After so many months of waiting and planning, we’re delighted to have finally got our whole school community back together. It’s quite difficult to articulate the absolute joy shown by staff and students on being reunited after many months apart.  It’s early days and, understandably, there have been moments of anxiety for all, but staff and students have worked together to make our new approach successful, enabling us to get back to quality face to face teaching and learning, albeit a little different. Thank you for your support with this. Attendance this week has been excellent, giving students the very best chance of settling back into school.

Alongside redesigned curriculum plans to re-engage students and help them in making progress, we’re also working with a focus on students’ mental health and wellbeing. This was one of our reasons for making sure we kept tutor time within our new school day structure and why our focus in PSHE, to begin with, will be on mental health and wellbeing.

It’s also been great to welcome our new Year 7 students to the Boroughbridge High School team. They are quickly settling in and showing confidence in their new surroundings and embracing their new curriculum. Activities that they’ve been involved in this week include identifying the skills that they can develop in Drama, working out ‘What is Geography?’ and, in English, identifying what makes a good story. On Thursday, they had their official school photo taken marking the start of their journey at Boroughbridge High School.

At the other end of the age range, we welcomed our Year 12 students at the beginning of the week and they have made an impressive start to their A-Level studies.

Students have been very organised in bringing their own resources this week. It would be really helpful if, along with pens, pencils, a ruler, eraser, coloured pencils and a scientific calculator, they could also bring a glue stick. A reminder that students will be outside until 8.40am so shouldn’t arrive on site before 8.15am and, as the temperatures start to drop, an outdoor coat would be helpful as students will be outside at break and lunchtime.

We’ve welcomed new staff this week with our new Head of PE, Mr Field and Maths Teacher, Mrs Johnson. During the summer break we said farewell to Teaching Assistants, Mrs Bettney, Miss Pannett, Mr Slator and Mrs Thomas and Caretakers, Mr Hartley and Mr Whittaker. We wish them well in their future ventures. Joining the team are Teaching Assistants, Mrs Brown, Mrs Law, Mr Mitchell and Mrs Weston and Caretakers, Mr Anderson and Mr Chittock.

So, at the end of a very successful week, I hope you have a lovely weekend!