It has been another exciting week at Medina College this week. On Monday, we had a Safeguarding Review carried out by our Academy Trust and, as part of that, they spoke to staff and students. Our visitors were very impressed with the conversations that took place and commended us on the good practices in place across both the lower school and VI Form site.

On Tuesday, we had a Development Day where staff had a guest speaker in the morning and discussed teaching and learning strategies. Staff were buzzing with ideas afterwards. In the afternoon, staff were engaged in making plans for Year 11 to ensure rapid progress is made across the whole year group.

Thursday saw some students travel to the Royal Yacht Squadron for a Marine Careers Fair focusing on providing post 16 opportunities and, of course, in the evening we had our Year 6 Open Evening. During the evening, we welcomed approximately 300 Year 6 families through our door and the school was alive with excitement and enthusiasm. During the presentation in the Theatre, Millie, Carson, Imogen, Louie and Oliver talked amazingly well about their experiences during their time at our school and Freddy gave a very moving musical performance. Well done and thank you to them. 

Next week, we have some Year 11 students attending an Oxford University Access Roadshow on Tuesday hosted at Christ the King College and on Tuesday evening we have our Year 7 Tutor Evening from 4-7pm. This is where parents can come in to meet Tutors and discuss how their child is settling in. If you haven't made an appointment yet, please ensure that you do.

As you are aware, we are constantly striving to raise expectations amongst students and we have recently been focusing on one of our key words 'Respect'. Students are first learning to respect themselves and part of that is ensuring they are taking pride in their appearance. We have worked with families this half term to give everyone time to rectify any uniform issues. The vast majority of our students are now meeting our expectations and their uniform looks fantastic. However, as was previously stated in Mrs Croke's letter at the start of term, 30 September is the cut off to have any uniform issues rectified. From Monday, if students arrive not meeting the expectations, we will try to rectify any issues with our own stock. If that is not possible, they will work out of circulation until it is put right. As a parent, a call will be made to you and you will be asked to bring the correct item in. We really appreciate how the vast majority of students and parents/carers have got on board with this raising of expectations. Students themselves are commenting on how much they are appreciating the changes to ensure fairness across the school is enforced.

Finally, I would like to finish off by congratulating our Hot Chocolate Friday winners. These students gained their ticket for either 100% attendance in the last week for their year group or were top achievement point winners. Well done to: Imogen, Choloe, Joseph, Sinan, Lily, Dexter, Cameron, Poppy, Leah and Harrison.

I hope you have a lovely weekend and the sun shines for you.

Mr Pearce-Jones
Head of School - Medina College