1 November 2018
Support for each other
One of the main reasons why I choose to work at Walton-le-Dale is the support that students and staff show for each other. I see it in countless ways each day, sometimes in the tragedies such as the ways in which everyone supported the friends of Tim Hindle, sometimes in the way we celebrate other people's achievements, sometimes in the way that friends stick up for each other, sometimes in the quiet acts of kindness where people help someone who they don't know, but who is clearly upset. I have completely lost count of the number of times that students have come to me to ask me to help someone who they feel is struggling in some way. The opposite of this is when students encourage people to fight or harm each other - this is extremely rare at Walton-le-Dale and violence, verbal or physical, has no place in a civilised community. We have had one such incident this past week and so I just wished to make the obvious extremely clear - inciting a fight is absolutely and completely unacceptable at Walton-le-Dale and students who persist in enjoying the suffering and fear of others have absolutely no place at this school. We are a positive, supportive, compassionate, caring place - that is why so many parents and carers choose us as the school for their child.
School improvement
As you would expect, since Ofsted we have been very focused on making improvements so that we are a good school all the time. We commissioned two major recent reviews from external experts and the reports were published on our website this week: the Pupil Premium review is at https://www.waltonledale.lancs.sch.uk/parents/pupil-premium and the Science review is at https://www.waltonledale.lancs.sch.uk/about-us/ofsted. Both are highly constructive and extremely useful. I consider this a very good time to have a child at Walton-le-Dale - there is absolutely no element of complacency about our work - behind the scenes everyone is working incredibly hard to ensure that the quality of what we do is in line with the very best practice nationally.
Collection at the "back" of school
We are aware that an increasing number of students are being picked up by cars at the back of school by the bus lane and we are becoming a bit concerned about student safety with buses turning, poor visibility as cars come over the motorway bridge, very limited legal parking and lack of footpaths on "our" side of the road. Please could I suggest that you park some distance away from the front of school, ask your son or daughter to come out of the front of school and to walk to where you are parked. I do appreciate that we have seen an increase in the number of students being collected by car and that this has made the front of school very busy so the more that students can walk a few hundred yards to where you are parked, the better! The back of school is not a good alternative, for the reasons outlined above. Many thanks for your help - it is the safety of our students that is our primary concern.
@WLDHighSchool
If you don't already follow us on Twitter can I urge you to do so. It is a really quick way to keep up to date with all that is going on at school. The tweets are also shown on the left hand side of all the pages of the school website (except the homepage).
A couple of things happening this week....
- Author visit on Monday for Years 7 & 8 - Andy Briggs - author of "Drone Racer" and many other books...
- Theatre company in on Friday afternoon for Year 11 to enhance their understanding of the poetry elements of GCSE English
Very important upcoming event: Year 10 Parents' Evening - Wed 21st November
Have a good week!
James Harris
Headteacher
Posted by James Harris
Category: WLD Updates
