Newsletters

Dear Parent or Guardian,

This is the first newsletter of the year and is intended to replace the weekly bulletin issued last year. Whilst I know many of you liked the regular communication in difficult times, some parents still felt it was a little too much information. We also want to show you all the wonderful things we are doing, so we have decided on trying to produce these twice a half term. It’s so good to have school return to some semblance of normality. You can sense that both staff and students were genuinely happy to return in person and work in a way they haven't been able to for well over a year. I have been really impressed with the way our students have presented and conducted themselves so far, particularly to and from school. As you walk around the school you can sense the optimism and the fact that we are back to what really matters; learning and building relationships. 

Covid

I would like to thank you for your support in helping us to test students on their return. Whilst we had very few positive cases, I think it proved that it was worth doing properly. In the interests of continuing to keep us all safe, please continue reminding your child to test themselves twice weekly and not to come to school if they test positive or have symptoms. A reminder to Parents who are reporting absence regarding Covid, please clarify if a test result is for an LFT test or PCR test. We are still sanitising and any student or member of staff is welcome to wear a face covering if they wish. It is always worth students having one on them as the guidance still recommends these in certain situations. We will also continue to ventilate with windows and doors open, so having a warm coat (name labelled!) is essential as we go further into Autumn. Since we have a split break and lunch to minimise numbers, students aren't able to return to classrooms during a wet break, but we have opened the main hall for eating in general which should accommodate, however, we will evaluate how well this works as we go. We will also continue to set work remotely via Google if students are forced to isolate. You will have seen that the government will be rolling out a vaccination programme for 12 to 15 year olds and it seems likely that the NHS will use our school to do this. Whilst we know consent is voluntary, we have yet to have further guidance on this and will let you know as soon as we know more. 

Events

We are doing our best to run our usual events again this year, but risk assessing everything and trying to put mitigation measures in place. It is certainly true that I regularly feel like the ‘party killjoy’ but have to balance what we want to do against keeping us safe. 

We therefore ran a much reduced version of prize giving this week for our Year 13 students who left us last year and intend to run something similar for Year 11 near to Christmas. Our speaker this year, Dan Germaine, was an ex-Bordenian and was co-founder of Innocent Smoothies, now working at a senior level in Google. He made a virtual appearance, but it took nothing away from the honest, ethical and self-effacing nature of the talk. 

Similarly, we will be closing early to run our annual open evening on the 5th October for prospective students and will be asking for guides from Year 7, 8 and 12. However, to mitigate numbers, we are running additional shorter talks, asking Parents to minimise numbers attending, opening more classrooms, creating a maximum number in rooms and asking visitors to wear masks. It isn’t going to feel quite the same, but at least we are running something.

Next Wednesday afternoon on the 22nd, an organisation, supported by Kent Police, is visiting us to present 'Is it worth it?' which delivers an educational message about the dangers of online behaviour and particularly sexualised behaviour. This will be presented to Years 8 and 9 and is part of our embedding of the RSE curriculum and safeguarding our young people.

Finally, we are also starting to run clubs again and you will see on this newsletter that PE clubs, trials and fixtures abound, as well as performing arts clubs four nights of the week and chess club will be restarting very soon!

Staff training days and motivating boys

I am fully aware from my own friends that when schools have training days, there is often the temptation to think that they mainly involve drinking tea and catching up on emails. I can assure you that whilst there may have been some tea drinking, the two days at the start of this year were jam packed with sessions ranging from safeguarding, relationships education and teaching students with special educational needs, through to behaviour management and exploring the research on the latest theories on teaching and learning. One area I would like to talk to parents about further this year is about how boys tend to think and learn (I apologise for those parents of girls in our 6th form). There is significant evidence that boys underperform compared to girls because of attitudes and approaches rather than ability. Boys tend to be more motivated by rewards or recognition than internally motivated, and tend to be focused on overall performance rather than getting better at something. Many also don’t like taking public risks if they think they may fail and so ‘self-sabotage’ as a result. Of course these are generalisations and may be true or not true for many boys and girls, but it is useful to think about what this means in terms of the language we use, how we set tasks up in class and what messages we need to send. Why am I telling you this? Because it is as important at home as it is at school. If we can send a united message that effort counts most, that small steps make large ones and to compete more with themselves than others, then we will help motivate those that struggle to motivate themselves.

Borden cares

We had ‘Jeans for Genes’ day today, 17 September, to raise money for families impacted by genetic illness, and have a number of other charity events in the pipeline. School council and sporting representatives have been elected already and we are keen to make the student voice aspect of this as meaningful as possible. We also now have ambassadors at every key stage that were trained at the end of last year; anti-bullying ambassadors at Key stage 3, diversity ambassadors at Key stage 4 and wellbeing ambassadors at Key stage 5. All of these things show how our Borden value of “Kindness” is alive and well.

So thank you again for your support in complex times, and I do hope you can see that we are doing all we can to balance delivering what is important, whilst keeping our community safe. I hope you enjoy the rest of this newsletter and look forward to seeing many of you in person this year.

Kind regards

Ashley Tomlin
Headteacher

Aim Higher 

Aim Higher started after school this week and the Year 6 visiting boys enjoyed lessons in Spanish, French, Science and Music. The atmosphere was exciting and the boys are looking forward to coming back next week. 

Relationships and Sex Education

For years Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) has been a key part of the Personal Development (PD) Curriculum at Borden and so while the recent introduction by the Government of the Statutory Guidance on RSE has not resulted in huge changes for us, it has necessitated a review of our provision which has resulted in some new topics being introduced, and others being given more curriculum time.

For Terms 1 and 2 the following topics will be studied by the Year groups listed

Year 8 – Community; Rights and responsibilities where students will examine their values and our values, rightness and wrongness, human rights and healthy relationships

Year 9 – Staying Safe: Sex and relationships where students examine how attitudes towards sex and relationships have changed over the last 60 years, contraception, consent, STIs and STDs, pregnancy and miscarriage, teen pregnancy and the impact of it and abortion

Year 10 – Staying Safe: Sex and relationships where again will students examine consent, pregnancy and miscarriage, abortion and also fertility treatments. Followed by a small unit of work on Making Healthy Choices which will involve studying what we mean by healthy sexual relationships and will include a study of sexual harassment and violence

Year 11 – Students will begin the year by reflecting on their future and how best to utilise their time, skills and opportunities to realise their potential. We then move onto a unit of work on Making Healthy Choices during which students will complete their work on alcohol and drugs from Year 10, study testicular health, consent, pregnancy, miscarriage and abortion

All content is planned to ensure it is both age and stage appropriate, with a focus on providing our boys with the necessary knowledge, understanding and tools to make good choices for life.

If you have any questions about this, or anything else relating to the PD curriculum then please don’t hesitate to contact me by email kmahoney@bordengrammar.kent.sch.uk or the usual school telephone number

Mrs Mahoney
Lead Teacher of Personal Development