Welcome to this week's newsletter
It was great to welcome students back to school on Tuesday for the start of the new term. We do hope everyone had the opportunity to rest and spend time with family and friends. This term is always a busy one, full of activity across the school and in the wider community.
It was a real pleasure to meet so many families through the Meet the Principal sessions that we hosted last half term. There is definitely lots of positive feedback coming back into school through this forum. Equally, we welcome those meetings where families would like to discuss what could be better. Both Mr Martin and I see these conversations as an opportunity to ensure we are listening and are acting accordingly so that the school - and the people in it - can be the very best it can be. The dates of this half term's sessions are listed below:
- Friday 12 November
- Friday 26 November
- Friday 10 December
If you are interested in attending, please send your request to principal@manor.school.
Today marks the annual celebration of Bonfire Night and there will no doubt be a whole host of celebrations in the community. Both Mr Martin and I are very much looking forward to taking our children to local demonstrations and bonfires in support of our local community organisations running these events. It would be naïve of us not to encourage all of the young people to act appropriately if they are participating in the celebrations either at home or in community-based events. Be safe and look after one and another.
On Thursday next week we will be holding our annual remembrance service. Remembrance is an opportunity for us as a school to shine a light on one of our REACH values - empathy. The chance to pause and remember those who have given their lives so that others have their freedoms is a true demonstration of the value of empathy. We are very much looking forward to gathering the whole school community together in the spirit of remembrance - further details can be found later in this newsletter.
Finally, happy Diwali to all those in our community who are celebrating the festival of light this week. We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all peace and joy.
Lee Towers, Co-Principal
Remembrance
On Thursday 11 November we will be commemorating Remembrance Day with the whole school community. This will end with two minutes of silence at 11am.
Students who are members of uniformed organisations may wear their uniforms for the whole day.
Main reception will be closed, and calls will not be answered between 10:45am and 11:15am.
Accessing Office365 from home
We have received some reports of students who are struggling to access Office 365/Teams/emails from home. Often the reason behind this issue is that they are trying to sign in with Office365 Personal instead of Office365 Schools.
Our network manager has therefore produced the following document which talks through how to sign in from any computer or mobile device with a browser and internet access.
Year 11 and 13 trial examinations
Between 22 November and 3 December, Year 11 and 13 students will sit a series of internal examinations in all subjects that have a terminal examination component to help prepare them for the intensity of an extended examination period.
Provisional draft timetables for the examination period can be found below.
Thank you in advance for your support in helping to prepare students for these important trial examinations.
Manor Maths Challenges
Mrs Radd's blog is celebrating its one-year anniversary by returning to where it all began with Barvember. There'll be a set of challenges for each weekday throughout November - see how many you can solve.
Post-16 options
Sixth form
Over the next two weeks, Mr Carter and the sixth form team will be meeting with students in Year 11 during tutor time to discuss sixth form options.
Please save the date for our open evening to find out why students go on to reach some incredible destinations after they leave us. Information on how to book your place will be published at the end of November.
College applications
All students who expressed an interest in studying at one of our local further education colleges next year have now had a group or individual meeting to discuss their plans. The main theme of these discussions has been a need for students to access the college website and explore the courses they are interested in, and they been advised to visit the campus and discuss these courses with college staff and have look at the facilities before they make their application. Please use the following link to download the college open days that are taking place this month.
Once students have explored the courses, facilities and additional support and are satisfied with the course they have chosen, they will need to make an application. In order to do this, they will need to create an account with the college they are applying to and the campus they wish to study at. Once they have created this account (with an user name and password) they can complete their personal details, GCSE subjects and predicted grades. Students can make more than one application for different courses and/or colleges. Some courses will arrange further visits, ask for a school reference and will organise an interview.
If you have any questions about your child's college applications then please get in touch - contact details can be found on the careers advice page of the school website.
PE notices
Please find below the PE extra-curricular programme for this term. Please note that after-school clubs will end between 4:15-4:30pm dependent on weather, light and numbers.
The PE office has now moved and is located at the end of the PE corridor on the way out to the field. The PE student notice board is now also here which is where team sheets and important notices can be found.
Now that we are getting into the colder and darker months, we would like to take this opportunity to remind all students of the PE kit expectations. The PE uniform policy is available on the school website, but in a nutshell, all normal PE kit is still expected to be worn, but in addition to this students are allowed to wear gloves and woolly hats and underlayers that are dark in colour. Students are not permitted to wear hoodies or large outdoor coats. Thank you as always for the continued support in maintaining these expectations.