BartholoNews, our school newsletter goes out weekly to staff, students and parents/carers, with a circulation of over 4800. We are looking for a BartholoNews title design for the school year 2024/2025. Last year the winning student design (below) was by Mavis in Year 13.

The new winning design will head up our weekly newsletter throughout the new school year and will include a by-line for the student designer. You will also win a certificate to include in your portfolio of work and a £30 Amazon voucher.

This is a great opportunity to have your work seen by our whole school community. It would look great on personal statements, CVs or even
House Colour applications!

Design Brief

• The design should be bold and clear and must feature the newsletter title BartholoNews.
• It should include our school logo or space for us to add the logo
• The design can be in any style or media
• Download and use the Design Template (also available at the art office, top floor Curnock) and to ensure your design has the correct dimensions.

Competition Rules

• The competition is open to any current St Bart’s student
• The deadline is midday on Friday 7 June 2024
• Entries should be either sent to bartholonews@stbarts.co.uk or delivered to the art office (top floor Curnock) – remember to tell us your name and tutor group.

 

On Friday last week, the touring theatre company, Box Clever, made their third visit to school this year. This time they were performing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to Year 9. This fast-paced, exciting performance really captivated students and brought the play to life. Students were eager to get involved in the workshop opportunity afterwards, and it was great to hear them speaking (shouting) lines as the love triangle between Paris, Romeo and Juliet followed its devastating, but predictable course.

Each year, we conduct surveys with our key stakeholders. We have recently surveyed all staff and, after Easter, will be sharing a survey with all students. As part of this commitment, we are also very keen to capture your views and to understand more about your experience of the school and, through your eyes, to understand more about your child’s experiences too.

We would be very grateful if you could complete this online survey by the end of this half-term. We will close the survey on Thursday 28th March at 13.00.

Your voice matters

It is important to recognise that we do engage very carefully with data that emerges from our surveys. We generate our School Development Plan each year with close reference to stakeholder responses. With this in mind, it is important to highlight some of the key areas that were identified by parents/carers last year and to indicate some of the ways this has informed our work in 2023-4.

• We have recently agreed some significant changes to the terminology and colour coding on school reports. We are confident that these changes will address some of the concerns previously raised. The new format will take effect next academic year and we will share details in due course.

• Informed by parent/carer feedback on the user-friendliness/functionality of our website, we are in the process of planning and developing a new website. This will be responsive on mobile devices and will enable parents/carers and all other visitors to more easily explore and access school information. We are planning to launch in September 2024.

• Last year’s survey raised some significant queries about the availability of curriculum information. We are confident that the new website will enable us to present information in a clear and accessible format. Planning for the website has prompted a comprehensive review of the curriculum information that we make available to parents/carers.

• We are also planning to migrate to a new Management Information System in January 2025. This will enable new and more efficient forms of communication with parents.

• As part of our commitment to listening to parents’/carers’ views, we have been very pleased to host more discussion forums as part of our Parents’ Association meetings. The session on Homework was particularly well-attended and we will continue to look to engage with parents through this route and will promote sessions through Bartholonews.

• Reading emerged as an area for development from last year’s survey. The promotion of reading through lessons (in all subjects) and through our excellent library has been a key part of our Development Plan this year. We recently invested in a significant piece of software – Reading Plus – that is already having an impact on Y7 students and some other groups across the school. This will remain a priority area for us.

Please share your views with us. It really makes a difference.

Students enjoyed our traditional non-uniform day last Friday, 15 March to celebrate Red Nose Day. This national fundraiser is about having some fun and raising money to support people whose lives are incredibly difficult.

Well done to our Year 9s who took part in a 1-mile fun run on Luker Field during their PE lessons to help encourage even more donations.  Many students wore something red in addition to their PE kit.

Thank you so much to everyone who donated. We raised £1149 plus £232 through gift aid, bringing the grand total to £1381.

You can still support all these activities by making your donations here. To increase the impact of your donation, you can Gift Aid it. Thank you in advance for helping us raise as much money as possible.

On Wednesday 28 February and Thursday 7 March we had the pleasure of welcoming an MFL specialist theatre company called Onatti. This company performs plays in French, German and Spanish, suitable for beginners and immediate level learners. The play we saw in German was called ‘Der Babysitter’ which tells the funny story of a babysitter agreeing to allow her ex boyfriend to come and help her but after an argument she walks out leaving the teenager in charge of the baby. In some of the scenes, the actors even invited the students to participate. This is what Matilda in Year 10 had to say about the event.

“I really enjoyed the play that was put on, it was engaging and easy to understand even for those who had only just started learning German. It was impressive for only two people to be acting, and the set and costumes were very well thought out and intricate. My favourite part was the audience participation. They frequently invited members of the audience to participate, this kept everyone engaged and led to many laughs.”

The French play ‘Le Cours d’Art’ was equally as amusing with the actors acting out what happened when five students were shut in an art classroom with no means of escape- both Kuda Y10 and Maria Y9 were great sports.

We are extremely grateful to the Parents’ Association who have funded these events for all MFL students in Years 8, 9 and 10.

The Spanish play takes place on Tuesday next week and we are really looking forward to it.