26 January 2024


January appears to have passed at a phenomenal pace. We are now members of Danes Educational Trust and this, combined with our highly successful Ofsted Monitoring visit of December 2023, has led to a renewed energy and purpose for the new year.


We are absolutely committed to the success of all our students at The John Warner School and, in light of all things legacy, our Year 13 and Year 11 students are a significant priority for us across the Spring and Summer terms 2024. As such, I am delighted to announce that Alex Quintin, our Head Boy, has received an offer to read Geography at Oxford University. His sustained engagement with his school, quiet determination and kindness, and sheer hard work have provided him with an opportunity which I am sure will be grasped firmly with both hands. Similar congratulations go to Louis Barnes who has, as a result of significant creativity and dedication to his chosen area of study, received an offer to study Architecture at Cambridge University. We are exceptionally proud of both boys. 


In keeping with our focus upon the Year 11 cohort, I would like to thank parents and students for both attending and fully engaging with their Parents’ Evening of last night, the first 'live' event of this type since the students joined The John Warner School in Year 7. I would like to remind you, further to this event, that the ‘Prepped for Success’ Programme continues apace, providing short, sharp, targeted bursts of intervention for identified students across our curriculum offer, while the National Tuition Programme is catering for students who need added support in Core subjects over a 12 week period. Please do ensure your child(ren) continues to engage in what is a phenomenal offer masterminded by Adele Wallis, our seconded Curriculum and Assessment advisor from Elstree Screen Arts Academy, and Clare Price, our Assistant Headteacher for SEND and Inclusion.


Congratulations to the 13 students in Year 9 who have seized the opportunity to take part in The Brilliant Club Scholars’ Programme and have over the course of the last three weeks undertaken their induction to the programme. The Scholars’ Programme provides students in secondary school with the opportunity to explore higher education and to build key skills to help them succeed in the next stages of their education. The Brilliant Club is working with students from our Year 9 cohort who will take part in a series of seven university-style tutorials, delivered in-school by a PhD tutor throughout the course of an academic term. The tutorials are based on the tutor’s area of research expertise, so our students will explore an inspiring, supra-curricular topic whilst developing key academic skills that support their attainment across the curriculum. 


On completion of the programme, students visit a university for a Graduation Event to celebrate their achievements and build their understanding of higher education, helping them make informed choices in the future and believe that they can succeed in university-style learning. 


In equal measure, congratulations and thanks go to our students in Years 12 and 13 who have engaged fully with the CoachBright mentoring training programme, co-designed with our Assistant Headteacher for Post 16, Steve Cove, and who are now working closely with their mentees across Key Stages 3 and 4 to ensure school engagement and contribution is encouraged through peer-to-peer support.


Please do take the time to read our January newsletter in full. As ever, the extent to which our staff, our students and our community are involved in and contribute to the world around them is quite exceptional.

Warmest Regards

Rachel Brindley
Interim Headteacher, The John Warner School

'Light the Darkness'
Holocaust Memorial Day

In advance of Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow, staff and students from The John Warner School attended the annual service held in the gardens behind Lowewood Museum this afternoon. Year 13 student, Annabelle O’Bryan, was chosen to read a poem of her own devising, further to having sent a selection of her poetry to the event organisers. A very real privilege and well-deserved, following her participation in the sequence of lessons delivered by colleagues at the school entitled, ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’: these were delivered in the latter two weeks of the Autumn Term 2023 and included a recognition and commemoration of the 85th anniversaries of Kindertransport and Kristallnacht.

Between November 1938 and September 1939, the Kindertransport saved the lives of approximately 10,000 children escaping Nazi terror and persecution while the Night of Broken Glass recognises the night of 9 to 10 November 1938 when the Nazi Party targeted synagogues and Jewish prayer rooms.

Thank you to those members of our community who have shared memories of and tributes to those lost in The Holocaust. These will be displayed from the beginning of next week in our Main Reception through purple floating lanterns lit in remembrance of all victims of genocide.

The John Warner School Combined Cadet Force (CCF)

Congratulations to Year 11 students Cdt Cpl Anthony Page, Cdt Sgt Eren Gunduz and Cdt Cpl James Forrest who have all been successful in applying to attend the Combined Cadet Force Senior Cadet Instructor Course taking place in Colchester from 16 to 23 February 2024. Over 200 cadets across the country applied for one of these sought after places and, as such, their success is significant.

The John Warner School is proud to host a flourishing Combined Cadet Force on site with over 90 students across all year groups currently involved. Below please find a snapshot of recent activities and significant success stories.

On the weekend of January 10  to 11, The John Warner School CCF ran a leadership training weekend, alongside competition training for our Combat Cadet and First Aid competition teams. This was a fantastic opportunity for cadets to get stuck into training for upcoming competitions or to engage with leadership tasks and problem solving.

In light of the above, we are delighted to announce that for the first time since the CCF was established at the school in 2019, the following teams have been successful in gaining an entry place to the following regional Cadet Force competitions this academic year:

full article

Broxbourne Nursing Home: Community Project

Aimed at bringing significant happiness into the lives of residents at Broxbourne Nursing Home, this community project focuses upon the delivery of various activities at the Home by our students, culminating in a Dance Show in the Summer Term 2024. 

At the end of the Autumn Term 2023, 32 students sent Christmas letters to the residents at the home, establishing the start of the communication and ‘live’ events that will take place across the Spring and Summer terms 2024. As such, yesterday at 11.00, a small group of students visited the home to take part in a 'Burns Day' poetry reading much enjoyed by the residents. 

Our students spent time making conversation and listening to the residents and their stories.   All the students were a real credit to the school and at the end of the visit sang Happy Birthday to one of the residents who celebrated her 100th birthday.

In an increasingly fractured world, community cohesion is a significant part of school life and education for character. As such, we hope that this project will help to prepare our students for a bright future informed by confidence, friendliness and compassion. Thank you to Ms Dennison for recognising this so clearly in her lovely email to Jill Bertolone on Monday:

‘Absolutely overjoyed with this project. 

We have loved ones in nursing homes and see the joy that children bring to them when we are there. 

Thank you for taking the time to arrange this. 

Michele (Maddie’s mum)’ 

'Poles Apart'

During the Autumn Term 2023, Ms Adams, Subject Lead for Geography, signed up The John Warner School to an Antarctica Flag event where the students could design a flag for Antarctica. 

Winning designs were to be sent to a team in Antarctica who would print them out and send a photo of the flag there. The design travelled with an electronics engineer in the British Antarctic Survey to the Halley VI Research Station and the Lifetime of Halley (LoH) site which measures the Brunt Ice Shelf. 

We are delighted, therefore, to showcase the flag designed by  Honor Stockwell-Pearson in Year 10 below: first in situ in our main school quadrangle and then on site at the Halley VI Research Station:

Year 8 Art Work

In keeping with the school’s belief in the power of the Arts in its broadest sense to support and develop students’ well-being, creativity and curiosity, please find below a celebration of class 8X1 Art and Design final piece outcomes. There is a fantastic array of compositional work on show here, displaying a solid understanding of the formal elements within art and also the artists studied across the Autumn term 2023. It has been a genuine joy to conduct Learning Walks of these classes and to see, first-hand, how the students’ work has developed.

Science Home Learning

And, finally, an innovative piece of Science Home Learning from Ella Sparkes in Year 8 is showcased below. Asked to challenge herself with a representation of the digestive system, Ella applied herself to the task in such a way as to suggest a complete immersion in all things biological.

Congratulations to

Year 12 students…

Artun Bolat, Ava Wenbom, Claudia Goroszkiewicz, Ollie Lake and Toby Stewart who, further to exceptional interview performance have been awarded £2,000 each by The Worshipful Company of Founders to support their Post-16 study and their journey to become the engineers and mathematicians of the future.

The Worshipful Company of Founders is one of the oldest livery companies in the City of London with its earliest records dated 1365 although there is evidence of a fraternity that is even older. Like other livery companies the main purpose of the company was to control trade in the City of London by setting standards and training apprentices who would subsequently become freeman of the Company indicating they were entitled to practise their art.

The Warner charity specifically supports The Worshipful Company of Founders university bursaries (currently held at Imperial College, Birmingham and Manchester universities) and an annual Warner lecture. Other charitable endeavour includes support for the work in both primary and secondary schools focused on science and engineering and more recently on apprentices based at the Brunel Centre in Bedford.

All things Engineering...

In keeping with the school's successes and engagement with engineering, we are also delighted to announce that Mr Stuart Higham has been nominated for the ERA Foundation’s David Clark prize, which recognises 'exceptional STEM educators in the UK who have gone above and beyond to inspire students to pursue engineering careers.'

Year 13 student & Tottenham Hotspur Striker… 

Persis Oteng, who received an international call-up to the Ghana U20 Women’s National Team to play in x2 World Cup qualifying games against counterparts Senegal over the course of January 2024 - a magnificent achievement.

And, last but not least, congratulations to Jake Evans who has been selected to represent Tottenham Hotspur Academy in the German Indoor Football U15 Junior Championship (12 to 14 Jan.) at the GETEC Arena in Magdeburg.

Intermediate Mathematical Challenge

On Wednesday 31 January 2024 students from Years 9 and 10 will take part in the Intermediate Maths Challenge organised by the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust. 

Wishing them all the best in their endeavours to achieve a Bronze, Silver or even Gold Award. 

Thank yous

Thank you, thank you, thank you….to you and the JWS team. 

The whole school community is in debt to you for this superb turnaround. The school is a very different place now than it was back in the summer and you have done it by taking the staff, students and parents with you. 

This is an enormous undertaking and to have come so far so soon is a testimony to your skill, tenacity and sheer hard work.  

I’m so delighted that the school will have a celebration at the end of this milestone. 

I am also heartened that the inspectors recognise the concerted effort of so many from within the school and across the trust. This is truly ‘making the difference together’ in action. 

We all recognise that this is only the beginning….but what a great beginning. 

Onward and upward. 

Josie Valentine
CEO, Danes Educational Trust