designed to prepare students to make a positive, solutions-focused contribution to debates on Israel-Palestine. More info is on their website: https://solutionsnotsides.co.uk/

This has been the most ‘Pinner High School’ week in a long time. Team building activities, academic enrichment, Head’s Challenge events, student led initiatives and sports clubs all featured for our students, and was brilliant to see them embracing the opportunities available to them. And more new spaces open in Computer Science!

Years 7, 8 and 9 were all out on the field for a full day each of team building activities led by ‘Wise Up’. They provide a range of different tasks that required diverse skills, and the students rose to the challenge together really successfully. One student summed their day up as ‘really tough and mind bendy, but really great!’

I am very grateful to Bridget from the ‘Meat Like it Used to Be’ butcher in Pinner for coming to school to demonstrate how to properly joint a chicken, and donating one to each student in the Year 9 Food Technology class so they could do it themselves. This was extremely generous, and I am very grateful for her time and effort- and the chickens! Students were utterly absorbed in the process and made real progress. Thanks to Mrs Stephenson for organising it all.

Colleagues in the English department are running a Poetry competition for Year 7 and Year 8. More details are here: Foyle Young Poets – of the Year Award The poem can be any length and any theme. The deadline is Thursday 29^th July and the students can submit their poems via dedicated Google Classrooms. The winner will be announced in October! The Google Classroom codes are here: Year 7 code: lzdycd7 Year 8 code: f2zugkb

In the last week I was pleased to be approached by two student groups hoping to launch new initiatives, Year 10 led Wellbeing Wednesdays looking at different ways of offering support for each other, and Year 9 students looking to start an Aspiring Activists group. I watch both with interest, and am grateful to my colleagues providing the support to help this happen.

The same colleagues are able to provide 19 sports activities every week, running outside the Head’s Challenge activities which started coming back last half term, and gradually continue to do so over the next few weeks. It was brilliant to have our Silver Duke of Edinburgh participants training this week before their forthcoming adventurous journey, and plans coming together for an onsite Year 7 camp.

And in the background, 1505 Teacher assessed GCSE grades being moderated and processed, and the Year 11 Leavers Celebration assembly on Monday. It could be a lump in the throat moment after 5 Trailblazing years!

‘Shake it Off’, our annual Shakespeare festival took place this week. Last year this took place virtually, so I am delighted we have been able to be celebrate this together this year. The theme was ‘Women in Shakespeare’ and as an English teacher it has been lovely to see the school covered in quotations from Shakespeare’s plays. Such activities bring life back to the school. Managing this in a Covid safe way, with the additional pressure of Year 11 assessments, is not straightforward and something I am particularly grateful for. My thanks to all colleagues involved.

We are gradually bringing assemblies back as well. Since the start of term Years 10 and 11 have had presentations from our Safer Schools Officer on issues raised nationally on the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ website. This is such an important topic in all schools, and we will share a school wide proactive approach to this in the weeks ahead.

In lessons this week Year 8 have impressed in Spanish lessons by preparing scripts and rehearsing waiters taking orders from customers in a restaurant. I am sure we are all looking forward to more of this happening outside school as restrictions are lifted!

We were pleased to play our first sporting fixture in over a year last week- a 14 run victory for the Year 11 boys cricket team against Avanti House. When the school first opened in 2016 we shared our site with Avanti whilst their permanent home was built, so these students know each other well. It is always a close game between our schools, and since Year 7 the four matches between the teams had been evenly split 2-2. With just 3 weeks left until Year 11 complete their studies they were particularly pleased to edge ahead in this fixture!

Firstly, I’d like to congratulate all our students for their dedication and resilience over the last half term. They have logged on to well over 100 live lessons each, and their teachers report extremely impressive outcomes. We celebrate with the students who achieve the most stars of the lesson each week, and are very pleased to do so. This week over 90 students in Years 9 and 10 took part in the UKMY Intermediate Maths Challenge. Students achieve great success with this every year, and I am delighted that this year will not be the exception. Congratulations to our team of Year 8 girls who have progressed to the semi-finals of the Cyber First competition this week. Great news!

This week marks the Chinese New Year celebrations, and students in Years 7 and 8 had a morning to celebrate this important festival. We shared the activities with our local primary schools, Cannon Lane and West Lodge, who our Mandarin teachers collaborate with every week. You may recall the Mandarin team were awarded the Certificate of Excellence for Innovative Partnerships for this collaboration in the Pearson Teaching Awards last summer.

There will be more activities to enhance Distance Learning after half term, supporting World Book Day and other events, as we look forward to having more students in our classrooms as soon as we safely can.

Our end of term audio concert is available on Google Classroom today; a mix of the old and the new with a radio style concert distributed on a twenty first century learning platform. I hope you enjoy it. Despite the restrictions of recording all performances in a covid secure manner, students have done a great job. Congratulations to all the staff and students involved.

Further congratulations to our Year 8 and Year 10 writers, who recently entered the ‘Young Writers’ SOS Sagas: Trapped’ competition. A mighty 87 of them were winners, and will be published in the next anthology in the new year. Further success in our Burnet News Club, run by The Economist Magazine, with one student winning the competition for ‘obsolete jobs’ with an entry about the role of coachman in the twenty first century. Judges were impressed with the creativity and research involved.

Festive jumper today is a very colourful end to the term, as you can see from the staff modelling their festive jumpers in the image! The photo features our school Christmas card too, designed by a member of Year 7. Our Christmas lunch, also pictured,  was very festive and very tasty! Many thanks to ISS our caterers, who managed to serve across 5 serveries, with high numbers of students and staff joining in. They do this every day and have adapted very successfully to our new way of working. Many thanks to them all.

I wish you all a peaceful and restful holiday. Thank you for all your support this term. It has certainly had its challenges, but Pinner High School is such a positive community, and we look forward to the new year and the new term with optimism and excitement.

An eclectic round up in the blog this week, involving Maths, the Burnet News Club and the Royal Geographical Society.

Year 9 have been working on complex questions involving volumes and surface areas of 3D Shapes. When I visited the class, one student did a perfect explanation for me of how to tackle this particularly demanding question in the image above. The question is beyond the expectations of GCSE, so for students to approach this, and be able to explain it so eloquently in Year 9 is staggeringly impressive!

Also very impressive, the Burnet News Club is run by The Economist magazine Educational Foundation, which we take part in with some of our more able students. One of them won their most recent competition. Congratulations!

And finally, the Geography department are delighted to report they have become full members of the Royal Geographical Society.  A Year 7 parent has very kindly sponsored the membership which gives the school access to a host of additional resources . The Royal Geographical Society lectures, teaching resources and up to date key cases are all now available to the school. Head of Geography Mr Smith believes, ‘This is a great extra resource and next year when the school rolls out its first A level courses, the membership will be invaluable.  The knowledge and expertise linked with the new technology will help the department to be at the cutting edge of teaching Geography’. We are very grateful for such generous support.