Newsletter, 28th January 2022

Good afternoon, 

I hope that you and your families are well. In particularly I hope that those of you, students and parents/carers, who are having to isolate with COVID remain well both physically and mentally.  

As national restrictions relating to COVID have been lifted over recent weeks we have seen the number of positive COVID cases amongst both students and staff increase significantly. I know from speaking to colleagues across the city that some schools have struggled to remain open to all students owing the levels of staff absence that they are experiencing, and media reports suggest that this is the case nationally. So far here at Westfield we have been able to remain open to all students and we are grateful to our students for understanding that we have had to bring lots of cover teachers into school. We’re also grateful to our team of teachers who have stood in for absent colleagues. We very much hope that we have reached the peak of staff and student absence now and that the situation will ease in coming days and weeks.   

YEAR 10 MOCK EXAMS – WELL DONE 

A week has now passed since our students in Year 10 sat their mock exams. This was their first-time sitting exams in such a formal environment, and we could not be prouder of how they applied themselves. Well done, Year 10! 

Most teachers have now finished marking the papers and Year 10 students have begun to receive feedback in their lessons. Parents/carers of Year 10 students will have the opportunity to discuss mock results and the progress being made by their child in greater depth at parents’ evening on 24th February.  

YEAR 11 MOCK EXAMS 

Year 11 students will begin their final week of mock exams from Monday and have been provided with their own exam timetables. We know that our students will take the exams seriously and will want to improve on the grades they achieved in November. Good luck, Year 11.  

YEAR 9 OPTIONS  

Parents/carers of Year 9 students will have received communications via Weduc relating to the array of information that is now available on our website relating to the many subjects that their child can choose to study in Years 10 and 11. Students have been provided with their options booklets. Students are asked to complete the back page of their options booklet with details of their choices and hand this to their form tutor by Friday 11th February.  

Further information, including videos about the subjects we offer, can be accessed via the Options page of the school website and can be found by clicking here: https://www.westfield-chorustrust.org/gcseoptions 

DANCE SUCCESS 
We were delighted to be visited last week by a choreographer from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance who came to school to work with our Year 10 Dance students. IT was fantastic to learn that four of the students who took part in the session were subsequently invited to audition for the Northern School of Contemporary Dance’s ‘Centre for Advanced Training’. Amazing work!  

PARENT SURVEY FEEDBACK 

Thank you to the many parents/carers who completed our online survey following this month’s Year 9 and Year 11 parents’ evenings. We have been incredibly pleased with the positive feedback that we have received but have also listened carefully to areas in which we still need to improve, one of which was improving ways of communicating to families what their children are learning about in the classrooms. We have already begun to develop a strategy to improve in this area and look forward to receiving further constructive feedback as the academic year progresses.  

 

With many thanks for your continued excellent support – have a great weekend. 

Joe Birkbeck 

Head of Westfield School