Dear Parent or Guardian
My annual Easter whole school assembly this year talked about the importance of sacrifice, commitment and growth. This is made even more poignant by the fact that many of our year 11 or year 13 students will be attending Easter School, where both staff and students give up some of their holiday time to prepare for the rapidly approaching examinations. If your child is in one of these year groups, then please offer them your full support and encouragement, reinforcing the need to revise balanced against the need to look after themselves in the process. If you need any help or advice, then we are always here.
Building Work and canteen closure: This will likely be the last time that I will write to you to talk about the progress of our new building. This is because by the next newsletter it will have been handed over to us and we will have started the process of moving in. Priority will be given to PE and the new classrooms since we will lose the three temporary classrooms by the May half-term. It’s exciting, but heralds the other, even more disruptive, internal work that then begins. On this point, we will be losing the use of our canteen for the last half-term of the year (June to July). We have looked at all other options, but I’m afraid we will all just have to live with a reduced offer in this period. We will be working with our suppliers to offer a range of food for students, but it will unfortunately mean, only cold food for the final summer half-term. On the basis that these are the hottest months, we are hoping that the impact will be lessened. Of course, there is always the option of packed lunches, and it is only for six weeks. When we return after the summer, we will have a bigger canteen and eating space, which will ultimately benefit everyone. Just for information, our new block resulted from KCC investment because Borden agreed to increase its intake to 150 students, whilst much of the internal work resulted from Borden winning successful bids for national pots of money.
New Opportunities: Hot on the success of Luke Littler, the 16 year old runner up in the world darts final, we have set up our own Key Stage 4 and 5 darts club. Mr Phillips and Mr Dale will be running a Tuesday night darts club after half-term and, if your child is interested, please send them to find out more! We also saw the training of 25 amazing year 12 students to become mental health first aid ambassadors, giving back to Borden by working with our younger students who may need a little extra support. This is truly Borden at its best.
Mobiles: You will be aware that this has become a hot topic of conversation nationally and that the government has issued new guidance for schools. Whilst we need to avoid any knee-jerk reactions, it is important that we think about this carefully. We have comparatively few mobile related incidents at Borden, and students generally ‘buy in’ to our existing rules. However, the research evidence and government guidance must be taken seriously. We will write to you in the summer term once we have considered this carefully in context.
Recruitment and Retention: We are now into the recruitment phase of the year and I think it important for parents to know how extraordinarily difficult this currently is. Recruitment targets have been missed by the government consecutively for 9 years with just 57% of their secondary target being met this year. In some areas this is even worse i.e. Physics had only 17% of the target met. It is now common to receive only one or maybe two applications, and sometimes not even that. School trusts are resorting to financial ‘golden handshakes’ for teachers in an attempt to try and attract quality personnel. This has a knock on effect of teachers moving on more quickly resulting in more use of supply teachers during the course of the year. Supply teachers themselves are in short supply and so even more costly to school budgets and, as we know, are not generally ideal in creating a sense of continuity or consistency. The same is actually true for support staff in schools who are equally hard to recruit at the moment. The repeated below inflation pay rises and increased workload for teaching staff is often discussed in the news. However, it is also important to note for you as stakeholders, that any pay increase given that is not fully funded, hits school budgets and therefore impacts on the students in other ways, i.e. class sizes, subject offers, textbooks, maintenance etc. A number of trusts, or groups of headteachers have taken the step to write to parents to ask them to lobby their MPs to prioritise education budgets and so prevent this from happening. I have taken the decision to explain it here instead and will leave it up to you!
Goodbyes: On that note, we unfortunately have to say goodbye to three of our highly valued staff members. Ms Stephenson has worked ‘behind the scenes’ in a variety of roles, most recently as a finance officer. Some of you may already know that Dr Stone has worked a day a week at Christ Church University focusing on educational research and is now taking up a highly regarded full time position there. We will be staying in touch and hopefully working together on some future educational research projects. Many of the students, and possibly even parents, will know Mr Hewitt who has been our school caretaker for nearly 30 years. He is taking a well deserved retirement and, I am sure, will continue to stay a close part of our Borden community through the Old Bordenians.
Vertical Tutoring: On the 19th March we ran an event, as we have started to do more regularly, where students meet in a mix of year groups from year 7 to 13. This is known as ‘vertical tutoring’. Whilst some schools do this on a daily basis, the approach is to run it once a term, with the aim of once a half term going forward. This time, it was focused on critical thinking, where students across year groups undertook a NASA prioritisation task involving problem solving and class debate. It also gave us an opportunity to explore some student voice on where they think they currently do the most critical thinking and to consider what more they would like to see in their lessons and tutor time.
Anti Bullying: As you may already know, we have been working with the organisation ‘United Against Bullying’ this year which has included work with both staff and students. Our recent questionnaire from students shows that students rate their school experience and wellbeing as much better than the national average. That said, there is always more work to do with bullying and so, as part of this we are producing an easier to read summary for students and parents of our current anti bullying policies (included later on in this newsletter!)
Finally, we received a congratulatory letter from the minister for schools this term. It recognises Borden’s positive outcomes last year, placing us in the top 30% of schools in terms of progress, and in the top 16% of schools where students have taken the full Ebacc suite of subjects. This is a nice recognition of the hard work of our year 11 students last year and the support given to them by staff and parents. To finish where I started, please encourage and support your child if they are in years 11 and 13, asking for help if needed. I am very aware of the important role that our parents play in our community and would like to thank you again for that continued support. Have a wonderful Easter break and I look forward to writing to you again in the summer.
Ashley Tomlin
Headteacher
Congratulations to the year 7 and 8 students that have achieved their Spring Term Accelerated Reader Targets. A massive Well Done to Adam in year 8 who has achieved 500% of his target. Certificates, achievement points and prizes will be given out when we return in April, it was good to see so many boys reach and exceed their targets. 
