Our Ref: DK/jh/gltr/jan 25

8th January 2025

Dear Parent/Carer

I hope you and your family are well and you had a pleasant holiday season. January’s update letter will hopefully be of help to you, with a focus on:

• Information on the Curriculum Review Meeting and early finish for students on Tuesday 14th January
• The next SEND Community Cafe event for Parents/Carers led by the Speech and Language Therapist
• Subject Parents’ Evenings this half-term for Year 11 and Year 7
• Website update - Attendance and Punctuality information for parents and carers
• Other key dates for the half-term including dates for the School Production of Sister Act.

Curriculum Review Meeting - Tuesday 14th January (Students finish at 1pm)
As was mentioned in the December update letter, following on from the recent assessments in Y7/8 we will be holding a KS3 Curriculum Review afternoon on Tuesday 14th January. Subject teams will be reviewing the performance of students in these assessments and working together on how to make changes to the curriculum and lesson resources in the weeks ahead to help support the identified areas for development. 

To enable staff to do this as effectively as possible, we are providing additional time through an early finish for students that afternoon. Students will finish at 1pm and will be dismissed by their Period 3 teachers with the following key details also relevant for you to know:

• Students who are eligible for Free School Meals will be able to collect a packed lunch from the Food Pods/Dining Hall before going home.
• Detentions will be held in the normal venues at 1pm so any student with a detention will be delayed in leaving school. You will be notified as normal via Arbor if your child has a detention.
• Period 4 teachers will be instructed to set additional homework for students via Google Classroom or an alternative platform. 

Parental Engagement/SEND Support - Community Cafe event on Tuesday 14th January
Following on from the first SEND Community Cafe event in November with a focus on Autism, we will be hosting another SEND Community Cafe on Tuesday 14th January from 11am - 12.30pm in the Library. 

The focus of this SEND Community Cafe is to provide expert support for parents from the school’s Speech and Language Therapist along with Mrs Robinson who is the SENDCo at Holyhead. Themes that will be covered include:

• Speech pronunciation and fluency skills
• Expressive language
• Understanding language
• Social interaction and play skills
• Attention and listening skills

If you are interested in attending this event please contact SEND@holyhead.crst.org.uk with your details so we can provide you with more information in advance.

Subject Parents’ Evenings this half-term
There are two Subject Parents’ Evenings coming up in this half-term and parents will be sent information in advance of each of these events with the information on how to book appointment slots with your child’s teachers directly via Arbor as usual. The dates of these important opportunities is below:

• The Year 11 Subject Parents’ Evening is on Thursday 23rd January from 4-7pm. 
• The Year 7 Subject Parents’ Evening is on Thursday 13th February from 4-7pm. 

Upcoming website update: Attendance and Punctuality - Processes and policy
In a number of previous letters I have written to update you on the successes of our work on attendance, including notifying you of the awards and recognition we have received for our well above national average attendance over the last two years. 

The work to secure such positive attendance is collective and your continued support is absolutely crucial in this. To support parents and carers we will be updating our information on the school website to provide all parents/carers with an overview of the key information linked to attendance at Holyhead including:

• Key times in the day - when is a student recorded as late?
• Reporting absence - who do you inform and by when in the morning?
• Requests for absence - what is required and how is this done?
• How we follow up on absences and why we need to do this
• Understanding our Attendance Policy

This information will be on the website from Monday 13th January and we will send out an Arbor message which contains the concise overview document itself as well as the link on the website when this is live.

Other key upcoming dates and events in January / February

• We have Y10 workshops on improving communication led by Talk the Talk on Wednesday 15th January.
• We will be hosting the annual Spelling Bee finals event on Wednesday 29th January from 4pm.
• The Spring term Mock Exams for Y11/13 begin on Monday 3rd February and run through to Friday 14th February.
• The live shows of our production of Sister Act will be on Wednesday 5th February and Thursday 6th February with doors open from 5.30pm for a 6pm start. More details will be released soon on how to buy tickets.

I thank you as ever for your time in reading this letter and wish you and your family good health and fortune for the weeks ahead.

Yours faithfully,

Mr D Knox
Principal