Hundred of Hoo
Principal's Bulletin
March 2022 - Issue 1
Aspire to the highest standards
Principal's Welcome
Dear Parents and Carers,
I hope this first Principal’s Bulletin finds you and your families well. Following the survey, it was clear you wanted regular communication and updates regarding life at the Academy. I will produce a regular bulletin to keep you updated with developments at the Academy.
It has been an incredibly positive start to module 4 for our students who are firmly settled back into Academy life following the half term break. We know that many challenges remain, not least the long tail of COVID but also concerns over the desperately sad Ukraine-Russia conflict. We have this week looked at ways we will support our students to discuss the events and their concerns as they unfold. In spite of this our students remain at their resilient best and continue to impress with their work ethic.
We recently collected Attitude to Learning scores (4 being the highest) for all pupils and it is so great to see every year group averaging ‘very good’ or ‘exemplary’ attitudes towards their learning; see table of results to the right.
I would like to express my gratitude for the support you continue to give our academy – all that we have done and all that we continue to do. The result of your support is always seen through the students from their attitude to learning to their outcomes academically and socially. We are incredibly proud of them and for your support we remain grateful.
Yours sincerely
Mr C Guerin-Hassett, Principal
Carl Guerin-Hasset | Principal
Behaviour on the buses
It has come to our attention that there has been an example of poor behaviour on one of Arriva’s buses which involved a very small amount of our students.
As an Academy we will always support our students, parents and local community by investigating issues that are brought to our attention; sanctioning appropriately in school those who have made poor behaviour choices. We will inform parents and the bus companies of the students involved. If there are repeated or serious offences, we will request that bus passes are retracted for a period of time in order to safeguard our students who behave impeccably on their journeys to and from the Academy.
The pupils involved in the recent poor behaviour have had their passes removed for 12 weeks and are completing community service around the Academy. We thank you as parents and carers for supporting us in this, the safe travel of all of our students needs to be a team effort between us all to ensure a consistent message reaches all of our young people regarding what is appropriate and acceptable behaviour in public.
Achieve to the best of our ability
Cross-Phase Offer at our All-through Academy
The Cross-Phase curriculum continues to be highly successful with pupils across the academy benefiting from the unique offer we are able to provide. Our primary pupils receive subject specialist lessons in Science, Humanities, Computing, MfL, Drama and PE. Our secondary pupils receive bespoke intervention in Numeracy and Literacy to ensure they are able to achieve to the best of their ability.
Parental and Pupil Survey
Nearly all of our primary parents were aware of our cross-phase offer and the vast majority agreed how positively their child spoke about their secondary lessons. Of these, parents agreed or strongly agreed that having lessons provided by secondary specialists was really beneficial to their child’s education.
Nearly all of our pupils agreed that they enjoyed their lessons with secondary staff and that our secondary teachers help them do their best.
Key Stage 3 and The MYP at The Hundred of Hoo Academy
Last year we began to embed the IB in 8 subjects (English, Maths, Science, Geography, History, MFL, Art, Drama). This year these subjects continued into year 8 and all other subjects began MYP in year 7. Enquiry walks of MYP subjects/lessons demonstrate that we are authentically embedding the MYP throughout all subjects. This means pupils are not only getting high quality subject knowledge but are also developing their knowledge of the world around them through the explicit inclusion of global contexts in all schemes of work. We often contextualised schemes with local contexts but the MYP has a greater focus on global contexts that means we are creating globally minded citizens.
We continue with our three year Key Stage 3, so pupils no longer select options at the end of year 8 that lots of parents with older children would remember, instead they continue with the broad and exciting MYP curriculum and select GCSE options in year 9. The deadline for options being returned is 25th March.
MYP Authorisation
We had our MYP consultant visit on the 12th to the 13th of January and feedback from our consultant was incredibly positive. He was incredibly complementary of all colleagues as they demonstrated their passion for MYP and how this was authentically embedded in their practice. He was very impressed with the way pupils could articulate the MYP philosophy and this matched with what he saw in lessons. The aim is to have our authorisation visit in module 6 (June/July).
Year 11 & 13 Pre Public Exams (PPE’s)
Over the next two weeks pupils in year 11 and 13 will be sitting the final round of PPE’s in preparation for their exams in the summer. These will inform their teachers of what content is needs to be revisited and revised before the exam season starts. Pupils have all been assigned personalised exam timetables which they can view via their MCAS app.
Revision Tips for Parents and Carers
Ensure your child eats breakfast For more information on the psychological benefits of breakfast, click here.
Diary Dates
Year 9 Futures Evening
Thurs 17th March.
Award Assemblies Module 4 - All year groups
Monday 28/03/2022- Friday 01/04/2022
STEM Day
Monday 28th March
Y10 Parents Evening
Thurs 31st March
Coming Soon - Parent Voice information evening