You may have seen some of our Year 7 geographers in Boroughbridge this week as they carried out their geographical enquiry exploring the hypothesis, ‘The function of Boroughbridge is a resort town.’ Primary data collection is taking place with traffic and pedestrian counts and a land use and environmental survey which students will analyse on their return to the classroom. Further trips will take place next week.

Thank you to Year 7 parents and carers for your attendance at the Meet the Tutor evening on Monday. It was great to be able to welcome you into school and to hear how well our young people have settled into the Boroughbridge High School community. If you’re a Year 7 Parent/Carer, you’ll have received a link to a ‘Settling in’ survey. Thank you to those who have already completed it. There is still time for you to do so. Your feedback will be used as part of our evaluation and areas to be developed built into our future planning.

One of our development plan areas this year is to continue to increase our wider and extra-curricular opportunities for our students linking with our aim to ensure that all students leave our school, not only with the qualifications they need to access the next stage of their education or career of choice, but with the skills and confidence to make an active contribution to the communities to which they belong. Therefore, we’re delighted that again, this week, we’ve had more than 25% of our students involved in after school sport and that we have 26 students have signed up to the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award and 10 for silver. Year 10 also heard of a further opportunity this week, to be part of a Young Enterprise team which Mrs. Mannion spoke to them about in assembly. They still have time to sign up and just need to let their Form Tutor or Mrs. Mannion (who’s in S6) know that they want to participate.

Mrs. Murphy has recently been appointed as our Service Children Champion and had her first meeting with our 36 service students (almost 8% of our school population) to talk about how she’d like to work to support them.

Now that we’ve completed six weeks of the Autumn Term, in assemblies this week, I’ve talked about the measurable progress that we’ve made as a school community, sharing feedback with students from recent e-mails sent by members of the public praising our students for their social skills, exemplary behaviour and enthusiasm. We also recognised the fact that within school the introduction of the expectations around the three phases of learning has had a marked impact on the quality of learning as evidenced in lesson observations and governor visits. The high standard of uniform has also been noted. Our focus now is to embed this whilst also driving forward on our next areas for action.

Following our first Progress Review Point, tracking data for students in Years 10 and 11 has been sent out this week. In response to parental feedback at the Y10/11 Expectations Evening, you will also have received a Revision Guide which will give parents and carers the information that they need to have conversations about the different subjects, requirements and what to revise for the November Progress exams. Thank you for your support with this.

We break up for half term next Friday (27^th) and it is our Year 10 Parent/Carer evening on Wednesday 8^th November. This is an online event and you should have received a letter and information about how to sign up for appointments. Please get in touch if you need any further information.

Have a lovely weekend!