November and December seemed to fly past. We had the mock exams for Year 11 in their core subjects and Year 10 had their early entry mock as well. All students displayed excellent behaviour, and the mocks did their job in the sense it helped many students realise the importance of revision. To this end, we have been working really hard with students on revision techniques, using all the advantages that are available to them now, such as ‘itslearning’, from which they can extract all the resources that have been used in their learning to date, and SENECA, which is an excellent tool for testing their knowledge and practising the all-important retrieval techniques. In particular, I have worked with groups of Year 11’s to model to them how they can use SENECA to build revision mind maps in English Literature.

We have made it clear to the students that if they are doing an hour a day of revision between now and the start of their final exams, then they will be on track to do the very best they can.

Attendance update

In my last blog, I also said that I would keep you appraised of attendance to the College as this is so important in helping students with their learning. I am delighted to report that by the end of the Autumn term our attendance overall was above the national average at 92.2% compared to 91.7%. Likewise, Years 9 to 11 showed a good improvement on attendance from the summer term, with Year 11 being a whole 2% higher. Years 9 and 10 were both 1% higher. We also had 518 students in the College with attendance above 95% compared to the Autumn term of 2022 when we had 407 students. So, this autumn term we had 100 more students achieving 95% or above attendance than we did last autumn, which is just fantastic.

All of this shows that we are moving in the right direction in regard to that crucial engagement in education, and I want to thank all parents who are working in partnership with us to help each student attend College as much as possible.

STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths)

The main aspect of the College that I wanted to focus on in this blog is connected to the growth of our STEM programme. I am passionate about making sure that students have as much access to as many opportunities as possible, and in the Portsmouth, Havant and Waterlooville area we have a wealth of engineering companies who offer a vast range of opportunities to young people as they come out of education at different stages. As many of you will know, we invest heavily in our careers department and the way they can support students to ensure successful pathways post 16. It was with great delight that we were reaccredited in December 2023 with the GOLD standard for Investors in Careers. This is a real testament to the amount of work that Clare Mack and Beverly Brown do, to provide the best possible advice and opportunities for students. The assessor actually had no areas of recommended improvements for the College, as we were exemplary across the board.

However, Clare Mack and I have a plan to take the concept of preparation for apprenticeship to the next level and this comes in the form of our proposed Crookhorn Engineering Academy, which we hope to launch from September 2024.

Crookhorn Engineering Academy

A key part of this Engineering Academy is our partnership with the Engineering company WASP (part of Collins Aerospace) and Mr Morgan, our Head of Technology and engineering advocate. Mr Morgan has been hugely successful in building the strength of our technology department to what it is today, and at the very core of this is the strength of our engineering teaching team; Mrs Breeze, Miss Kitching and Mr Attwood.  I mentioned in the September/ October blog that our engineering results were some of the best in the country, so I am very keen to build on this area of excellence to benefit more and more students.  To this end, we have continued to invest significantly in this area regarding IT equipment, so we are working at industry level specifications and also in regard to specialist teachers.

I met with WASP Engineering in September, and together we talked about the importance of students understanding the wide spectrum of engineering and the need to break down the myths that are traditionally connected with the subject. However, it was agreed that a good, strong understanding of maths was key to progression, but it is important to understand what this maths looks like and the fact that it can be easily accessibly to most students.

The vision, therefore, for the Academy is: to help students understand the scope and potential within engineering and to have meaningful experiences within the industry to shape future aspirations.

The outline plan to deliver this currently looks like:

Mr Morgan has already done a lot of thinking and preparation to help bring this plan to fruition and with Mr Collins assisting him, I have no doubt that we will embark on a new and exciting engineering journey from September.

Aside from this development, I would just like to take the rest of the blog to showcase what we have achieved already this year in regard to STEM - covering all four of the subjects: science; technology; engineering and maths!!!

Senior Maths Challenge - October 2023

15 Year 11 students took part in the Senior Maths Challenge in October, which is a national competition aimed at students in Year 13 or below.  We are really pleased to say that 5 Crookhorn students achieved awards!

Henery G. (Bronze),  Fadl O. (Bronze), Angel V. (Silver), Ellie J. (Bronze), Archie C. (Bronze).

Williams Racing Trip - October 2023

Year 9 Engineering students visited Williams F1 Racing and every member of the team at Williams