Heathside News Fortnightly Bulletin

Friday 15th June 2018

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Key Stage 3 Informal Concert

On Thursday 24th May, parents, grandpar-ents and friends crammed into the music room to enjoy an informal concert per-formed by students from Key Stage 3. This is the fourth Key Stage 3 concert we have held and it is an occasion for students in the low-er school to showcase their musical talents. For some, this was another opportunity to show parents and friends what they could do. However, for quite a few of the students, this was the first time that they had ever performed live in front of an audience and there was a lot of nervous tension in the room. All the practice paid off, however, as the audience was treated to musical perfor-mances of a very high standard in a variety of different styles. In turn, they supported each musical performance with rapturous applause, cheers and lots of smiles!

Highlights of the concert included a sensitive performance of a Haydn piano piece by Amelie Versavel (Year 9), Jessica Owens (Year 9) singing Out Here On My Own from the musical Fame and a very stylish perfor-mance of the Foo Fighter’s track Learn To Fly by Clara Richardson (Year 7) on the bass guitar. There were also very enjoyable per-formances from the three bands who re-hearse regularly with Mr Anderson on a Tuesday after school.

Well done to everyone involved – you should be very proud of your musical achievements.

The final music concert of the year is the Summer Concert which takes place at 7.00pm in the school hall on Thursday 12th July. Entrance is free and the PTA will be providing some summer refreshments. Please come along and support the students.

Mr Macfarlane

Dates for your Diary Monday 18th June Wellbeing and Mental Health Parent's Information Evening 6.30-7.30pm Wednesday 20th June Year 12 Spectroscopy Activity run by RSC 10.30-1.00pm Thursday 21st June Careers & Information Evening 6.00-8.00pm Friday 22nd June Year 11 Prom Sunday 24th - Tuesday 26th June DofE Silver Practice Tuesday 26th June KS3 District Athletics, Sheerwater Athletics Track, Woking Wednesday 27th June Sixth Form Induction Wednesday 27th June STEM Club Showcase at Big Bang Festival, West Sussex Friday 29th June Year 13 Prom Saturday 30th - Monday 2nd June Year 7 Wales Trip, Cardiff

From the Principal Dear Parents/Carers This has been a busy week for Sixth Form, with Year 12 students returning to school following their exams. The Year 12 UCAS evening took place on Monday when students were given valu-able information and guidance to help them with their forthcoming university applications. The Sixth Form Open Evening was held on Wednesday and was well attended, by both Heathside students currently in Year 10 and also students from other schools. Thanks go to the Sixth Form team of Miss Balson, Mr Blackman and Mrs Best for running both of these events. Last week, as part of our Wellbeing programme, Year 9 & 10 students listened to a Substance Misuse Talk from an external speaker, Bob Tait. The Bronze Qualifying DofE expedition is taking place this weekend, so we hope the weather is kind to them and thanks to all members of staff who are giving up time over the weekend to camp overnight and support the students. The PTA held their final meeting of the year on Monday and a massive thank you goes to Sarah Wilde, Co-Chair and Alli Hibbert, Secretary who are stepping down. We are extremely fortu-nate to have the dedication and support of a small number of parents who work tirelessly to support the school through organising fundraising events, providing refreshments at school events, as well as attending meetings to decide how best to allocate funds to school projects. If you are have a few hours a term to volunteer and would be interested in supporting the PTA please email: pta-chair@heathside.surrey.sch.uk. Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the letter on page 4 from Francis Nicholas, Chair of the ElmWey Learning Trust, outlining the leadership changes from September 2018. I look for-ward to focussing on my new role as Executive Principal of the trust and to working closely with Ms Dohel in her role as Head of School for Heathside. All students have been informed of this today. Best wishes Mrs Cullum

House competition – I ♥ Weybridge

Year 9

1st Place: Jake Thomas

2nd Place: Luca Soave

We would like to say a special thanks to Mrs Kirk

for all her hard work arranging this amazing

competition with the Weybridge Society. Fingers

crossed that Heathside will have some winning

entries.

LRC Guess the book in the jar competition

Thank you again to LRC for this great competition this term. Amelie Versavel who is on the LRC Crew has created and arranged this compe-tition as part of her gold level training. Only one entry per

student and there is an achievement point for every entry. With a jar of sweets for the winning entry, and goody bags for 2-4th place AND huge achievement points for the House, there is no reason not to enter! It will definitely make a difference to our house totals, so get entering!

House Captain Applications

We were staggered by the amount of applica-tions that we’ve received for this year’s House Captains. Thank you to all those who have ap-plied. We are currently selecting and interview-ing candidates, and we will let you know our new house captains for 2018–2019 very soon.

Mrs Ray, Mr Blake, Mr May and Mr Cross

Surrey Young Carer’s

Many thanks to Nigel Legg and Debbie Bell from

Surrey Young Carer’s who gave assemblies to

several year groups last week. They also provid-

ed a tasty Domino’s pizza lunch for Heathside’s

current young carer group, which was enjoyed

by all who attended.

Miss Hides

Student Support Coordinator Year 7

House updates

House competition – I ♥ Weybridge

It was great to see so many students contrib-uting to the Photo Competition ‘I ♥

Weybridge’.

The students took fantastic photographs of Weybridge. The Year 7 brief was the park in Weybridge, Year 8 the weather in Weybridge and Year 9 the high street in Weybridge.

All of the photographs have been entered into the Weybridge Society competition, where lots of other schools from around Weybridge also took part. We are still waiting for the announcement of the win-ners, but we can tell you who has won the internal house competition! The winners are:

Lucy Kimmins 07AT

Timothy Courtice 08TM

Jake Thomas

09ZJ

Year 7

1st Place: Lucy Kimmins

2nd Place: Jessica Oldfield

3rd Place: Bethany Morris

4th Place: Amerlia Cudzikova

Year 8

1st Place: Timothy Courtice

2nd Place: Alex Stirk

3rd Place: Jaimee Wyeth-White

4th Place: Thomas Wade

Access to school

Dear Parent/Carer

Please be advised that unless there is a speci-fied reason or a pre-organised academic ses-sion run by a member of teaching staff, stu-dents should not be on the school grounds anytime before 7.45am.

If your son/daughter needs to arrive before this time, please contact their Head of Learn-ing to confirm arrangements for when they will be arriving so we can allocate a place for them to be in school.

Many thanks for your support.

World Environment Day

As part of our UNICEF awareness this term

we got fully involved in World Environment

Day on Tuesday 5th June, only we decided to

make it a focus for the whole week.

Throughout the week, students improved

their awareness of how to save the planet,

with a huge number recycling their rubbish.

The investment in new House-coloured recy-

cling bins for plastic bottles has had a huge

impact, with many students finding their

competitive nature to recycle the most. The

winning house was Kestrels, who have won

100 House Points for their efforts.

All students are being encouraged to use the

bins appropriately in order to develop the

mindset of being environmentally friendly on

a long-term basis. Environmental awareness

and recycling will continue to be a focus at

Heathside School, with more competitions

and environment projects in the pipelines for

this year and next.

It would add a lot of value to our work here

in school if you, as parents and carers, could

encourage your child or children to recycle

and get involved in environmental action in

the community.

Although there were over 70 students or-

chestrating the recycling project, and hun-

dreds more recycling their rubbish, special

recognition goes to Matthew Fry, Robert Bes

and Lorenzo Santilli in Year 8 for their com-

mitted approach to making this a success.

Mr North & the UNICEF Leadership Team

Year 7

Well done to Year 7 for another fantastic half term. The attendance for the previous half term was 96.5%, which is an improvement from the previous spring half term. Well done to 7ACR who had the highest attendance percentage score last half term with 97.14%. Congratula-tions to Jennifer Stevens (7JG) and Vivienne Gehle (7JG) who had the highest achievement points last half term. Well done to Ria Tyther-leigh and Gega Kheladze who won the first half term Rock star award. Good luck for all Year 7 pupils for their end of year exams with start next week.

Mr Tachon

Year 8

Since I have taken over from Miss Ahmed, I have been impressed with Year 8. A huge congratula-tions to Jasmine Findlay and Amy-Lee Van Der Westhuizen who competed for North West Sur-rey at the Surrey Schools Athletics Champion-ships on Saturday 9th June. Results as follows:

Jasmine Junior Girls 1500m 14th

Amy Junior Girls Hammer 1st 35.00m PB

Amy has been selected to represent Surrey at the Southern Inter Counties this Saturday 16th June.

Congratulations girls!

I’m looking forward to hearing about more Year 8 success in the future and wish them the best of luck in their upcoming exams.

Mr Hakamali

Year 9

Congratulations to Year 9 for having the highest year group attendance figures, 95.85%, for week ending Friday 8th June. This however is still be-low the whole school target of 96%. It is there-fore imperative that all students are in school every day from now until the end of the aca-demic year.

I would like to wish all of you good luck for the forthcoming summer exams that start next week. It is important that you spend adequate time revising for each subject regardless if you are not going to be studying it next year.

Congratulations to the following students for earning the highest amount of achievement points in their year group; Rebecca Miles on 215, Amelia Douglas on 209, Ryan Noble-Mott on 205 and Amanda Hooper on 201. Keep up the hard work and effort!

Miss Gatrell

Medical Appointment and Holiday Requests

Dear Parent/Carer

I want to take this opportunity to remind you of our school’s expectations regarding ab-sence requests (Holidays), which is highlight-ed in our policy:

All requests for holidays will be considered to be unauthorised leave of absence. If a family needs to request absence in term-time then an Application for Leave of Absence Form must be completed prior to the leave date and where possible at least two weeks be-fore. These forms can be obtained from the website, the Front Office or by writing to the Head of Learning. The Principal in consulta-tion with the Vice Principal/Assistant Princi-pal or Head of Learning, will then decide whether or not to authorise the absence re-quested. Each request will be considered separately and a decision made based on the reasons for each request.

A fixed Penalty Notice may be issued should your son/daughter be absent from school due to unauthorised absences such as holi-days during term time.

As of September 2018 we will be offering a two week October Half term commencing Monday 22nd October - Friday 2nd November. It is hope that this will bring benefits to stu-dents and their families.

We also want to encourage all GP and dental appointments, where possible, to take place outside of school hours (8.30am - 14.55pm) as this likewise will affect your child's attendance and learning.

As always, we appreciate your support on our high expectations regarding attendance at this crucial point of the academic year.

Mr Crafts

Assistant Principal – i/c Attendance and Punctuality

Year 11

We are looking forward to the Year 11 leav-ers assembly this afternoon and hope the students are too. Students will have their Physics exam prior to their assembly. For some this will be their final exam and we wish all students the best of luck in this last remaining week of exams. The exams have run smoothly and students have been a cred-it to themselves. To give students a positive day it has been arranged for students to have the opportunity to purchase piz-za along with some other sweet snacks on their last day. This has been provided espe-cially for Year 11 students, we hope that stu-dents will appreciate this gesture.

The assembly will finish at approximately 12.30pm with an opportunity afterwards for students to receive their hoodies, year books and sign shirts. All students are expected to have left the site by 1.15pm.

I look forward to a really positive day and wish students a successful and happy future. We look forward to seeing them at prom and on results day.

Mrs Boyce

Athletics Success

10 students from Heathside represented North West Surrey at the Surrey Schools Ath-letic Championships on Saturday 9th June. Congratulations to Jasmine Findlay Junior Girls 1500m 14th, Amy Van Der Westhuzien Junior Girls Hammer 1st, Luca Soave Junior Boys Hammer 1st, Reuben Leyland Inter Boys 400m 6th Final, Dylan Spencer Inter Boys 3000m 3rd, Sam Bishop Inter Boys 400m Hurdles 2nd, Madison Hutton Inter Girls Long Jump 2nd , Marcus Shantry Senior Boys 1500m 1st, Nicola Bell Senior Girls Javelin 2nd. Amy’s and Luca’s performances were person-al bests.

Amy, Luca, Dylan, Ben, Sam and Reuben will be representing Surrey at the South East In-ter Counties Championships this weekend. Fingers crossed that they run, jump or throw the qualifying times/distances required to be selected for the English Schools Athletics Championships in July. Great achievements and good luck.

Miss Gatrell

Heathside School Weybridge Leadership Team Changes

Dear Parents and Carers,

I am writing to you in my capacity as the Chair of Trustees of ElmWey Learning Trust, which operates Heathside School in Weybridge.

As many of you are aware ElmWey Learning Trust is planning to run the new Heathside Walton on Thames Free School, which is currently targeted to open in September 2020. Since Heathside School Weybridge left Local Authority control in September 2015, and became an Academy within the ElmWey Learning Trust, Mrs Cullum has been managing two roles – Executive Prin-cipal of ElmWey Learning Trust, and Principal of Heathside School Weybridge. This arrangement was always intended to be for a finite amount of time and, due to the workload of both roles now being unrealistic for one individual to manage on an ongoing basis, Trustees decided earlier this academic year to seek an appointee as Head of School Heathside Weybridge.

In addition to this change, Ms Alison Shakespeare, Vice Principal, will be leaving Heathside Weybridge at the end of this Aca-demic year to work in the teacher training sector.

We have therefore been busy recruiting for both roles and I am delighted to announce the following appointments, both effective 1st September 2018:

Ms Tracy Dohel will join as Head of School, Heathside Weybridge, and will report to Mrs Cullum in her Executive Principal role. Ms Dohel is currently the Principal at the Ark Helenswood Academy in East Sussex. Previous to that she held a variety positions across schools in various London Boroughs. Judging by the progress Ms Dohel managed to deliver in a variety of roles and settings, I believe that she will be instrumental in continuing to drive Heathside Weybridge further. Ms Dohel is a mathematician by background, and we’ll ensure that she also spends some time teaching as part of her role.

Mrs Jeanette Bell will join as Vice Principal, Heathside Weybridge, reporting to Ms Dohel, Head of School. Mrs Bell is cur-rently Deputy Headteacher at Thamesmead in Shepperton. She brings a wealth of experiences, which will be very valuable to us, such as being their Designated Safeguarding Leader. Also a mathematician and with experience in Computing, again we’ll ensure that we lever Mrs Bell’s background and experiences.

We had strong fields and high numbers of applications for both positions, another indicator that Heathside Weybridge is a school that teaching professionals aspire to teach at.

We therefore thank Ms Shakespeare for her 9 years service at Heathside, and wish her well with her new role. We also wel-come Ms Dohel and Mrs Bell, and look forward to helping them have a fast start in their new roles.

If you have any questions or feedback for myself or the other Trustees, then we can be contacted via the Clerk to the Trustees Mrs Parrish at jparrish@heathside.surrey.sch.uk.

Francis Nicholas, 11th June 2018