The Lister Weekly Update #19

Our main three priorities for this term are as follows:

All pupils make strong academic progress and meet with success;

Pupils feel safe, behave well and focus on their learning;

We support our staff to become exceptional teachers.

Although we are in the last term, these priorities remain the same as they have through the year. This is why we have such a focus on students' behaviour, attendance and punctuality. if we get these things in order then the first and third priorities will naturally be able to take place. The rigorous uniform rules and our focus on excellent behaviour are an extension of our priority that our students - your children - meet with success. Please note the extract from our headteacher's letter which emphasises our behaviour and uniform expectations:

I am pleased to say that there is a perceptible change in the school. Pupils are looking smarter. Numbers of praises have risen as pupils work to meet the Lister Expects standards. We are still working towards our 10:1 praise:concern ratio, but it is moving in the right direction.

There is a lot of work still to do, however. Please find our uniform policy in the image. Please support the school and your child by sending them in dressed smartly.

We need to continue to improve our uniform. Please go through this with your child.

Pupils will be asked to remove all jewellery except for small stud

earrings.

We do NOT permit pupils to wear face coverings, except for a medical mask.

Pupils are not permitted to wear an abaya instead of uniform.

Skirts must be of at least knee length.

Acrylic nails and nail varnish must not be worn, so please plan for this to be addressed before the

start of term.

Please also note that pupils who bring mobile phones to school must ensure they are turned off and left in bags (not pockets).

Pupils should not bring gum into school or chew it when they are here.

We appreciate your support and our unity in working towards excellence.

The curriculum page of our new website is very informative and useful for you to visit (to get the sense of what will be happening in your child's term). This part of the site is divided into year groups and then subjects, with topics covered in the curriculum for this term. Why not pay it a visit and see what the term ahead looks like?

After strong competition from all the house teams, Shelley House won the House Cup! For the next half term the agora will be decorated with Shelley House banners and have green - the Shelley House colour - hanging from all the balconies. We want to celebrate their success and if your child happens to be a member of Shelley House, then you can congratulate them on their success.

The House Cup is a half termly competition that all the houses enter into. The competition is won by the house with the greatest amount of 'praises' (merits from teachers) won, minus the overall 'concerns' (demerits from teachers). Students get praises for each time they meet the expectations of a teacher in a lesson - arriving on time and meeting the objective for the lesson. Concerns show where students have failed to meet expectations despite warnings.

We are in the final steps of year 11 before they take their final GCSE exams, with only a few weeks to go before your children take their first GCSE exam. As you know, we are always aiming for excellence as a school and we aspire to provide a world class education for our students. As the year 11 have only recently taken their last mock exams, the results will be a good indication of their flight path. However, nothing is decided until the final exams have been sat. To improve on excellent results is probably the hardest challenge, but one that our elite students should not shy away from. Equally, students who have less satisfaction with their results probably have the easiest improvements to make. We strongly encourage all students to approach their revision in an organised way - break down the revision mountain into smaller steps. Prepare revision cards for each curriculum area and by each exam. As parents, we would like you to proactively encourage your children to make a revision timetable and reward them for sticking to it.

If any students are feeling stressed by the pressure of these final exams, they can speak to teachers or find support with Place2Be - our school counselling service - or follow the links above to get advice.

Young Minds have a series of support pages aimed to help with exam stress and anxiety. Their advice is available to help school staff, parents and carers and, of course, young people themselves. You can find this helpful advice at the links below:

School staff

Parents

Young people

Each week we want to celebrate particular students who have won the most praises in their house and in their year group. Keep and eye out for you child aiming for excellence and having their name highlighted here!

Our Thought of the Week, this week, is related to the theme of beginnings. Please discuss the thought with your child.