This week

A Happy New Year to our whole school community. Whilst the relatively early return to school straight after New Year’s Day was probably a shock to us all, it was great to see our students and staff again on Tuesday.

The Head Teacher wrote on Thursday about the challenges we faced in moving to a new catering company. Feeding the majority of the School’s 1700 students in 40 minutes at lunch time has never been an easy task and the change to new tills, a new caterer and new queuing systems was always going to bring along some unforeseen issues. Thank you for your understanding in what has been a very difficult project to manage, but overall we think we are finally getting there. For example, the issues with the tills and queues were thankfully largely resolved today. However, a small number of students will need to have their ID cards replaced as they have not treated them as we would expect. New cards can be ordered via ParentPay (£5). If treated as expected the cards will last for a year or more.

We have been informed that the ParentPay balances should now be up to date. Please check your child’s balance and top up the account if needed before Monday.

We are monitoring the food quantity, quality and range making use of feedback from students and staff. As mentioned in the email from the Head Teacher on Thursday, we are very aware of the importance of value for money, healthy options and ensuring queuing times are not too long. We aim to improve all of these aspects further. Again, we apologise for inconvenience and difficulties this week.

Assemblies this week focused on setting New Year’s resolutions and goals, looking forward to the year ahead and reminders to the students about how to be most successful at Darrick Wood School. The assembly ended with a reminder about the importance of bringing the correct equipment to school (as per Parent Bulletin last term) and of reading – both for pleasure and academic success. The School’s overall mission of providing the highest quality of teaching and learning was discussed and how every member of the School community (teachers, other staff, students and parents/carers) has a role to play in enabling this to happen.

Clubs and societies are back up and running. Please make sure your child is attending one or more of these each week.

Music appointment

We are pleased to welcome Mr Rees, our new Head of Music and are looking forward to him building on the strong musical tradition that we have within the School.

All students in Year 7 and Year 8 will have a term of Music lessons either in the Spring Term or in the Summer Term.  This will replace their dance lessons for that term.  Students who have Music lessons this term will return to Dance lessons for the Summer Term.  Students are therefore expected to wear their full school uniform on days when they have Music lessons rather than Dance lessons.  These timetable changes have been explained to students and are now visible in the MCAS app.

Students in Year 9 will be able to continue their Music lessons as an option in the elective programme.

Other appointments

Mr Pereira Wood has been appointed the School’s new Outdoor Education Coordinator. His first task will be to launch the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme with Year 10 but he has ambitious plans for other aspects of outdoor education and will also be continuing to work within the Year 8 pastoral team. The new Achievement Coordinator for Year 8 is Miss Bargeron. As usual, the first point of contact for parents is your child’s Form Tutor.

Parents’ Evenings

Thank you parents who attended (virtually on SchoolCloud) the Year 11 parents’ evening on Thursday. We hope you found this helpful but it you need further information about your child’s progress and how we can help them further please get in touch. The dates of all future parents’ evenings are given in the dates for the diary section below.

Toilets

We have continued to review our student toilet provision. In common with our whole school goals, we want the highest standards for our students in everything we offer, but this does require them taking responsibility for their shared spaces. We have previously written about concerns that too many students are using these as communal gathering spaces and not for their intended use. This has led to vandalism and the use of phones (which are not allowed to be on, seen or heard during the school day) being used in the toilets. We have also found children eating lunch in the toilets! There has been a national trend of this sort of behaviour post-pandemic that has also coincided with concerns about children’s access to vapes and increased truancy.

In the longer term, if we have sufficient funds we will undertake some redesigns of our toilet areas to bring them in line with how they would be if we were a newly built school. In the meantime, we monitor the use of these facilities from the corridors and enter the toilet spaces when we need to. We have installed vape detectors in some. We have recently changed the light switches so that students cannot turn off the lights (a favourite game). We have also removed mirrors which seemed to have been another cause for children to gather for longer than necessary in the toilets.

This week in assemblies the Head Teacher has reminded students that those found to be gathering in large groups in the toilets or causing issues within the toilets will be issued with higher level of sanctions available within our Behaviour Policy including internal exclusion and external suspension. We will not tolerate this type of behaviour. It is anti-social, against our agreed values and rules and is costing the School money it could be spending on learning resources.

As previously mentioned, we are also considering the installation of CCTV over the basin areas (not the cubicles!) This is costly but would be a very effective way of helping identify those causing the problems. Like other schools, to ensure lesson attendance remains high, we may also have to restrict access to the toilets during lesson time with only one toilet area for girls and one for boys open during lessons, the others then becoming available only during break and lunch. Those who have a medical need to use a toilet more frequently have passes and will have access as they need to.

All of these ideas are under consideration in order to ensure the toilets, like all parts of the School, are used responsibly and appropriately by all and not seen as a place where children who behave well in front of staff believe they can behave poorly when they are in the student toilets and cause issues for themselves and others.

We hope our plans re-assure parents/carers that we are aware of the potential issues and are busy making plans to tackle them so that all of our student community can use the toilets safely and approriately.

Reminders

Equipment

Please refer to the previous Parent Bulletin regarding equipment that all students must bring to school. A copy of the equipment list is on the uniform page on the website.

Parking

We are liaising with the relevant authorities about drivers who continue to ignore the parking restrictions in the local area and in particular close to the School on Lovibonds Avenue. We are requesting more frequent visits from parking enforcement officers and the Head Teacher has been asked to log the registration plates of those who ignore the restrictions, park on the yellow lines and therefore cause a risk to our students outside the School.

Dates for the diary

Date	Event	Notes
Monday, 8th January	Second week of Year 12 assessments	These are taking place in lessons
Thursday, 11th January	PSFA meeting	7pm Training Room at school
Thursday, 18th January	Year 13 Parents’ Evening	SchoolCloud
Thursday, 25th January	Year 7 Parents’ Evening	SchoolCloud
12th – 16th February	HALF TERM
Thursday, 29th February	Year 10 Parents’ Evening	SchoolCloud
Wednesday, 6th March	Year 9 Options Evening
Wednesday, 27th March	Year 8 Parents’ Evening
Thursday, 28th March	Last day of spring term (Friday is a Bank Holiday)