Headteacher's Blog

Welcome to the Easter edition of my Headteacher's Blog

I’m delighted to tell you that we will soon be expecting our American visitors from David Prouty High School, Massachusetts. They arrive on Saturday 28 March and will be staying with our pupils who have taken part in this annual exchange. We have some exciting trips organised for them, including a day at Alton Towers and a trip to Windermere. We will report on this again in our next newsletter.

Since last writing we have held a number of workshops and presentations for our pupils including:

Drama and Performing Arts at Liverpool Hope and Southport College, Tomorrow’s Engineers for Years 9 -11, Cambridge University for six of our Year 10 pupils and an Apprenticeship presentation for Year 11pupils organised by our Careers Adviser, Mr Blundell.

On 13 and 20 March we were visited by politicians John Pugh MP, Sue Maguire and Jo Swinton where the focus was Women in Politics. These were very lively events and we were proud of our pupils who asked some very interesting and pertinent questions.

We have also run a number of trips and events recently including:

 Sefton Super Reads trip to Formby where our librarian, Miss Greenall, took some of our avid readers to meet author Paul Dowsell

 Movie Night for our Year 7 pupils. Thank you to Miss Garrett for organising this  Sixth Form PE visit to John Moores University

 Three-day residential retreat for our Year 8 pupils

 Travel & Tourism trip to Alton Towers

Liverpool Waters - on 16 March Ms Ray and I took two sixth formers to an event led by the Peer Group. They gave a presentation on how £5b is going to be invested in the port development which will make Liverpool the main import and export centre for the whole of the country. Schools were invited to the presentation to see how education can be linked with this. It is anticipated that it will create 20,000 jobs, 85% of which will be offered locally.

During this half term our parents’ meetings have included a Year 9 Options and Information Evening, Year 9 Parents’ meeting and an Information Evening for Year 11 parents.

Whole -school Charity – this year we have raised over £3,500 for Queenscourt Hospice, making a total of nearly £70,000 altogether for various charities which have been chosen by our pupils over the years. My thanks go to our parents for your generosity, form tutors and pupils for all the novel fundraising events including ‘slummy money’ collections and various raffles and, of course, Maria Parker for coordinating it all and keeping up the momentum.

Our pupils finish at the earlier time of 12.00 noon on Thursday 2 April and they can come dressed in mufti (non -uniform) on this day for a donation of £1 per pupil. We return on a WEEK B on Monday 20 April at the normal time of 8.40 am.

I would like to wish you all a very happy and peaceful Easter.

James Lancaster, HEADTEACHER