Dear Parents/Carers
I hope this letter finds you and your families well; a Friday update for you, as always, after the first week of the new half term.
Year 11 have been completing their second round of pre-public examinations this week. These are an important marker for them and us in preparation for the summer GCSEs. Year 11 have taken these exams very seriously and conducted themselves very well throughout the week. We now wait, like them with bated breath for the results.
We received feedback this week on our talented Year 10 mathematicians, who took part in the national Intermediate Maths Challenge. All of the students acquitted themselves exceptionally well, but special mention must go to Zayn Bham in 10S and Alex Wild in 10L who achieved the gold award, which is an exceptional achievement. Well done to all that took part.
You will recall from my update on the 2nd February, that our Year 9 History Club students had the privilege of visiting UCL's new campus following a 6-week project entitled 'Becoming an Historian'. The students explored items from UCL's Special Collections, with a focus on Natural History, to write museum labels. I am delighted to share the published Year 9 work on the digital exhibition blog post here, and the X thread here.
Sports-wise, football fixtures were cancelled due to waterlogged pitches this week, unfortunately. Over the next couple of weeks, we will see the years 7-10 basketball inter-form competitions commence. Additionally, if any of our female athletes wish to discover the sport of girl’s rugby, Woodford Rugby Club will be running a taster session on 1st March from 1.30-4.00pm. To attend or to find out more please see here.
In our continued push to become a greener, more environmentally conscious school, we are working with The Green Schools Project and recently submitted our data to help calculate our carbon footprint as a school. The results are in and can be viewed here. We are one of the first schools to complete this; it is always nice to see Kelmscott trailblazing in this way. Our Climate Ambassadors will be working with the results of the survey and will soon release their plans for our first ever Sustainability Day, which will take place on 25th April 2024. We are making great strides towards being a zero-carbon school and we are excited to hear the action plan from our Climate Ambassadors.
Kay Rufai, the inspirational mastermind behind The Smiling Boys Project, was back in school this week to begin work with a group of Year 10 and 11 boys. Feedback from the group was very positive indeed and we are very pleased to be working with Kay again. If you are interested in finding out more about the project, you can do so here.
No doubt you will have seen on both our @KelmscottSchool and @KelmClassDept ‘X’ feeds (Twitter) that on Tuesday 27th February our Classics department will be hosting our first annual 'A Day to Celebrate Classics'. A day of exciting talks and workshops celebrating a subject that continues to enrich so many lives. Please see here for the full programme. I am excited to attend as much of the day as possible and wish all those involved in the planning, and our guests, bonam fortunam.
The charity World Book Day is holding its annual celebration on Thursday 7th March. This year is all about 'reading your way', and promoting reading for fun. There will be activities held in tutor time during the week of the 4th March, as well as two competitions; one to write a short story and one to design the front cover of a mystery book, the deadline for both competitions is the 8th March.
Further to the message sent out to Year 8 parents/carers yesterday, we have taken the decision to move the Year 8 Progress Evening from Thursday 14th March to Thursday 7th March. We have made this decision as the original date fell during Ramadan with the iftar time just after 6pm, right in the middle of Progress Evening. We know this would have been problematic for many of our Muslim families and would have affected attendance on the night. We hope the change of date does not inconvenience our Year 8 families though, we are really looking forward to seeing you all on the night.
It was very nice to see so many Year 9 families in school for Options Evening yesterday, especially given the heavy rain, as Year 9 begin to choose their four options for Years 10 and 11. I was impressed that the vast majority of students have already given this careful thought, and already have a very clear picture of what they wish to choose.
Finally, well done to Dumitru Anghel in 7K who topped the reward point charts for the school in the last week before the holidays with fifty reward points. Well done to the following who topped the chart for their year group:
Year 7 Dumitru Anghel with 50 points
Year 8 Hirah Noor Azmat with 34 points
Year 9 Sufayn Bhiraashir with 24 points
Year 10 Zahra Turkmani with 24 points
Year 11 Kai Molloy with 45 points
With every good wish, yours ever,
Mr Sam Jones
Headteacher
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