Dear Parents and Carers

A huge welcome to the new academic year 2023/24. We are extremely excited about the opportunities the next 11 months will bring, and are looking forward to embracing these together with our brilliant students, our parents and carers and the wider community, including our alumnae.  Developing our highly valued community will remain a key priority for the year.

This year our primary focus with be the strategic delivery of our Vision and Mission:

Vision:  Developing uniquely talented young adults, who are independent, strong and confident.

Mission: A girls' grammar school creating a welcoming environment which draws the very best from all in our community.  Achieved by providing an ambitious education that stimulates creative and critical thinking, values diversity and facilitates dynamic personal development.

Within the classroom, we will do this by targeting our effort into further consistent delivery of our AHS Classroom.  This successful approach this year, along with our targeted 'First in Line' support for specific students, has been reflected already in our incredible A Level and GCSE 2023 exam results:

2023 GCSE and A Level Exam Results

We are simply delighted with our GCSE and A Level results, most importantly because the grades have given the students the tools they need to achieve their next steps but also because they are AMAZING!  All of these students experienced a torrid time through Covid and have shown resilience and courage in their approach to their studies; we are immensely proud of them.  

As I am sure you are aware, the Government is ‘flight-pathing’ English results back to 2019 levels; we are thrilled that AHS has ‘beaten’ this trend again in both GCSE and A Level; our 2023 results are significantly higher than our 2019 results.  

A Level Detail:

An impressive 47.5% of all entries were rated at A* or A (40% in 2019), and 75.4% were graded at A* to B (67% in 2019). Our students collected a total of 301 A* and A grades between them, sitting a total of 634 A Levels.  13 students collected 3 A* grades and 4 of these achieved an incredible 4 A*s. 62 students had 3 or more A or A* grades and our average grade was an A.  Brilliantly done by Year 13!

Headgirl, Yi-Toong said; ‘After a challenging two years, and despite these being the first proper exams we have sat, I am very happy to be going to my firm choice to study Journalism at a Russell Group university.  I would like to congratulate my peers for all their success and thank my teachers and the staff at AHS who have supported us during our time here.  I wish nothing but the best for everyone as we move on to the next chapter of our lives.’

All bar two of our students are placed for next year, with 81% accessing their preferred choice of university place. Ten are going to Oxford and Cambridge and overall, our lovely students will be leaving us to study at 59 different institutions, reflecting the careful research and decision making that they have done to help secure their futures.  We are immensely proud of all the well informed decisions they have made for their next steps; as well as the familiar subject choices, our students will study degree courses in subjects as diverse as Global Design Engineering, Practical Filmmaking, Archaeology, Musical Theatre Performance and Dance Education and Teaching. 

Eighteen students will be studying Medicine, 2 will study Dentistry and 3 Veterinary Science. 

We are delighted that 6 students have secured prestigious degree apprenticeships to begin their careers with organisations including Allen & Overy, Goldman Sachs and British Airways and other students are taking a year for personal development. 

GCSE Detail:

Well done Year 11, you also did brilliantly!  30% of our awarded grades were Grade 9, up from 20% in 2019.  56% were Grade 8-9, up from 46% in 2019 and 76.5% were Grades 7-9, up from 70% in 2019.  

We are delighted that record numbers of our students have chosen to stay with us into Year 12 and also that large numbers of external students have applied to join us.  We are significantly over-subscribed for 2023/24.

We take our responsibility to all our students immensely seriously, and look forward to exploring the joy of deeper A Level study to them all.  Congratulations, new Year 12.

 #AHSWalksTall

Return to School Details

Welcome back to all our lovely students and a particularly huge hello to our new Year 7s and any other new students joining us in any other Year Groups.  You are most welcome!

Please take note of the following dates.

Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th September - Staff training days - no students on site

Wednesday 6 September - Years 7 & 12 on site at 0845.  Year 7s to congregate in the Main Hall and Year 12s in the Harding Hall.  Year 7 students will drop their Chromebooks in the Dining Room on arrival so that we can apply the AHS license, which parents should have purchased on ParentMail.  We will walk Year 7 students to the bus park at the end of the day to ensure that they know where to board their bus.  If Year 7s are catching buses from elsewhere, please ensure they know where to go!  If you are collecting students, please do not park in the roads surrounding the school, as they get extremely congested.  Please either ask them to meet you in the Tesco car park or park there and come and meet them outside reception.  We often have new students unsure where they are meeting their parents, so please do make this clear to them!

Thursday 7 September - Whole School returns at 0845 - any new-to-AHS students should go to Reception.

Please can we remind parents and carers that they are not permitted to drop their daughters off on our site, we sadly do not have the capacity to enable this.  We suggest that students are dropped at Tesco and walk the short distance to School.  This also helps reduce traffic around the site, which increases student safety.  Thank you. 

Equipment List 

Please do bring PE kits on the first day back in case you have a PE lesson.  

A reminder of our equipment list:

● Ink pen/ball point pen/rollerball pen 

● Range of pencils e.g. 2H, 2B and HB 

● Coloured pencils or felt-tip pens 

● Ruler (metric 20cm at least) 

● Protractor 

● Set Square 

● Pair of compasses 

● Scientific Calculator (Casio fx-991EX Classwiz preferred) 

● Glue Stick 

● A Mini whiteboard and dry wipe marker - please note that this is a new requirement for this year

We expect students to be in the correct uniform and will be checking this thoroughly at the start of term.  Please see our full uniform policy here and note that we have clarified our expectations on hair and nails. If students colour their hair in an unnatural shade or get nail gels or extensions, we will ask you to make an appointment to get these rectified within 24 hours.  We really hope that we can avoid this additional expense and inconvenience.

Contact details for Heads of Year and Form Tutors

Please see the year group pages of our website for contact details for our Heads of Year, form tutors and Pastoral Support Assistants

Reminder of Term Dates

Please click on this link for the 23-24 term dates.  The 2024-25 dates are also on this page, which can be found under the 'What's On' tab on our website.

Please note that AHS will now close at 1300 at the end of each term; the private buses will run to these times.  This change does not apply to the half-term breaks.

Finally, following all the extensive coverage in the media over the last two days, we would just like to reassure all parents, carers and students that we do not have any reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in our school buildings and are therefore are not affected by this issue.

Wishing you all a very lovely weekend, and our sincere thanks for your trust and support.

Marieke Forster