I hope you had a lovely Easter break. It was great to welcome students back into school on Monday and hear about what they’d been doing over the holidays. Uniform standards have remained impressively high and our thanks go to parents and carers for your support with this.

Year 7 returned to their first set of formal exams at Boroughbridge High School. We do exams for each of our year groups so that they get into the routine of exam hall conditions so by the time they get to Year 10, they feel confident in doing so. Year 7 have certainly risen to this challenge this week arriving fully equipped, entering and exiting the Exam Hall silently and carrying out each exam in full exam conditions. Over the next few weeks they’ll be getting their results, receiving confirmation of things that they do well and identifying areas for improvement.

Remaining on the focus of exams, with the GCSE and BTEC season rapidly approaching, Mrs. Bauwens, our Exams Officer, has reminded Year 11 students of the JCQ regulations and Year 10 will have a similar session next week.

Across the year groups, students have quickly settled back into school life and routines. We were pleased to welcome our Local Authority adviser on Thursday for a visit focused on Behaviour for Learning. We had a full day with visits to many lessons across the curriculum and year groups, along with observing Year 7 entering the Exam Hall at the beginning of the day, watching assembly, walking around at social times and speaking to groups of staff and students. It was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate the progress that we’ve made with high standards of uniform and behaviour being consistently observed. We will, of course, as I outlined in my Headteacher’s Update, continue on our improvement journey.

In assemblies this week, Mrs. Godsell-Wright has focused on resilience, talking with students about how they can develop theirs whilst using inspiring examples such as Russ Cook who, you may have read, completed a gruelling feat of running the length of Africa whilst facing many challenges along the way. Students were invited to give their own examples and, this morning, Year 7 students described how Greta Thunberg in her environmental campaigns and Marcus Rashford with his Free School Meals campaign had shown great resilience.

As part of their fundraising efforts, the Friends of Boroughbridge High School are organising the School Lottery. If you’d like to take part, please click here.

On Thursday, a group of Year 11 students took part in NYBEP’s employability skills scheme, learning all about the employment application process from CV writing and how to stand out from the crowd, to interviews and employability skills. They took part in activities that they might face at assessment centres and completed group challenges to develop their team work skills, critical thinking, planning and resilience.

We were delighted to welcome back Madame Reed from maternity leave before the Easter break and this week we’ve welcomed to the staff team our new Attendance Officer, Mr. Hepburn.  

For next week, a reminder that we will be holding a Scholastics Book Fair on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th April in the school library. The book fair will be open 1-1:30pm and 3:45-4:15pm for students to browse and purchase any books that they would like. Parents and carers are welcome to call in to the after school sessions too – please sign in at the main reception. The fair will be cashless and so students will need to either complete a ‘wishlist’ and purchase books online at home or pay via debit card.

Have a lovely weekend!