14th January 09

Dear Parents and Carers,

I am pleased to inform you that we are now back to normal after the disruption caused by the snow, the heating failure and the burst pipes! We will continue to allow the students to wear boots or wellingtons to school as the roads and pavements remain dangerously slippery and would like to thank you for your continued support. Please be aware that our usual uniform policy applies and non-uniform items, eg, hoodies and brightly coloured scarves are not to be worn.

Two members of staff, Ms A Bussell and Ms H Foley have been seconded to the senior leadership team on a temporary basis. They will cover a range of responsibilities held by Mrs Swards who plans to take maternity leave in the near future. Ms Bussell will be managing the behaviour systems in school and line-managing the pastoral team and ensuring our structures are supporting students well. Ms Foley will manage the student reward system across the school and support our Newly Qualified teachers in their first year of teaching. Mrs Swards’ other roles of responsibility are to be shared across the other senior leaders in school. I would like to wish Mrs Swards the very best as she plans to be a mum, and to thank her for her hard work and support, particularly as she manages the handover of her roles and ensures plans are in place. We are all excited about the ‘new little arrival.’

After Easter we have two new members of staff joining Sale High School. Mr J Scully will be the Curriculum Team Leader for Maths, replacing Mr P Fearon who left Sale High School at Christmas to take on a new role in an academy in North Manchester. Mr Sculley comes to us from Two Trees Academy, Denton.

Mr B Fox will join us after Easter as an Assistant Headteacher who will primarily lead on the technology specialism across the school and within the community and so engaging partners and stakeholders in the development of the school. Mr Fox presently teaches at Broadoak High School in Partington. This term we were also fortunate to appoint Mr Adebanjo, a maths teacher from Winsford who is currently working with classes mainly taught by Mr Fearon. The students are responding well to him and he is determined to help them achieve their targets.

I do hope you enjoyed reading our recent edition of the school magazine ‘Inside Sale High.’ This highlights many events and successes and is a way of sharing our good news with parents and the local community. This term sees us working on a range of initiatives. Mrs Chapple, the Deputy Headteacher is planning a new curriculum for September which will impact especially on the current year 9 students as they plan for new courses in September. We plan to share this with parents both at the options evening and on our website. I have been working with staff on our SEF (School Evaluation Form) which is a lengthy document to support schools in evaluating themselves and then plan for new developments/improvements.

However, our main work has been ‘teaching and learning’ and this has been the focus of staff training. We have a teaching and learning group who have been sharing good practice and coaching others in a range of departments to ensure students are engaged in a range of learning styles and that they experience exciting cross curricular opportunities, through our schedules 1/2 termly Flexible Fridays, Thinking Thursdays and Enrichment Days.

Our main focus has been on Year 11 students and planning a range of intervention strategies to support them in all subject areas but particularly in maths. We have extra lessons about to start, smaller groups set up, one to one tuition available for some students, reward schemes and the support of an experience head of department. We also plan to create a maths tutor group for a targeted group of students which will be led by our advances skills teacher. It is now up to students to work hard, take part positively in the range of initiatives and make the most of the advantages available to them. We also welcome support from parents to ensure homework is completed and revision begins now. Please ask students about their learning,check their planners and encourage them to meet deadlines and be motivated to achieve their best.

Yours sincerely

Lynn Nicholls
Headteacher