Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
We began the new term last week with two staff training days: revisiting important routines, celebrating our excellent exam results and sharpening our teaching skills further. Teaching staff focused on the craft of lesson planning, using AI effectively both in their own preparation but also in training students how to get the best from AI, purposeful home learning and the role enrichment plays in school life.
On Friday, we welcomed Years 7 and 12 for their induction day – always one of my favourites in the school calendar.
For Year 7, starting secondary school is a huge milestone: new teachers, new subjects, new friendships and a new level of independence. There are bus journeys and road crossings to master; bags to organise; lunch plans to navigate; clubs to try; home learning to manage; and, inevitably, a few disappointments and detentions along the way. Even deciding what to tell parents – and when – is part of growing up! These are big learning curves, and we will support the girls through every one of them, all the way to Year 13.
Year 12, meanwhile, were straight into lessons after break. I remember them arriving in Year 7; they have grown into confident, independent young women with clear interests and enthusiasm for their chosen subjects. We are delighted that over 60% of our Year 11 have returned to The Holt Sixth Form to study an impressive spread of sciences, humanities, creative arts, technology and languages. This balance of subjects reflects the strength and consistency of teaching across the school.
Here are Year 12 and 7 in their first assembly of the year
Year 12 and their peers who have moved elsewhere, deserve enormous congratulations for their GCSE results. The proportion achieving five or more GCSEs at grade 4 or above, including English and maths, rose from 89.2% to 91.1%. Grades 7-9 also increased, to 48.7%, while 92% achieved grade 4 or above in both English and maths. These results place us well in the top 10% nationally for value added.
Our A-level results were equally strong, again placing us in the top 10% nationally for value added: 14% of all grades were A*, 40.9% were A*-A and 89.5% were A*-C. A record seven students were accepted by Oxford and Cambridge. We congratulate Year 13 on these achievements; thank them for everything they have contributed to our community and wish them well for what comes next.
Results like these reflect students sustained hard work, staff expertise, dedication and care, and the steadfast support of families. Thank you!
We also welcomed back Years 8, 9, 10 and 11 on Monday. I hope they are feeling energised and ready for the challenges and joys ahead.
One significant change this year is the mobile-phone ban for Years 7-11. Full details have been sent separately, but last term’s experience with Years 7 and 8 gives us real cause for optimism. We saw girls playing cards, board games and ball games; more students joining clubs and charity events; and surprisingly few confiscations. The girls’ own verdict was simple: ‘We talked more.’ – nice.
That matters. Conversation is not a soft extra; it helps us build friendships, navigate workplaces and live fuller lives.
A summer article in The Economist revisited advice from Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ – do not ramble, look bored or lose your temper; listen; remember names; smile; and make others feel included. The advice may be old, but it has worn well. Research into healthy ageing, points in the same direction: social interaction matters. My youngest daughter recently visited my 95-year-old aunt in Ireland and explained how Hinge works. How good is that? and I am sure that conversation will keep my aunt going – if only to share with the nuns and friends in her rest home!
Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks offers a useful framework in her book Talk: choose good topics, ask good questions, keep conversation light (doesn’t mean superficial) and show kindness. At school, one of our priorities this year is to help our girls become confident speakers, and we will try our best to coach and encourage them to engage in the small, everyday conversations with peers and teachers, to build that confidence.
Communication is also one of the five human skills highlighted by former LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky in his book ‘Open to Work’ – these are communication, courage, curiosity, creativity and compassion – the five Cs. In the book, he discusses on the opportunities AI creates, which is refreshing to read, given all the downbeat news about AI taking away job roles. He used his huge LinkedIn data set to understand ‘who is thriving, who’s getting left behind’ and the upshot was those who are thriving are not the ones with the best qualifications but the one who are taking control of their careers .. another article in The Economist called this having an ‘internal locus of control’ where people believe they can shape the world around them whereas those with an ‘external locus of control’ tend to think that luck, destiny or that other people determine their fate. The internal locus people make things happen …sometimes it goes wrong, but they push forwards. Going back to Roslansky’s 5Cs, he described the modern career ladder is more like a climbing wall: there is no single route up. People move sideways, diagonally and sometimes down before finding a better way forward. He says the 5Cs are the key to survival in an age of AI – they are human skills. Resilience and adaptably are important skills too that we encourage at school, and I think they are subsumed into courage and creativity. Roslansky encourages young people who are seeking work to demonstrate these skills in a practical way – not just on paper and they need to take the lead as no one else will take care of their career pathways.
When we look ahead to the world our girls will enter at aged 18 or 21, achieving their very best academically is vital but only part of the picture. They will also need agency, resilience, adaptability and those five Cs – qualities built through experience, not simply learnt from a book or a ppt presentation. That experience begins now: helping to organise a charity event; joining a club; talking with friends and teachers; sharing a thought for the week; delivering the news item with confidence, learning about lives different from their own; and discovering how to handle failure and disappointment. The Year 12 all signed up to such experiences at the enrichment fair on Monday where many offered to run clubs for the youngest years, support girls with SEND in Learning Link through one-to-one reading or playing boardgames at lunchtime and others joined have signed up to volunteer at Oxfam, the ME2 club and at Cowshed. It was great to have Les Eke in to promote DofE as well. Miss Harris, assistant headteacher, is compiling the extracurricular activities timetable for all year groups so it is ready to go out on Friday. Please encourage your daughter to join at least one club – maybe two and the second being something completely new to her….for all the reasons above!
Home offers just as many opportunities to develop conversation and the five Cs. Keep conversations going over meals – difficult with teenagers, I know. Play a board game. Watch a series together. Go somewhere new, whether that is the countryside, the coast or a different part of town. Visit wider family and bring generations together. Not every outing will beat scrolling in a teenager’s eyes, but each one gives them something to notice, think about and talk about.
And how have time to read reviews and articles? Sadly, I broke my ankle on day nine of the Coast to Coast walk at the end of July. Like Kirstie Allsopp, I needed mountain rescue; the Swaledale team were amazing, and I became incident number 43. https://www.facebook.com/swaledalemrt/?locale=en_GB
I have a Tri malleolar fracture and I am now in week six of eight with my left leg raised 24/7 and non-weight-bearing. I am certainly missing everyday social contact. With luck, the cast will soon become a boot, and I will be somehow getting on the number 4 bus to work.
Finally, we look forward to seeing Year 7 parents at the information evening this evening. The remaining dates are Year 11 on 16 September, Year 12 on 23 September, Year 13 on 30 September and Year 10 on 7 October. Further details will follow by email.
Best wishes
Anne Kennedy
Co-Headteacher