The Long Goodbye

Apologies for the long gap since my last post; this is an exceptionally busy time of year for schools as we write timetables, recruit staff for next year and of course support and encourage our year 11 students through their final weeks of compulsory education. These young people have been exemplary in their attitude and behaviour, setting a great example to younger students; still attending daily, in dress code, until the end of this week when they move onto their exam timetable. This means they can wear their own clothes to school and come in just for those subjects in which they are still to be examined — a taste of their sixth form experience to come.

Speaking of sixth forms, the London Borough of Richmond´s consultation on this matter ended on 6th May and the findings have just been made available. The findings make interesting reading, indicating strong support across the borough for school sixth forms. Hampton and Twickenham Academies will play a full part in the next stages of this process — watch this space.

One of the highlights of last week for me was attending the official opening of the new Teddington School building with Cabinet Minister Vince Cable MP unveiling the plaque. The impact of their magnificent building on the students was demonstrable in their pride in their school, and was something I was able to bring back to our own Parents´ Forum on Tuesday when the model and architectural flythrough of our new buildings were again on display. The plans for this are forging ahead with the demolition programme scheduled to begin on 16th July — the first day of the school holidays.

This short half term has seen many highlights, principal amongst which was the GCSE Music Showcase which involved more students than ever before. The 26 Year 11s who took part performed a range of classical and contemporary items, culminating in a superb ensemble piece which was performed twice to the enthusiastic audience by popular demand. Special mention should be made of versatile musician George Rutherford whose seamless (almost!) transitions from guitar to vocals to drums to keyboards were most impressive; the beautiful singing of Caroline O´Mahoney, Nicole Gear and Laura Herbert; and the very different — and deeply moving — performances by Nick

Patient, who accompanied himself on acoustic guitar. Many congratulations and thanks to our music teachers Jonny Logue and Selale Akdeniz, and our music mentors, former students Alex Deboeck and Reece Honeyball. Thanks also to uber-busy LST Chief Executive John Baumber for taking time out to attend — he was very impressed.

Other recent successes include our Year 7/8 combined cricket team, who notched up a victory over our sister academy Twickenham; and a personal triumph for Caroline O´Mahoney (see above) who has been awarded a sixth form place at the prestigious Brit School in Croydon, alma mater of Adele and many other of today´s stars. We will all be watching Caroline´s career unfold with great interest.

We have advertised several new teaching posts recently and have been very pleased with the fields for main scale teachers of maths, science and ICT; a welcome improvement on past years. It is very gratifying when good teachers want to come and work in our school. All candidates, including those who were unsuccessful, have been very positive about what they have seen of our academy and the new learning model — the words ‘exciting´ and ‘innovative´ frequently came up. Our student lesson observers have been brilliant and the quality of their feedback on the demonstration lessons taught by the candidates would stand comparison with any teacher´s — and indeed, any OFSTED inspector´s. Take a bow Greta Gidley and Zeeshan Bajwa.

I conclude this blog en route to the formal opening of Ipswich Academy, the third in our LST family. The opening of Ipswich is good news for all three academies, bringing additional resources into the LST in terms of shared services, staffing and monies for the curriculum. We have all come a long way since September and there´s been no let-up in the pace of the journey. Do keep reading!

Sue Demont