News & Headteacher Blogs

I hope you are all well and making the most of our greater freedoms as restrictions ease.  We welcome the news this week that from Monday, 17 May, in line with step 3 of the roadmap, face coverings will no longer be required for students and staff in classrooms.  However, they will still be required to wear them in communal areas like corridors, walkways, dining rooms and toilets. The announcement which was made by the Prime Minister on Monday of this week, hopefully marks another step in the return to normality and I know will be a huge relief to students and teachers.

May is an incredibly busy month and began with our Year 8 parents evening. This was held online - as we have done for all our parents’ evenings this last academic year - and once again the feedback we received was positive.

Our Bronze Duke of Edinburgh students meanwhile are readying themselves for a practice expedition at the end of the month. Forty-two students will take part in the overnight event in Oxfordshire, and we look forward to hearing about their trip.

You should have received a schoolcomms this week about our latest parent forum, which takes place next Wednesday, 19 May from 6-7pm via Microsoft Teams. This session will focus on catering, and the school’s continual focus on improving catering in school and serving healthy and nutritious food. Please attend if you can as we really value your feedback, and we hope that this session will allow us the opportunity to set up a SNAG (School Nutritional Action Group). If you are interested, please email Mrs Anderson danderson16@thedownsschool.org and she will forward you the event link.

We have recently announced some new internal appointments within the school, and I would like to congratulate the following teachers on their new positions; Miss Bermingham as Assistant Headteacher Ethos & Achievement for KS4, Miss Brennecke as Head of Music and Mr Hutchins as Deputy Head of 6^th form.  These posts were advertised both internally and externally and we had a large volume of high quality applicants, so it is a huge achievement that our own staff have been internally promoted; I feel a great sense of pride that we have such talent within the school.

Finally, we are taking part in a nationwide competition run by National Book Tokens to win £5,000 of books for the school library. If you can, please visit www.nationalbooktokens.com/schools and enter ‘The Downs School Compton’ to nominate us. Thank you.

I hope you and your families have a good weekend.

Mr Prosser

Headteacher