Richmond
EDUCATIONAL CURRENT NEWS
Online Safety – Tips and recommendations
The online world is posing an ever-increasing risk to children at any age, and it is important that schools, parents, and carers work together to take an active role in teaching children about online dangers. Learning how to act safely when using the internet is an incredibly important part of children’s safeguarding.
We are continuously working on improving our online safety education and protection in the school, but we also want to give more support to parents at home. Therefore, we want to raise awareness regarding this important topic to further increase the safety standards for our pupils. If you have not done so yet please sign up for the online safety platform NOS (https://nationalonlinesafety.com/enrol/richmond-park-school), one of the most useful platforms for supporting parents with online safety in the UK. As soon as you sign up as a parent of a Richmond Park School student you have access to courses, recommendations and much more information regarding online safety for your children. Many of the courses are available in Spanish and English.
Additionally, our parents will soon have access to a new section on our ´Parent Area´ entitled ´Online Safety – Recommendations´. Within this new section you will have access to information regarding highly relevant topics such as: setting up parental controls, managing screens and controlling online times of children, risks, appropriate usage of applications and much more.
We will continue to deliver helpful information to our parents and will be a supporting partner for you in your efforts to maintain a safe online environment in your home.
Recommended films for KS2 onwards families
“Trece vidas” on YouTube
“La inspiración más profunda” on Netflix
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN EYFS/PRIMARY AND SECONDARY?
As we step into the new academic year, we are delighted to share some exciting updates and highlights from Richmond Park School’s Primary & Early Years stages.
We should like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your continued support and involvement in our school community. Together, we shall make this academic year a memorable and rewarding one for our students.
Welcome to our new Secondary Leader
We are delighted to welcome our new Secondary Leader. Mr Brian Conway has worked in education within the UK for 32 years in a variety of successful schools in London and the East of England. He was appointed Headteacher of Notre Dame High School in Norwich in 2010 and led the school to be rated as ‘Outstanding’ by OFSTED. He was appointed as a ‘National Leader of Education’ by the UK Government, to help schools develop their teaching, learning and curriculum. Over the past 6 years he has formally taken on leadership of 9 extra primary schools, in addition to Notre Dame.
During his time at Notre Dame, he led the school to become a leader in applying the latest educational research in the classroom and in training teachers at all stages of their careers. The examination results at Notre Dame are superb, and many students have gone to the best universities in England and abroad.
Mr Conway is passionate about a wide and exciting curriculum for all students, and ensuring every child achieves their full potential academically, as well as developing excellence in sports, creativity and Languages.
I am hugely excited about taking on my new role as Secondary Leader at Richmond Park School. I have visited several times over the past few months and am incredibly impressed by the facilities, the dedicated teachers and the happy and enthusiastic students. We will work together to introduce the International Baccalaureate, an exciting course which I have previously introduced at my former school. I am really pleased to be part of the next stage of Richmond Park School, as we grow and offer even more exciting courses and opportunities for our students. I am very much looking forward to getting to know staff, parents and most importantly students and will dedicate myself to achieving even greater educational excellence at Richmond Park School.’
KS3 & 4
In secondary school, we have been delighted to welcome families for presentations about the academic year ahead for students in Key Stages 3 and 4. We are very excited about the plans for the curriculum and secondary school development in the year ahead and will hold information meetings for further year groups throughout this autumn term. Our communication with families is so important and vital to build and maintain our community. Specific dates of each Year group’s sessions have been communicated to families and are all on our school calendar. The sessions are all led by Mr Conway, our new Secondary Leader and we look forward to welcoming you and continuing our learning journey together.
House Captains
We are delighted that we now have House Captains for Year 7 to 10 in our Secondary section. Our House Captains have put themselves forward to be leaders within their Years and Houses and support the development of this important aspect of Student Leadership across the school. Our House Captains will take the opportunity to develop their own leadership, give something back to the school, motivate other students and celebrate the achievements of the Houses to which they belong.
House Captains will initially be involved in the various House sporting events but will play a wider role as the year progresses, participating in events and representing the school. Every year in secondary we intend to ask for nominations so that many of our students get the chance at some point to develop their leadership through this important initiative.
Merits in Secondary Section
We have recently introduced the merits system to reward our students in the Secondary Section and students seem very keen to work hard and receive Merits, many parents will have already seen that there may be comments in student planners regarding Merits.
Teachers will award your child Merits for:
- Exceptional work/effort/participation
- Increased/sustained effort in work/extended learning
- Random acts of kindness/going above and beyond
- Representing the school in their own time
- Community service and support for other students
Numbers will be on reports at the end of each term and each merit is also worth a House Point, it is very encouraging to see the enthusiasm with which our Secondary students have responded and congratulations to all those who have received Merits so far. We will be awarding certificates once we have some students who reach 25 or even 50 Merits.
Mr P training for staff
Mr P is one of the foremost educational experts and one of the most popular online speakers from the UK regarding using technology in the classroom.
As he is in such high demand, we have had to pursue Mr P vigorously to get him to lead a CPD session with our staff, and we managed to book him for a whole day on 5 September. He is on a mission to get teachers using technology more effectively in the classroom in order to have a significant impact on teaching and learning and to get teachers working smarter not harder. Alongside his training for schools, he shares content through his supporter page on Facebook and his website ( www.mrpict.com ). He is an expert in enhancing the curriculum through a variety of apps, tutorials, and the correct use of technology in the classroom.
Training our teachers and enabling them to access information about the latest trends in pedagogy and learning strategies is a major priority for us as an innovative educational centre.
SPORTS
Morning sports clubs programme
All morning clubs have started very well, in a competitive atmosphere and with a really good attitude from all students. As you all may know, as a sports centre we believe these clubs will bring our students a number of benefits and lead them into a healthy lifestyle. Some of these benefits are introducing sport as a morning routine, improve physical condition for participants, increase daily productivity and set higher levels of responsibility and commitment for participants.
In case you have not seen them, here is a list of our 2023/24 morning sports clubs:
Inter-house tournament
Richmond Park School will be commencing inter-house sports competitions with the aim to develop skills and resilience, as well as participation and a sense of teamwork for the houses.
The great advantage of these events is that they combine exercise with thrill, excitement, and competition. Sports and games are means of mental and physical growth and create a great opportunity for the children to learn many things. They learn how to maintain their mental balance in different scenarios and how to tackle difficult situations.
Sports develop their sense of friendliness and team spirit.
This week: Year 7 & Year 8 Girls football match BADGERS vs. OWLS result was:
Improvements
Once again, this year we have had a number of major building development works going on during the summer. Three major categories of improvement have taken place:
- extraordinary repair works due to the 29 May floods in the area
- routine maintenance works that happen in the summer so the school year does not get interrupted
And finally, development works, these improvements are supported by the school making additional investment that we know will improve the learning and teaching experience around the school, led by the decision making of senior leadership. They can be of one-off projects or part of our ongoing building development. This year, we have:
- opened 4 more classrooms in Secondary, including a science/mathematics theory lab
- re-structured existing rooms to include a Secondary Leader office and a Finance Department office
- reorganised all the outside space in front of the Secondary building to make it more functional and attractive for the different year groups using it
- included a fume cupboard in the science department and an industrial oven in the art department in order to widen the curriculum offer in the school
- set up the performance centre as a streaming centre so any event can be shared online with the whole online world
We hope everyone benefits and appreciates the constant effort behind these improvements aimed at being the best possible learning centre for our students.
HOUSES
Richmond Park School’s Houses score chart
MERCHANDISING
Richmond Park School’s merchandising
We invite you to visit our website’s section “SHOP” where you will be able to see all the merchandise with our Houses’ logos. Please remember this is a personalised service, so orders cannot be received with less than two weeks notice.
