Inside This Week's Bulletin
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Meols Cop High School Weekly Bulletin Week Ending Inclusive Excellence for ALL Friday 14 September 2018 Inside this week’s bulletin... NEW! Year 11 Notices Information on next year’s Prom, Careers and Achievements. Keep up to date with year 11 news from Miss Evans, Year 11 Progress Leader. Library News All the details regarding lunchtimes, Book Club and Film Club from Mrs Burt, School Librarian. School Council With Mrs Sharp (PSD teacher). Sports News Lots of information from Mrs Piearce-Swift, 2nd in PE. Community Pages Find out what is happening in your local area, including how your children have helped to raise much needed funds for our community. Meols Cop High School Weekly Bulletin Week Ending Inclusive Excellence for ALL Friday 14 September 2018 Welcome Back to YOUR school! I hope that everybody in our community has had a wonderful summer and well deserved break from challenging learning! Welcome back to our older students and my colleagues and a warm first welcome to all of our new students and their families who now join our school. The new students, our largest year group for at least 30+ years absolutely filled the hall and I know that the confidence our mums and dads place in us to deliver not only top quality learning but exceptional care and social development, will be our top priority, as it always is, for the next 5 years. I’m never sure if our students always go home and talk about the changes they have experienced at school but if they haven’t, we have made some important changes to enable us to make us an even more inclusive school in terms of developing independence in all students and opening our doors safely to students who wish to join us. We begin in the morning straight into lessons without form time, so that we immediately get down to learning with learning tutor time after lunch, where the students will benefit from a whole range of activities designed to develop and support their resilient Meols Cop mind- set and be well prepared for the learning challenges they will face throughout school. Praises as well as consequences will appear on MyEd and the whole school is geared to smashing tougher examinations and barriers that come our way. The corridors near where the students access the field [our crush halls!] have been widened to allow safe access for the amount of students we now have. There are approximately 300 more students than there was 15 years ago when I returned to Meols Cop and we have introduced a 1 way system to ensure safety and to enable us to make sure that, should we increase our numbers to meet the huge demand the local community has of us every year, we can cope with the numbers. The RE room has been divided into 2 to provide for 2 additional maths rooms and additional dining areas have been installed. We have 185 students in year 7 but if I tell you that our first choices for admissions over the last 2 years is at least 40- 50 above that number with another 300 + 2nd/3rd choices, you can see that we have to consider how we can best meet this fantastic demand. At a time of financial restraint and lack of proper funding, there isn’t an easy solution and if we can add an extra 20 students [at least] next year to our admissions, we would be on our way to meeting demand whilst at the same time balancing the budget! Watch this space. I’m sure that parents who have been with us for some time now realise that I won’t involve myself or the school in some of the excesses surrounding examination results and the use of data to make competitive statements and comparisons with other schools in the locality. All schools are very different and have varying intakes of students and any good school, is about far more than 1 year of examination results. Parents choose to send their students to certain schools for a variety of reasons and I am so proud that we have chosen the path to be an inclusive comprehensive community school who values each and every student and who wants to collaborate with other schools rather than say we are better than them! Having said that I have to admit that I was extremely worried the night before the examination results arrived. As the exams have got tougher and the amount of time to prepare for the changes, especially for our most vulnerable students, was minimal and allied to the fact that there was no real knowledge of what the difficulty would be based on prior exams, I had no idea of what might happen! Meols Cop High School Weekly Bulletin Week Ending Inclusive Excellence for ALL Friday 14 September 2018 Last year, for the first time in many years, our progress slowed and whilst many of our areas of results [including whole school progress] was above national average I asked my colleagues to dig deep and to use all of their professional expertise to guide and support our students so that the challenge could be met. Progress tables topped for many years would be more difficult to achieve but I know my staff and I know their absolute commitment to making small miracles happen and aspirations to be met that haven’t even been dreamt of. I don’t make it easy for them by off-rolling students to other schools, making it difficult for SEND students to be educated here or by insisting academic subjects make way for easy option exams that massage league table and progress measures. We teach for the best of our community not league tables [although I would get rid of Jose Mourihno!] and my faith was vindicated when the results have already begun to see gaps closing from last year and pleasing national comparative grades being bettered. In ‘old money’ some of the results were the best we have ever had and if they weren’t this time, then I know from the drive and desire I witnessed on our staff inset day, that our professional development programme will get all areas up even further next year. There were superb results for all different abilities of student and I know lots of very proud mums and dads. Well done again! 15 years ago, we were bottom of any examination tables and had an intake of 70 or so students and you might be forgiven for thinking that having seen the school become what it has now in terms of reputation, numbers, progress measures and anything else that is remotely accountable, there might be a feeling that we have arrived, have no need to worry about improving further and can relax-not a chance! Demands on us change constantly and we will be ready for anything and nothing will get in the way of this school providing the quality of education and care that this community derives and has come to expect from us. On inset day I explained how I have worried that our rightly ambitious vision of providing “Inclusive Excellence for ALL’ might at times prove to be too tough an ask but having seen my colleagues take on tough examinations, devise fantastic training opportunities for the year ahead informed by the very best evidence and welcome so many other schools and educationalists with open arms to see us in action-there is nothing to fear! Your children are in the best hands possible, this will be a fantastic year and I can’t wait to welcome even more young people and their families into our very special community. Have an amazing 2018/19 school year. Car park reminder Please support our safety measure of not using the school car park to drop off or pick up children. Despite many nice requests, this is still happening and sadly it may well end up with an accident happening. Unless it is an emergency the car park should not be used by parents at the start of the day or end of the day and if it is an emergency, please be extra vigilant when students are walking across the entrance and please do not block any access points and do not park in the disabled bays. There are plenty of local spaces where children can be met if necessary but for health and fitness reasons walking home, where possible, is always encouraged! Many thanks. Mr D. Jones, Headteacher. Meols Cop High School Weekly Bulletin Week Ending Inclusive Excellence for ALL Friday 14 September 2018 On Opening Evening on 28th September we will be holding a Bake Off competition to see which student can bake the best cakes, muffins or biscuits within an hour. There will be a prize of a £20 gift voucher. The competition will be judged by representatives from Taylor Shaw who provide catering within the school. School will provide the ingredients and the cakes and biscuits will be sold at break on Friday for the Macmillan's Coffee morning charity. Anyone who wishes to apply must complete the application at the link shown by Friday 21st September. http://meols.schooljotter2.com/curriculum/subjects/design-technology The successful applicants will be told that they are taking part on Monday 24th September. So get your mixing bowls ready and show us want baking skills you have! The Library welcomes back students for the start of a new term! The library is run by Mrs Burt and is open every lunchtime for students to join in with games such as chess, draughts, bananagrams and scrabble.