Headteacher Update
March 2024
There are exciting times ahead in the school canteen! As previously reported, our Catering Service is moving in house to the Pele Trust Catering team after the Easter holidays and this week we have seen a procession of local suppliers coming to meet with our new chef, Graeme Thornton. The quality of the produce is great, including Geordie Bangers so morning sausage sandwiches will be on a whole new level! All this improvement does not come at a price and we will see some prices for some products reduce as well as there being a much broader offer for the children and the staff. The students will continue to be involved in menu development as well as being encouraged to get involved in various themed days that will occur across the year.
If you haven’t done so already, please complete the biometric consent form for the new payment system that has been sent out as we will be starting the process of administering the system from next week. Also, please keep an eye out for communications about School Gateway as this will be the new method by which you can ad funds to your child’s account. Any credit on your child’s account at the end of service on the final day of this term will be transferred over to the new system during the Easter holidays.
Last week we celebrated World Book Day with a number of different activities including the masked Reader, which certainly led to some speculation from the students. Thank you to Miss Nicholson and the English Department for organising the day and also a huge thank you to all those staff who got dressed up as various characters. The winning outfit was created by Madame Ward who came to school as a very hungry caterpillar. Also, well done to the Arts Block staff who became the staff of Hogwarts for the day, some fantastic outfits and approaches to lessons!
As we approach Year 11 exam season, Mr Redpath has now updated and published the support available for students. As ever, staff are going above and beyond to provide additional sessions outside of the standard intervention programmes that we have been running this year. It is worth mentioning again, that the response from the year group to this support has been fantastic and we have seen more students spending their lunchtime revising or attending sessions after school than ever before. The current year 10 have a lot to live up to as they approach their final year at John Spence!
Finally, thank you to those of you that completed the recent parent survey. We began looking at the results and comments at our senior leadership team meeting on Monday and will report back in more detail in the coming weeks. There were some very helpful comments, in particular about how we communicate your child’s progress as well as what they are studying and whilst we made some amendment to this earlier in the year, we can clearly still do more so will put plans in place for the new academic year.
I hope that you all enjoy a restful weekend.
Best wishes
Jonathan