Headteacher’s letter to parents July 2022

Dear Parents/Carers,

As we come to the end of this academic year, I wanted to thank you for your support and engagement with school yet again. It has not always been an easy year – establishing a new ‘normal’ never is! However, we have all worked together to CARE and I would love to acknowledge a few of our successes with you!

However, I do want to start this letter with an apology. The school has been severely hit with Covid illness over the weeks leading up to the end of term. It has impacted on pupil and staff attendance and, as we have been operating on a skeleton staff, some areas have been affected. For example, we were devastated to have to cancel sports day but we just didn’t have enough staff to safely look after our children at the stadium and the children staying in school. I am so sorry. Our Student Services team has been one of the areas hit most severely and I know that this has also affected normal practice. Again, I apologise and want to reassure you that I am also reviewing the platforms that we use to ensure that they are allowing you to communicate with us effectively and vice versa.

However, we still celebrated the end of the year in style with the ‘Consistently Fabulous’ Inflatables celebration on Monday, the Stretford Summer Fair on Tuesday, Trips and Fun day in school on Thursday and awards assemblies on Friday. Looking out the window today, it is really hard to believe we were sweltering in ridiculous heat just 4 days ago! What a difference a week makes.

We have also had lots of successes over the academic year as we strove to provide our SHS CARE: Community, Aspiration, Resilience and Education.

SHS is privileged to be part of our community and we take our responsibility to learn from and contribute to our community very seriously.  We are grateful to have been able to work alongside so many to make a real difference for our children and our community:

• Achieved the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Quality mark 
• Achieved the Leading Parent Partnership award
• Achieved Plastic Free School award
• Achieved Full partnership status with one of our ITT providers; MMU 
• SHS has had the pleasure of working with Trafford Housing Trust, securing a grant for food, equipment and uniform for families who are in need.
• Trafford Housing Trust also helped us to fund a number of projects across Art, Music, Drama and photography for our pupils.
• We have continued to support families via our SHS food bank – stocked by our own staff and run by our wonderful hub team
• We are continuing to develop stronger community ties with Israel & Palestine working party including community leaders
• We have successfully completed year 1 of 2 to gain recognition as a Holocaust Beacon School
• We raised £779.77 for Refugee Action though our Summer Fair on Tuesday 19th July 
• We have replaced all windows in school (last phase will take place over the summer!), installed new heat pump and currently installing solar panels – all significant steps in becoming a Green school
• Our children have had 87 opportunities to learn outside school this year: 54 Educational visits, 10 residential visits, 23 sports fixtures.
• Our PE team were invited to be guest lecturers at UA92 and supported them with observations of trainees.
• MFL hosted an event for local schools in Trafford to come together to listen to an AQA MFL specialist talk about how the GCSE reforms in Languages will affect our Y7s 
• We have supported the DfE as they are reviewing RSE guidance for schools.
• We have been appointed as a SSAT mentor school, leading practice in formative assessment across the northwest.
• Our Humanities department were invited to lead session at MMU on what we have achieved through our work on Equality, Diversity and Decolonisation across our curriculum, for which we have also received a Quality Mark for!
• Our school has a voice on the LA CSS Improvement Board, the LA Funding Forum, LA Safeguarding Forum, LA Task and finish group tackling peer on peer abuse – indeed, we have presented at a DfE conference and worked with the DfE as they were drawing up their guidance on this.
• Successfully completed the Department of Education Early Careers Framework pilot study
• We have become a Lead school for Mastery Maths

• We Celebrated the Consistently Fabulous on Monday 18th July
• Celebrated our Academic & C.A.R.E Awards on Tuesday 12th July
• Brilliant club was re-established to work with 20 students to raise aspirations post 16
• Our Year 7 team worked on the Gorgeous Gorse Hill community outreach project.
• Peer mentors Y9 worked with Man U Foundation 
• Year 9 worked with Kids of Colour who thoroughly enjoyed the project
• We reached the quarter finals of the regional Debate Mate competition
• Year 9 pupils engaged in Reach out mentoring 
• Our STEM Exhibition hosted an array of external professionals discussing careers and training opportunities 
• Achieved 100% Gatsby Benchmarks met throughout the Year 
• Our school is significantly above the national average when considering their future aspirations in the Life Readiness Career Program, 
• Achieved over 8 meaningful business career encounters per students per year 
• Year 10 fully engaged in work experience week in July enjoying experiences such as a select group of Year 10 joined the Midland Hotel for their work experience and even came back to school on Thursday 7th July to set up a pop up restaurant in school, ably guided by wonderfully talented Chefs from The French restaurant!
• Our ERASMUS STEM program linked with European schools enabling pupils to enjoy a number of residential visits
• 50 Students have achieved the CREST award (STEM)
• 30 students successfully completed the PPMA STEM project
• Over 300 students received catch up tuition / Intervention
• 50 Y11 students attended English / Science residential
• GCSE Pod (KS4 revision / Home learning) – Over 22,000 pods watched 
• Duke of Edinburgh expeditions were able to run this year and were a great success
• MP Kate green joined us to celebrate 8 Ways to be Great

Thank you to our pupils for being proud Stretfordian ambassadors, parents/carers for working with us and allowing us the privilege of caring for your children, local agencies and businesses for engaging with our school so willingly and to our neighbouring schools who work with us so openly in the knowledge that we are all working for the good of our local children.

Of course, all endings involve some change and we are saddened to be saying goodbye to the following staff and wish them every success in their next steps.

Mrs Ellie Lioudaki, Assistant Headteacher and SENDCO

Mrs Mez Munshi,Teacher of RE

Mrs Jane Lee, Teacher of History (promotion to Head of History, St Anne’s Roman Catholic School, Stockport)

Mr Carl Wood, Teacher of Geography (moving to Golborne High School)

Mr Alex McCulloch, Teacher of Science (moving to Appleton Academy)

Miss Karis Douglas, Teacher of science (moving to undertake full time Masters study)

Mrs Alicja Riley Sheldon, Teacher of Science (moving to Ellesmere Park High School)

Mrs Kellie Brook, Teacher of Science (moving to Dean Trust, Ashton on Mersey)

Mr Othman Mohammed, Teacher of Maths (relocating to London)

Mrs Claire Reedy, Teacher of English

Miss Ikra Anwar, TA (to undertake PGCE)

Miss Sophie Singleton, TA

Miss Charlotte Law, TA (moving to teaching role)

Mrs Alka Thakar, TA (retirement)

Miss Fiona Wilson, Interventions Teacher

Mr Andrew Sztehlo, Librarian

Mr Arman Afshari–Rahimzadeh, PE Technician (PGCE course)

During the last term, we have welcomed the following colleagues to the staff team;

Mr Jordan Driffill, Teacher of Maths (Vision for Education)

Mr Josh Dickson, Teacher of English, University of Manchester PGCE

Miss Megan Healey, Teacher of English, University of Manchester PGCE

Mr Stephen Gresty, Head of Business & Computing (St Christopher’s CofE High, Accrington)

Mrs Rita Dixon, Student Services Officer

Miss Jodi Blissett, Miss Stephanie Massey, Mrs Iyrena McGuigan, Miss Saba Rizwan, Miss Henna Bari, Mrs Amanda Handley, Teaching Assistants

In September, we will be joined by;

Mrs Donna Howard, PA to the Headteacher

Ms Rachael Southern, Teacher of English (Bates Wells Solicitors)

Mrs Jennifer Monk, Head of Geography (Golborne High School)

Miss Safwah Elmahdi, Teacher of English (MMU PGCE)

Miss Amirah Shameem, Teacher of Humanities (MMU PGCE)

Mrs Yvonne Adeyemi, Vocational Technician

I wish you and your families a restful simmer.

With Kind regards,

Mrs. Nicola Doward, Headteacher