Newsletter, 29th April 2022

Good afternoon,

I hope you and your family are well. It has been a little while since I last wrote a newsletter and there are many positives to report from the last few weeks.

YEAR 7 PARENTS EVENING

Thank you so much to those parents, carers and students who joined in yesterday’s online parents’ evening for Year 7. I know that you will have been very keen to know how your child has been progressing in their various subjects in their first two terms at Westfield. The teachers I have spoken to really valued the opportunity to discuss progress and the meet so many parents/carers – we were very pleased with the number of people who joined!

As ever, we have sent a message to parents/carers following parents’ evening requesting feedback on our school to help us understand what we do well and how we could improve. We would encourage as many parents/carers as possible to share their views with us to help us to keep improving.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR FEEDBACK

Staying on the theme of parental feedback, we are very grateful to those parents/carers of students in Years 8 – 11 who have completed our surveys already this year. We are pleased with the largely very positive feedback we have received.

The surveys have also been useful in highlighting a common area for improvement; there is a feeling that school could do better in communicating what children are learning in their various lessons and how well they are progressing. This is something we are determined to put right and have already begun work to rectify. We will ensure we keep you up to date regarding our plans to improve communication around learning and progress.

KEEP IT UP, YEAR 11!

We are so proud of our amazing Year 11s who continue to show real determination to achieve exam success. In the last two weeks our GCSE PE cohort have performed brilliantly in their practical PE moderation and those students studying for GCSEs in French and Spanish have been completing their speaking exams – our languages team say this year’s students have performed better than any previous cohort in these nerve-wracking tests!

In addition, many of our Year 11s took the opportunity to attend revision sessions during the Easter holiday. With continued excellent effort we have no doubt that our Year 11s will achieve some incredible grades when exams begin in just two-week’s time.

FOOTBALL FINAL

We are all very excited that our Year 11 boys football team will compete in the final of the Clegg Shield competition at Handsworth FC’s ground on Tuesday evening next week. Our team have played brilliantly all season and deserve to be in the final. We wish them the best of luck and have every confidence that they’ll be victorious!

YEAR 10 WORK EXPERIENCE

Our Year 10 students will be out of school for the next two weeks as they embark on their work experience placements. As ever, our students have secured placements with a wide variety of employers including doctors surgeries, mechanics,  dance schools, hair salons, firms of lawyers and even at the English Institute of Sport! We know that our students will learn a lot from the experience and will return to school more determined than ever to work hard to achieve their career goals.

 

With many thanks for your continued excellent support,

Joe Birkbeck

Head of Westfield School