Author: James Harris

The photo at the top of this update is from the Amnesty group's Egg Hunt.  This was organised in support of the "egg boy" who demonstrated against Senator Anning in Australia and against his views that the Christchurch mosque shooting was caused by Muslim immigration.  More information can be…

We are looking forward to welcoming everyone back on Tuesday morning at the normal time.  I hope that everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather - remarkable for a Bank Holiday.  It has been a busy couple of weeks for many - Year 11 in particular who are into the GCSE season immediately (Art this…

Saturday 6th April: 

All well - first flight done and now waiting in Helsinki Airport - Burger King and reindeer sandwiches!  No problem with the wifi and filtering in Finland - may be a different matter in China....  Next update once we are in Beijing, found wifi and got through the internet…

This week's update is necessarily focused on examinations....!  The picture above, however, is of Charlotte Cirino receiving her HART Highly Commended award from Baroness Cox in London on Monday - read more here.

"Exam season":  We are entering the part of the school year that contains the…

Walking around school: One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to walk around school each day, dropping into lessons.  It is always a dose of sanity in my day to see how well our students are learning and how much effort our teachers and other staff put in to ensuring that each of our…

Some really good things from this week:

The Year 11 Performing Arts group presented a showcase of their work and had it filmed for their qualification.  It was a pleasure and privilege to be there and to witness the hard work that everyone had put in to creating some very original…

We are rightly known for our support of students and their families, for our pastoral care and for our inclusive, child-centred ethos. We put a huge amount of effort into supporting students in making the right choices.  We recognise that young people make mistakes and we use a whole range of…

On Friday Year 6s and their families found out which secondary school they are going to and we found out the names and addresses of our new Year 7s.  I am delighted to say that we are, once again, full in Year 7 and I am very much looking forward to welcoming our newest year group.  We have set up…

I hope that all our students have managed to have a break this last week.  I appreciate that for many parents and carers school holidays can be challenging so many thanks for your support.  There has been a lot of illness over the last few weeks amongst students, staff and families so I hope that…

Year 9 Options and Parents' Evening this week - a really important event in the life of our students.  Choosing options is always an important stage in a young person's life in school - it is the first time that they have had any control over what they study.  The government is keen that as many…

Thanks to everyone for your support in getting your young people into school despite the ice and snow this week.  I hope that the coming week is less disrupted by the weather!   

We are a school which makes no excuses for the fact that we consider that strong relationships and exceptional…

On Friday, as our staff training (INSET) day, all the teachers from Walton-le-Dale joined with other schools from the Preston Teaching School Alliance (www.prestontsa.org.uk/), both secondary and primary, to consider how to improve teaching and learning.  In particular we looked at the importance…