20th December 2024
HEADLINES
By James Saunders
HAPPY HOLIDAYS We finally made it to the end of the term. I would like to finish the year by thanking our learners, staff, families and community for their support. Every day I am impressed with the conduct of our learners and the climate around school. It has been an absolute pleasure to show visitors around our school this term. They always comment on how wonderful the environment and culture is and how lovely, polite and engaging our learners are. Many have told me that we have the best culture and behaviour of any school in the area. That does not happen by accident - it happens through all of our learners conducting themselves as mature young adults and our community working together to live through our values. Sure, we sometimes make mistakes and get things wrong. But just like a family we never turn our back on one another. As I reflect back on some of the amazingly inspiring things that have happened at Honywood this term I feel an immense sense of pride. You are all great. After enduring a year of temporary accommodation we began the term very excited to be getting back to normal and having a normal year - fingers crossed. We welcomed our newest and largest cohort of C7 learners and kicked the term off with a trip to Mersea. This was followed by our C11s going off to a careers fair to ignite discussions around their next steps and college applications. At the start of October we were able to showcase the school on Open Evening. The night was a real success with the highest attendance yet. After 4 weeks of daily personalised tours we ended the first half term having welcomed almost 200 individual families through the doors for a tour of our school. The second half of the term has been just as busy. A few other highlights of the term include: • •
NHS Careers trip Portsmouth Warship trip
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C11 Geography Trip BBC Bitesize Careers Workshop Thorpe Park visit C7 Meet the learning group leader evening C10 Democracy Day C9 Dance Trip Rugby trip to Twickenham KS3 Disco ARu STEM visit Mental Health Champion launch C12 Returners evening Christmas Concert C11 Macbeth Screening Community Christmas Lunch
I recently spoke about the importance of the arts’ in my summary of the amazing Christmas Concert last week. It is so important to provide learners with the opportunity to express themselves creatively. Finally I would like to end on the wonderful work that everyone did to mark Remembrance Day. From the display at the front of school to the staff football match, at every step our learners, staff and community were working in harmony and were truly inspiring. These are the things that brought me to Honywood in the first place and have certainly made my job so enjoyable. What links these two events in particular is the spirit of collaboration and altruism. Without a collaborative and altruistic approach so many things are almost impossible to achieve. When I have seen the school working at its best this term it has been as a result of partnerships, of groups working together, of mutual support and respect, of people giving up their time, and of collaboration. We are constantly reviewing our provision at Honywood which often results in change. Change is a key part of life and is often inevitable. Adapting to change is difficult to achieve and it is only when we collaborate as a community and work in partnership that we will move things forward for the benefit of