News From Mr D. Pridding. Head Teacher of Thrybergh
As I come to the end of my first full year in the school, I have been thinking about the progress we have made. Visitors who come to the school now comment to me how different it feels. The new buildings obviously contribute to that, but I think the staff and students have made a difference too; the school is now a much calmer, more disciplined place.
 As you know, five weeks after my arrival the school was put into special measures. That meant that we would have a visit from Her Majesty’s Inspectors once every term. At the first visit in November our progress was judged to be satisfactory. When they returned eight weeks later in February, they felt that we were making good progress. On June 28/9th they came into school for their third monitoring visit. The visit went very well and the judgement was that we are continuing to make good progress. Most importantly the lead inspector made it very clear that he feels that he only needs one more visit before he takes us out of the special measures category. That visit will take place late in the Autumn term, when further evidence of our progress will be available:
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representative from the local authority, who attended the feedback, described it as the most positive HMI feedback he had ever heard.
I have been aware, ever since I came to the school, that examination results were not good enough. We have worked very hard with all the students in the school to raise standards, but there has been a particular focus on the Year 9 students taking SATs and the Year 11 preparing for GCSE. Tremendous progress has been made and we are confident that both these years of the school will get the best examination results the school has ever had. The Year 9 Maths and Science SATS results arrived in school recently and they were simply outstanding. In Maths 60% of the students achieved Level5+ as opposed to 44% last year. In Science 58% achieved it as opposed to 43% last year. The local authority uses a nationally recognised data system, Fischer Family Trust, and we exceeded our Fischer D targets. To do so puts us in the top 25% of schools nationally. The English SATs results are released with the GCSE results in August. We are looking forward to these results and will let you know exactly how good they are, once they are released.
Thrybergh students have done us proud in many other ways too. There have been many occasions when Thrybergh students have done brilliantly on the sports fields and staff tell me often how proud they are of the behaviour of our students when they take them out of school. Year 10 students proved to be excellent ambassadors for the school, when they went out on work experience and many employers commented that our students were a credit to the school.
A year ago I talked of Thrybergh becoming an outstanding school and we are well on the way into turning that vision into reality. There is no doubt that the school is moving forward and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you as parents for your support throughout my first year in the school.
D. Pridding
Headteacher |
