I hope this letter finds you and your families well; a Friday update for you as always, at the end of
our first week back following the Easter holidays.
We were very excited to see our new teaching block go up, within the space of four days, over the Easter holidays. It gives a real sense of the upgrade in facilities, that our community will benefit
from next year. The school will look even more impressive from Markhouse Road too.
I’ll begin by wishing families celebrating Eid today, Eid Mubarak. I hope you are having a wonderful day, celebrating with your nearest and dearest. The students have been regaling me with their itineraries for today, as well as details of the food they will be enjoying – I am very jealous indeed.
As I know you will be aware, teachers who belong to the National Education Union (NEU) will be
striking, again, on Thursday 27th April and Tuesday 2nd May. I have written a separate letter to
outline what this means for students on those days. Discussions between the Secretary of State and
Unions have reached somewhat of an impasse too, with no end in sight, in terms of strike action, as yet. It looks as if we are likely to see more strike action in the summer term, I won’t get ahead of
myself here though, let’s see what transpires.
Some of you may have already spotted that the strike on Thursday 27th April, clashes with our
rearranged Year 8 Progress Evening; we are not having much luck here. The new date for the Year
8 Progress Evening will be Thursday 6th July from 4.30pm until 7.00pm. I apologise for any
inconvenience that pushing this back again, may cause. Please do get in contact with individual
teachers if you have any questions, queries or concerns in the interim.
Year 11 exams begun, for real, this week with Art and the MFL departments centre stage. Students
and staff have done a terrific job of preparing for the forthcoming exams. We recommend that Year
11 students complete two to three hours of revision a night, in the build-up. We know that this hard
work will pay off; thanks to families for their support in ensuring this happens, it’s not always an easy task.
The LBWF Youth Urban Arts Foundation bus will be appearing in the leisure centre car park in the
near future. On board is a digital production studio and podcast production facilities, as well as a
recording booth. It will be here on Tuesday afternoons, I’m told, I hope our students are able to
take advantage of this exciting opportunity.
Our Year 10 and 11 Classics students spent the afternoon, on Thursday, enjoying the Greek tragedy, Medea, at Soho Place Theatre. This performance threw open a whole series of questions about how much society believes women and questions their emotions; casting them as victims or villains. The play truly brought Euripides' tragedy to life.
We are hoping to recruit some translators to support the work that we do here in school. When we
surveyed students last year, we have over forty languages spoken at Kelmscott – our diversity is
wonderful to see. We have a particular need for Hungarian, Bulgarian, Pashto, Farsi, and Arabic
translators. References would need to be provided, but if you are interested, and would like to find
out more, please contact Tina Thorp, Assistant Headteacher: t.thorp@kelmscott.waltham.sch.uk
Finally, well done to Ruya Arroyo-Kalin in 7O who amassed the most rewards points, with a
phenomenal 96 (including celebratory awards points) in our last week before the Easter holidays.
Keep up the good work.
Yours sincerely
Mr Sam Jones
Headteacher
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