Rounding up a busy week

Categories: Principal's Blog

It has been an incredible start to May with the college being an absolute hive of activity.  Rather than try to pick one thing for the blog I thought I'd give an edited highlight of everything - over the next 4-5 days there will be more information about many of the things below:

  • Arts.  Year 11 Drama gave some fantastic performances on Friday evening to an audience of parents and students.  Chasing Amy, the piece I was able to watch was chilling and a lot edgier than I was expecting with some great performances.  I hope to have more details about the show later in the week.  Also destined for greatness are our musicians - there is a new blog entry from "It's Soul About Us" (and if you haven't looked at their blog before I recommend you look at the video further down the page).
  • As well as talking about the general election a good deal in college we had a vote of our own - on the names for our four new Houses (the House system replaces Years from September).  Out of 73 suggestions student council, a governor, Mr Steed and myself worked it down to seven choices that had a mass vote from all staff and students.  The winning entry, based on the names of people who have given great service to Lodge Park was to name the houses Parker, Rumbelow, Berridge and Dickson.
  • There are a lot of changes coming through for September - uniform, times of the college day, new option choices affecting our Year 8 moving into Year 9 and many others.  To make sure that parents are fully aware of the big picture there is a special short newsletter coming out this week that just talks about the changes and how to find out more.
  • We had a busy Year 7 parent's evening on Thursday, and one thing that got a lot of interest was on-line reporting.  It is possible now for parents to see their child's report over the internet with up-to-date information about attendance, rewards, behaviour and progress.  After a successful pilot 30 families have signed up for short training sessions in the next weeks with more to come.  If you would be interested in attending a session please call or email into college, but there will be an invitation to all parents with details in the next few days.
  • This really deserves its own post but we've heard on Friday that Mrs Franklin has got through to the national final of the Teaching Awards.
  • Also - I've been using Twitter myself for a good while now - it is really useful to pick up on local news as it happens.  We've now set up an "official" college account so that anyone interested in Lodge Park can keep track of things as they happen - the account is called @lodgeparktc - please be aware though that any direct messages to that account won't necessarily get a quick answer as it isn't monitored as regularly as our email addresses.