For the second successive Friday last week the school was filled with students in bizarre, “creative” outfits as our Year 13 students had their Celebration Day. It was a great event with the final assembly marked with humour, high emotion and a real sense of the camaraderie of the year group – plus some very bad singing and acting from our staff which were enjoyed by all. As I said to the year group, they are a great bunch and we will miss them.

As ever, there is a lot going on with House competitions in school at the moment. Last week saw our first House Lego Bridge Building Competition and it is fair to say that we were all blown away by the enthusiastic response of the students – the appeal of building with Lego bricks is as enduring as ever. This week we have the early rounds of the House Weakest Link Quiz which has become a favourite of the House calendar, we have had the House Lunchtime Football Competition for Year 7 and straight after half-term we have the House Bake-Off Competition which was one of the highlights of last year. All of these activities are about keeping busy and participating and being part of something – and it is, of course, nice if you win.

I have to say a very big “well done” to those students who were on their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expeditions last weekend. We had cohorts out and about both for the Bronze and Gold awards which is absolutely fantastic and a core part of what we offer as a school.

Finally, thank you to our Mental Health and Wellbeing Team for leading assemblies on the topic of My Emotions and Me – as always with assemblies, I won’t add any more but they were insightful and supportive sessions for our young people to reflect upon.