Below is this week’s newsletter from Hopwood Hall College, containing essential reading for Year 11 students and their parents/carers.
Hopwood Hall will be providing Virtual Application Support from 3:30pm – 5:30pm on Tuesday 1st December to help and support Year 11 students and their parents/carers with applications for Sept 2021.
https://mailchi.mp/fd89b913b1b7/news-update-from-hopwood-hall-college-7085249
It was movie afternoon today for a very select group of our Year 7 students, as they were invited to a ticket-only event as their reward for being Perfect Pupils for their first half term – and brought their own snacks to enjoy while watching the movie. The students have demonstrated everything we expect from a Tottington pupil – Perfect Attendance, Perfect Attitude & Perfect Effort.
Thank you to parents for ensuring that students arrive to school on time every day, in the right uniform and with the correct equipment. We appreciate your support and the very vast majority of students are now absolutely ready for learning. It is down to your support that we have been able to have a relatively normal curriculum experience for students.
For your information, the uniform policy is on our school website and please be aware of the expectations when purchasing items or considering hairstyles or piercings over the break. We just do not want to be dealing with non compliance after half term. It is easily avoided.
As you know, we were fortunate in having a number of site improvements over the Summer and sincere thanks are extended both to the site team and the Trust for enabling this. So that you can see some of the work that has taken place, I have attached some photographs for you. We aim to continue this site improvement so that students have a fantastic learning environment. Also, please take a look at our video (which is on our website) giving you an insight into our school. It is difficult to welcome you through the doors at present, and we are continually finding ways of engaging with parents and families.
We value the contact we have with parents. It is always a pleasure to communicate with parents because we know what a difference it makes. There is a triangle of communication which is essential to ensure that a student is happy, making progress and developing essential life skills: parents, student and the school.
We encourage communication with parents and we have a system for this. The best starting point is always the form tutor because they see the student most often and know them best. Above that, we have Heads of Year who, along with our Pastoral Support Officers deal with things that the form tutor has not been able to resolve. The next tier would be our Heads of Key Stage, Mrs Benigno and Mr Burgoyne and the final tier would be the Deputy Headteachers and myself.
Please do not presume that, because we ask a form tutor to resolve matters, the other layers of support are not interested. We do know what is going on and we are involved. However, it would be appreciated if parents could liaise with form tutors in the first instance so that things can be dealt with swiftly.
We are very fortunate to be based in the heart of the village of Tottington. We are a local school and we want to engage positively with our community. One of the things I aim to do is to interact with the community so that we can work together. Our students will be the next generation of adults, perhaps living and working locally.
One of the things that is important is behaviour within the community and I would like to ask parents to support me in ensuring that behaviour outside of school is good. Two things spring to mind: first, our main gates cross a local footpath where adults, families and young children walk. Please, remind your children not to congregate there or involve themselves in anti social behaviour. It is distressing for local residents.
Second, local shops and the new garage should not be subjected to poor behaviour or abuse from youngsters. These are valuable resources and they should not be dealing with this. Please, do remind your children about expected behaviours because invariably businesses will ring schools as the first point of contact.
Our attendance officer, Miss Berry, is leaving us at half term in order to take up a promotion elsewhere. Miss Berry has done a fantastic job and has made contacts with and connections with many families at our school. We would all like to thank Miss Berry for what she has done and we wish her well in her new role.
Head Boy
Will Slater
Head Girl
Katy Lomax
One of the amazing aspects of our school is that we have a student body that is committed to good citizenship. There are many examples of individual students who have engaged in fundraising or other community based activities. I would like to share one example with you.
One of our Year 7 students, Archie Goodwill, has recently raised over £500 for a charity which is close to his heart. Archie walked 5k for this charity and here is a photograph of Archie sporting his charity T shirt. Well done to Archie on such a fabulous achievement!
I would like to wish everyone a relaxing half term break. We look forward to seeing students again on Monday 2nd November (Tuesday, 3rd November for those Year 11 students who are currently self isolating).
With very best wishes,
Ella Brett
Headteacher
For your information Inset days for the rest of the year are as follows:
Tottington High School year 7 pupil, Archie G recently raised over £500 for the National Autistic Society by walking over 5 kilometres around his local area in a sponsored event. We caught up with Archie’s mum, and she told us:
“The walk was supposed to take place in Manchester City centre, in an event called the Spectrum Night Walk. It’s arranged through the National Autistic Society which I have used a lot since Archie’s diagnosis in May 2018. We gathered our sponsor money through a Just Giving page and managed to raise £565 in total, which is fantastic seeing as we only put in an original target of £100!”
“Anyone who knows Archie, knows he doesn’t have the best stamina, so doing a 5km walk was quite a task for him, and he wanted to raise money for people who were just like him and raise awareness for autism too. Unfortunately, due to Covid, the walk was cancelled but we were encouraged to complete it within out local area. So that is exactly what we did. We had to track it on the running and cycling app Strava, and then I emailed the Spectrum Night Walk organisers a screenshot as evidence we had completed the 5km. Archie received a medal and t-shirt for completing it which he wears with pride.”
As a school we are immensely proud of Archie (pictured here with his medal), and he has met and chatted with our Headteacher, Ella Brett who congratulated him and rewarded him with a box of chocolates to enjoy over the half term break.
Well done Archie!!
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We are pleased to announce that from Tuesday 24th November 2020 we will go back to using the changing rooms for the children to change into and out of their PE kit for their lesson. This will enable us to access the full range of activities to give the children the opportunity to participate both inside and outdoors. The changing rooms will be cleaned in between every lesson to ensure cleanliness for all our children.
-The PE Dept