A few weeks ago we held a series of events for Anti-bullying week. KS 3 tutor groups prepared short assembly presentations which included poetry, songs, videos and talks on the topic of how to tackle bullying. There was a competitive element to this assembly as the senior team were asked to judge the best contribution. A hard task and indeed it was decided that quite a few of the entries were worthy of further credit and implementation. However, as a Senior Team we were really impressed with the thoughtful message and confidence of Alana Teasdale, Harvey Boddy and Lily Ferguson who performed ‘Your (sic) not innocent’ by Codie Kaye. As a reward, Mrs Stanyon hopped in a taxi with the students and went off to The Forum in Darlington. They spent a special morning, recording their version of the song and experienced the complexities of making a CD. We will be using the track to promote anti bullying strategies around school. Watch out for the video.
The school site remains a priority for me. This week we have been visited by the senior Health and Safety officer from the county, who was assessing our response to recent events and the safety of the site. He praised us for the improvements we have made since January 2016 and said I was very safeguarding aware. Which I am. I must stress that any capital spending, such as fencing and locking mechanisms come from ‘ring fenced’ budgets, which have to spent on these sorts of things. We are not allowed to utilise certain ‘pots’ of money for educational resources if they are for capital improvements.Hopefully this reassures parents that their children’s education is not suffering, because I spent money on a fence, this is simply not true.
The Youth Club goes from strength to strength following its recent relaunch. The fencing has ensured that the young people who are attending Youth Club are not disturbed by those just wishing to mess around and over the last few week numbers have grown. The fence may have divided the community, but it is there to protect our young people and I will not make any apologies for that.
