Here We Go...

Welcome back. Here we go again. No. Not again. This is a fresh start, a new year. New classes, new desks, new ideas. The dawning of new era. OK, maybe that is a tad pretentious, but it was necessary to get The Specials onto the blog this week.

Last year's results were, thanks to the hard work and dedication shown by all, the best the school has seen. This went from the A* grades achieved in both Language and Literature by top set to the G - D grades which represented excellent achievements for some of those pupils, not just the C/D borderline we are forced to focus upon. The challenge now is to improve upon that - and not just because of the external pressures that we are all too aware of.

We need to improve the results because they are the ultimate reflection of our work. If we stand still, the attainment and outcome of our pupils will stand still. Real professional development and pride mean that WE want to attain just as much as we want our pupils to attain. The work that has been underway for the last eighteen months has just been the start - it's got us into a good position, but we must aim higher, regardless of wider developments in the field of education.

This year, I see us experimenting with new ways of engaging classes, innovative styles of assessing progress, and developing our already stimulating curriculum into a bespoke, engaging, brilliantly differentiated one. We can start to break down the factory model of education, and focus on the learning outcomes of all of our pupils. It won't always be easy; there will be ups and downs. There will be times when it feels like it isn't going well, like you're falling down. Warning - I am about to go into PE teacher doing a motivational assembly with YouTube videos mode. It reminds me of a story I read this morning after I woke up hungover whilst researching the content of this blog. A South Korean Ice Skater fell over 20,000 times. And she won Olympic gold. If she had fallen over 20 times, she would have been a failure, but she kept getting back up. Even some of the greatest sports people ever fail, and use it as motivation. 

We will face challenge, and we will meet success, and we will meet them with the same attitude. We will work together as a team to achieve our shared and individual goals. And we will succeed.