I am delighted that our Chair of Governors, Dr. Ahmed, is the guest writer of the blog this week. News of our recent sporting success will have to wait until after half term!

"I am delighted to share with you what the Governing Body have been doing so far this year. I am excited to have the privilege of being elected as chair for another year and Nav Kullar as my deputy.

The Governing Body is responsible for the strategic direction of the school, and for providing challenge to Mr. Woolf and his senior team. The Governors have been involved with the school since before it opened, and we have added parents and staff to our number over the last two years. This year we have evolved a new committee structure to ensure our support and challenge for the school is even more effective. We have an Achievement and Standards committee and a Finance and Risk Committee, alongside the Full Governing Body. Mr. Woolf and his team provide us with detailed reports on all aspects of school life, and we cross reference these with the numerous inspection reports we receive, as well as our own findings. Scrutiny of these reports take time, but we have a skilled team of Governors who have a range of skills that ensure we can interpret them accurately. We also visit the school to meet with our school links, observe learning walks, sit on interview panels, review data and policies, take part in internal and external inspections and I run student voice. This enables me to hear directly from the students. I feel we have an excellent working relationship with the school and at the foundation of all we do is: how does what we do impact student outcomes. Our Governors reflect the culture, vision and ethos of the school and we are always looking for ways to improve. We have been accepted onto the Department of Education ‘Governor Space’ programme to enhance our own training and evaluation to ensure we can keep the school at the ‘leading edge’, as our inspection report says.

I am sure you will agree that the school is in excellent health. We are delighted to have reached almost 500 students and we know the school is becoming a destination of choice for teachers. Our recent Open Evening was a great success!

Whilst we are delighted with all of this, and the most recent report from the Department for Education, there is no sense of complacency in the Governing Body about the task ahead. Our opening years have certainly lived up to all we had hoped, but our Trailblazing students are now embarking on their GCSEs, our £4.2 million final phase of refurbishment will begin in the spring, and we continue to grow in size every year. We are excited about the challenges this brings, and the future of Pinner High School. I’d like to thank the dedicated staff of the school for all they do to provide opportunities for the students, and the students themselves for bringing life to the Pinner High School Values. Your support for this is crucial too. Governors’ initial vision for an ‘inclusive school for the whole community’ is one we keep central through the exciting phases of our development."

Dr. Ahmed, Chair of Governors

A brilliant evening at Pinner High last night, as 1,500 people attended our open evening. It is fabulous to have such interest in the school, and hear such positive feedback about the students and staff. Visitors heard about our inclusive ethos, academic challenge, sporting success and performance opportunity, as well as having the chance to try out new languages and new subjects. Mandarin is always a favourite, and with large numbers choosing it for GCSE it is likely to remain so. Science was particularly busy last night, and we enjoyed showing off our well-equipped laboratories, and our specialist teachers in each of Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

House Events are always mentioned by students amongst their highlights and this week by contrast to the sports events of last week, it was an art competition. These are always harder to judge, but with our GCSE art students at the National Portrait Gallery today, we are certainly nurturing their talents in this area.

This weekend 2 students and 1 teacher are taking part in the national commemoration of the centenary of the end of the First World War with their visit to the battlefields of Belgium. They will return and share their experiences with the school community- stay tuned.

News of positive inspection feedback and two silver awards this week; the Silver Artsmark from the Arts Council, and the Silver STARS Award from Transport for London

The Artsmark is a prestigious award that recognises the opportunities and participation in arts related activities at the school. To reach Silver at our first assessment shows the immense commitment of students and staff to our arts programmes. Students have performed at the Heath Robinson Museum, Pinner Panto, Watford Colosseum, in our own PinnFest and musical productions in the last two years, and have a range of opportunities in lessons too. My thanks to colleagues and governors involved in the assessment process. The Silver STARS award recognises the contribution of our Travel Ambassadors and the community in making travel to and from the school as sustainable as possible.

We had our scheduled Department for Education inspection this week, which was a very positive process. Feedback was extremely pleasing, and confirmed all the positive judgements that have been made about the school since we opened.

Our student numbers have surged this year, so that we are full in Year 7, and very nearly full in Year 9. I have enjoyed visiting primary schools this week to talk to the current Year 6 about secondary schools. Audiences at Cannon Lane and West Lodge were both very interested, and I look forward to seeing them and other members of the community on 4^th October at our Open evening. It is likely to be a very busy evening, so I'd be grateful if you can travel by public transport to minimise the impact on our neighbours. We're going for the Gold STARS Travel Award next year!

We celebrated our second birthday this week, and are thrilled to have so many new students join us at Pinner High School.

An action packed week: a visit to Lord’s Cricket Ground, a visit from a Spanish theatre company, students at Watford FC, and our neighbours Cannon Lane triumphing in our annual Primary Maths Challenge.

‘La Casa Encantada’ was performed completely in Spanish by theatre company ‘Onatti’ to the whole school this week. Students were a fantastic audience, and the play was very visual to enable students who have not been studying the language very long to understand what was happening. There was even some audience participation, which went down very well with students! Students were also very attentive to speakers from ‘Breaking the Cycle’ who spoke to Year 8 about youth violence as part of the Q?rius programme.

Our Cricket team were part of a historic occasion this week: the first domestic women’s game at the Home of Cricket watching Middlesex v MCC. They were part of the biggest ever crowd at a women’s domestic game, and returned to school inspired to further develop their own cricketing skills. Our cricketing fixtures start shortly, and students are already practicing at lunchtime.

Sporting visits also took place last week, this time to Watford FC. Our ‘Enterprise’ group of students learnt about the business side of the club, as well as touring their facilities.

Our second annual Primary Maths Challenge, took place on Thursday when our neighbours Cannon Lane, were victorious over local rivals. We were delighted to have teams from Reddiford, Longfield, West Lodge and Cannon Lane taking part. The level of Maths was very impressive.

We had our sixth term check-up from the Department for Education this week, which went extremely well. They confirmed their high level previous judgements across all aspects of the school. This is reassuring, and they set some more challenges ahead of our expected Ofsted inspection next academic year. To help us prepare for this, I’d be grateful if families had a moment to complete Ofsted’s Parent View: https://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/login?destination=give-your-views This helps to build a positive picture over time, even though the inspection will be some months away. We have a waiting list of over 100 for September 2018, but we are not complacent about our reputation in our local community. If you have time to make a comment on the Good Schools Guide alongside the other positive reviews there, I would be delighted: https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/schools/pinner-high-school-ha5-1nb We shall shortly be taking bookings from Year 5 families interested in our summer open morning on 14th June.

173 students have represented the school in 21 teams so far this year, with rounders, athletics and cricket still to come. It was the turn of our netball teams in Years 7 and 8 this week, playing in tournaments at home and away. Both teams had some successes, and brought life to the Pinner High School Values. The Values were also alive in the non-uniform day Sports Relief donations received of £266.61. Sports Relief led to a very active lunchtime, with a total of 936 laps completed of the school field by 195 students, 7 members of staff and 1 Headteacher.

Our House competition concluded Science week, where students had to build the tallest structure they could out of spaghetti and marshmallows, including the ability to hold a chocolate egg on a part of the tower. There were some impressive, and messy, designs! Q?rius students this week were utterly engaged by Rev’d Paul Hullyer, vicar of St. John’s Church, Pinner, who came to speak to them about a fascinating range of topics, including looking after a 700 year old church and his work as a Padre in the Territorial Army.

Planning for next term continues apace, and I am particularly grateful to the parent volunteers who have been helping us set up the library to be ready as soon as possible in the new term. We have inherited lots of ‘stock’ for the library from Heathfield School, the previous occupiers, and we have made good inroads cataloguing these books, so they can be borrowed alongside our existing newer titles. The new library space is significantly larger, and will accommodate the school when it is at full capacity in the years ahead. As 1515 books have already been loaned this academic year, this bodes well. 30 desktop computers will be delivered over the holiday for the library, and with some redecoration taking place around the student changing rooms as well, we will be ready for the next phase of our development as Avanti House move out next week.