Letters

Friday 1 July 2022

Dear Parents/Carers,

I am very pleased to be writing to you having welcomed many of you to a meeting at Falmouth School yesterday evening. My desire was to share where we are as a school, to outline the journey ahead and to hear the views of parents and families first hand.

Recruitment

Over the past few months, we have been on a serious recruitment drive and I am delighted that a significant number of new appointments have been made. The new colleagues who will be joining us in September, have already been into school to meet with students and staff and to prepare for the new term. Some of these appointments have come from within the school and I would like to congratulate Mrs Benney, who is our Assistant Headteacher with responsibility for Teaching and Learning and is the strategic lead for the Sixth Form and to Mrs Thirlby, who will be the new Head of Physical Education from September.

Curriculum and Assessment

Senior and Middle Leaders have been working on a full review of the curriculum where we have reflected on what we are teaching and when. The new Learning Journeys will be shared with you so that you can easily see what your child will be learning, how this is sequenced and where the assessments fit in. Moving forward, we will structure our curriculum around the three school terms, rather than the current four Learning Cycles. In the new Year 10, students have been able to select from four Options instead of three and this has offered greater breadth and balance of subjects to study in the examination years.

The School Day

In reviewing the curriculum, we have decided to move to five one-hour lessons and the new school day will look like this:

8.35am-9.00am                                 Registration & Tutor Time

9.00am-10am                                     Period 1

10am-11am                                        Period 2

11am-11.20am                                  Morning Break

11.20am-12.20pm                            Period 3

12.20pm-1.20pm                              Period 4

1.20pm-2.00pm                                Lunch

2.00pm-3.00pm                                Lesson 5

The start and end time for the day remains the same.

Student Voice

Our students are confident and articulate young people and it is important that we hear what they have to say about the plans for the future direction of the school. We will be involving them in ways in which they feel their voices are heard such as on-line surveys to ensure they feel they can be honest in how we can improve.

Uniform

The recent survey has revealed that most parents/carers are happy that they will be able to select either branded or non-branded items of uniform from Castle Sports and other high street outlets. We will also allow tailored black shorts to be worn from September.

We are welcoming our students at the front gate each morning and would invite parents/carers to join us from 8.10am-8.35am to see how positively we are greeting students as they arrive each morning.

Communications

In order to ensure that you can easily contact a member of staff when you have a query or would like to share information, please note the names, areas of responsibility and contact details as follows:

Step 1: Questions relating to learning and pastoral concerns

Member of Staff	Area of Responsibility	Contact Details
Mr Sheer	Learning Lead: Years 7, 8 & 9	asheer@falmouthschool.net
Miss Roberts	Learning Lead: 10 & 11	eroberts@falmouthschool.net
Mr Fewster	Sixth Form	sfewster@falmouthschool.net

 

Step 2: Questions relating to welfare and safeguarding

Member of Staff	Area of Responsibility	Contact Details
Mrs Holland	Years 7, 8 & 9	rholland@falmouthschool.net
Mrs Macrae	Years 10 & 11	mmacrae@falmouthschool.net
Mrs Hartley	Year 12	ahartley@falmouthschool.net

 

Step 3: Questions relating to wider school issues

Member of Staff	Area of Responsibility	Contact Details
Mrs de Sousa	Headteacher	bdesousa@falmouthschool.net
Mr George	Deputy Headteacher: Quality of Education (curriculum and student groupings)	ageorge@falmouthschool.net
Mrs Benney	Assistant Headteacher: Teaching, Learning & Sixth Form	cbenney@falmouthschool.net
Mr Cilia	Restorative Practice Lead	rcilia@falmouthschool.net
Mr Lumbers	Attendance, Careers and Personal Development Lead	blumbers@falmouthschool.net
Mr Hayward	Behaviour & Attitudes	Ahayward:falmouthschool.net
Mrs Brooker	SENCO	cbrooker@falmouthschool.net

 

We will always endeavour to get back to queries within 24 and no later than 48 hours during term time.

Family Learning Event

We will be holding a Family Learning Event on Thursday 14 July 2022 where we would like to launch a love of reading event which is a summer challenge for our "Falmouth Family" to read one hundred thousand pages over the summer. Further details will follow.

Parent Forum Meetings

Many of you have expressed an interest in joining these meetings which will be on a range of topics and we will let you know when these are scheduled when we publish the new school calendar before the end of this term.

 And finally…a heartfelt thank you from my Leadership Team and I to you all for your continued support. We appreciate the honest and frank discussions that we have been able to have in recent days and weeks. As we share more details of how you can communicate with us, we truly hope that our partnership can flourish.

Yours sincerely,

Brenda de Sousa

Headteacher