Assemblies this week have been all about “stretch and challenge” in the classroom and have prominently featured a very large cardboard character – as ever with assemblies, I will add no more but encourage questions to be asked at home. What I would say is that we expect all students to work hard but also to think hard, to stretch themselves across all areas of the curriculum, to be curious and engaged. Again, this is not about a small group of students but about everyone – everyone participating, everyone achieving and everyone thriving at school.

We are also focusing on attendance as a school over the coming weeks. Our expectation as a school is that a student’s attendance is at a minimum of 95% - and there are of course the vast majority of students who are above this with many either at or hovering around 100%. We know, of course, that we can all be unwell at times or have an injury or medical need; we also understand that there may be a small minority of students who struggle to attend regularly for complex reasons and we work hard to support them and their families. However, it is blatantly obvious that students need to be in school regularly in order to achieve and fulfil their potential and also to thrive through socialisation and participation, to be part of a school community and to embrace all of the opportunities which are on offer, and this lies at the heart of the push to get everyone up to at least 95% attendance before the end of term.

Finally, the excitement continues to build in advance of next week’s Year 7 promenade production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – we have never done anything like this before and it looks like it is going to be great.