Welcome Back

Happy New Year everyone, I hope that you all had a good break and are ready for the year ahead. It’s been lovely welcoming students and staff back into school this week, helped of course by some crisp sunny days as opposed to the seemingly never ending rain in late December.

A new calendar year is of course a great time for fresh beginnings and I hope that students are looking forward to all that is on offer in 2024. Of course it is a very big year for our oldest students as they prepare for and then sit their final exams. We are currently gearing up for the formal ‘Trial Exam’ season which starts in just over a week’s time from now. On Wednesday this week students were able to opt into the most recent round of after-school independent revision sessions known as Pomodoro. 137 students were there this week, working hard alongside their peers and many members of staff. Not bad for the first week back!

A theme of my blogs last term was on the subject of attendance to school, something that was in the news again just after the New Year. We know for an absolute fact that there is a clear and direct link between good attendance and good educational outcomes, and vice versa. Therefore I’ll keep mentioning it as although overall attendance at MHS is higher than the national average for secondary schools, it is still well below pre-pandemic levels. You’ll be aware that in the final weeks before Christmas we tried to incentivise daily attendance and this does seem to have had an impact. In the final week of term MHS attendance was 2.7% above national which is much more than the usual difference. We’ll keep raising this issue as, along with reading for pleasure, attendance is the most important factor in a child’s education.

Best wishes,

Joe Barker

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