Well, I would like to say what a fabulous summer it was, but frankly, the weather was not great and obviously there were some very disturbing events nationally that definitely cast a significant shadow over the month of August.

All that aside though, at Crookhorn we celebrated the end of a very successful academic year in July. In my Whole College Assembly speech, I focused on the breadth of enrichment that the students had been exposed to over the year and the fact that our attendances to extra-curricular clubs had increased by 120%, going from 10,000 is 22/23 to 22,000 in 23/24. If we break this down further, which Miss Elliott kindly did for me from our enrichment tracker which we have for every student in the College, we know that 99.3% of all students attended at least one extra-curricular opportunity. This is fabulous, and a full endorsement of the first strand of OPEN MIND, which is all about students taking up opportunities.

We also know that our positivity strand has been hugely successful too, with the number of House Points and Commendations increased by 81% and 58% respectively. Going forward this year, as a result of listening to Student Voice, we no longer have House Points and Commendations, we just have Positives. Students and parents will still be able to see what the Positive has been issued for on ClassCharts, as the criteria are all displayed on the pie chart. Parents can also see comments from teachers as well.

What was definitely exciting this year - a true example of never giving up and ultimately learning from mistakes - was our GCSE exam results. We were absolutely delighted as a whole community with the success of our Year 11 students with 71% achieving their English at 4+ and 73% achieving their maths at 4+ and 65% of students achieving a 4+ in two sciences. These results take the College above pre-pandemic standards, and we are so proud of the resilience and the drive our Year 11's demonstrated to get these results. I do just want to mention as well, because why wouldn’t I, that 21% of all English results (that’s almost a quarter of them) were grade 7 to 9.

Our Year 10 Early Entry results were also excellent. For the first time since we started doing early entry, our average GCSE grade was a grade 5, which was just above target. 20% of the grades were a Grade 7-9.

Academically, this data shows how Crookhorn College is pushing boundaries for all students; both those who are higher attaining and those who have barriers or even significant barriers to learning. We can certainly say that we are one proud community.

An area of real focus last year, and this will continue this academic year, is encouraging and guiding all students at Crookhorn to become increasingly independent with their learning. The way we seek to encourage this is through itslearning. All our homework is set through the platform, but itslearning gives us other benefits as well as, students can revisit lessons that have already been taught and access resources that have been used. This means that students can do their own retrieval work on previous knowledge. Obviously, in an ideal world, all students would be willing to do this and be revisiting their prior learning all the time. However, in this world and through the experience of having two sons myself, I know that not every child is motivated to revisit their learning when they have a little spare bit of time on their hands. (Personally, I cannot understand why!) As a result, we have started to implement our week-by-week revision plans for all year groups so that they are set H/W’s for at least two weeks, but sometimes 3 weeks prior to an assessment in a subject. For Year 11 and Year 10 Early Entry, the week-by-week revisions plans for all subjects starts in September and rolls the whole way through till the exams in May.

To make sure that access to the revision plans is clear and easy, we have been working on the same layout across all subjects. So, all students should know from Year 7 onwards that they can access their Revision folder from the resources section on the course. Then, within the revision folder itself, the revision tasks will be very clearly laid out as to exactly what the students have to revise or revisit and what resources to use and how to test their knowledge on that particular topic.

We were really pleased with the progress we made with this independent approach last year and, indeed, 93% of Year 11 students were very clear in their outgoing survey, that teachers had really encouraged their independence with regard to learning. This is essential as they will have to be very independent about this when they start at FE College. Certainly, with science, we believe that the increase in our grade 4+ results is largely down to the quality and thoroughness of the revision folders in each class.

We have a number of stars with regard to our next generation, but I just want to take this opportunity to say well done to Casper H who is undoubtedly set to be part of the next generation of West End stars. Casper took part in the All-England Finals for musical theatre and only went and won the whole competition, becoming the highest ever scoring winner for the whole of England. Casper has now started at the Brit School in London which, as we all know, has a fantastic track record in producing stars! Casper is just one example of a student, a member of our next generation, who left us this year after achieving the grades he needed to, enabling him to go on the next step of his journey towards his dream. We had many other students who were in the position to do this and some of them were able to talk about this when interviewed by Meridian on results day. It is absolutely the best part of being a teacher, working with the next generation and helping them on to the next stage of their DREAM. I love it!!

As I sign off, can I please advertise the fact that another one of our students, Eve, a current Year 11, who has been working super hard at her academic studies, has also had the chance, through her hard work and her commitment to a cause that she is passionate about, to feature in a documentary that is going out on Sky on the 12^th September. Eve’s dream is to work in the media, and by taking opportunities even at the hardest and lowest points in her life, she is well on her way to realising her DREAM. Well done, Eve.