Good afternoon,

I hope you and your family are well. It has been a pleasure to welcome students back into school this week following our half-term holiday.

Uniform Consultation

Thank you to the huge number of you who responded to our consultation on making changes to our school uniform for September 2023. The consultation closed on Friday 2^nd June and in total we received 534 responses – the vast majority from parents/carers. This has helped us to reach the decision to go ahead with the proposed changes to uniform next year, with some minor amendments based on your feedback. Whilst some respondents were happy to keep the current uniform, a significant majority favoured making a change citing comfort, durability, and simplicity of uniform as the key factors in their decision. Parents/carers of students in Years 7 – 10, as well as parents of children joining us in September, will receive a separate, more detailed message explaining the outcome of the consultation and defining our revised uniform policy.

Year 7 Parents’ Evening

It was fantastic to see so many Year 7 students and their families attend yesterday’s Year 7 Parents’ Evening. Making the transition from primary to secondary school is always a huge milestone for children, and it was pleasing to speak to so many families yesterday who reported that this transition had been smooth and that their child is happy and progressing well at Westfield. Students again had the opportunity to show their families the work they have completed across their subjects this year. Well done, Year 7, for a positive first year at Westfield!

Authors’ Writing Workshop

We were very excited to welcome Ian Ridley an award-winning author and journalist, and Seth Burkett an author, ghostwriter and social media specialist back to Westfield School this week.

Some of our Year 8, 9 and 10 students turned into roving reporters for the day, learning the art of catchy headlines, interviewing, taking notes of the facts needed for an article and also about being able to keep a reader interested in their story. Our students were then asked to put together their own article on the world of either football or crime, with some great articles being written whether it was for a newspaper or a social media account. Our students were very positive about the sessions, and we look forward to running more in the future.

Year 11 Exams

Well done to our students in Year 11 who have reached the end of another intense week of GCSE exams. This week students have sat exams in English, maths, further maths, Spanish, French, history, PE, geography and biology. Our students should be incredibly proud of the resilience and positivity with which they approached this most challenging period of their educational career to-date. Keep it up, Year 11 – one more full week of exams to go!

Busy Weeks Ahead

The idea that schools ‘wind-down’ in the final half-term of a year is a popular misconception! There are so many exciting experiences planned for our students in the coming weeks that it is hard to keep up. Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions, GCSE geography field trips, a trip to London led by our humanities team, rewards trips to Alton Towers, Year 6 transition days, Year 11 Prom, Celebration Evening, sports day and the Year 10 ‘Boss Your Future’ careers day are all scheduled to take place in the weeks to come.

Year 10 Mock Exams

Once exams finish for our Year 11 students, our Year 10s begin their time as our most senior students with mock exams, beginning on Tuesday 20^th June. A full schedule for these exams has been finalised and we will share details of this with Year 10 students and their families to aid in the planning of revision schedules. Good luck, Year 10.

 

With many thanks for your ongoing excellent support,

Joe Birkbeck

Head of Westfield School