Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends
Our last blog of September is here, and perhaps the dust is beginning to settle on the new term. The new Year 7 students are successfully navigating our school site, donations for our harvest festival are piling high (more on that next week), and rehearsals have begun for our school production of “Made in Dagenham”.
Another regular feature of September at The Holt is our Macmillan coffee morning. This is something of a misnomer as coffee is notable by absence but there is cake. Lots of cake. So much cake. Coordinated by our wonderful Technology Faculty, and led by the Miss Hurry, the head of the Food and Nutrition Department, our Year 7 and 12 students baked and bought the most wonderful selection of sweet treats to raise funds for this great cause. On Friday 19th September, the main hall was thronged with happy customers during an extended morning break. Together, we raised over £1000 for Macmillan. Thank you to everyone who contributed.
We are delighted to be holding our open mornings in the coming weeks. Prospective students and their parents have had the chance to hear from our co-headteachers, look around the school, and meet our wonderful Year 11 prefects who are acting as guides and information providers for our guests. We are grateful that they are such a wonderful advertisement for our school and its community.
Our PE department are no slouches in getting sporting clubs and fixtures going. The Year 7&8 badminton club has proved so popular that it’s been split in two, and our netball and football teams have wasted no time in getting started playing other schools. Well done to the girls and thank you to the staff who lead and coach them. Here are some snapshots of just some of the teams:
Year 10 netball – participants in the Wokingham SWIFT Netball League
Year 10 netball
Year 11 netball – still smiling after a tough game against Bradfield college in the National Cup
Year 8 football at The Forest
U14 football – the team showed great teamwork in their first game against Newlands School
It is wonderful that so many of our students get involved in sports and other extracurricular activities at The Holt. If you have a daughter here and she is not yet involved in any of our clubs, do take a look at the timetable and talk through the possibilities. These activities are a great way of getting to know more people, having fun and enriching the time spent in school.
Speaking of enrichment, some of our sixth form students have been finishing off their Extended Project Qualifications. Students choose a topic that is of interest to them, formulate a question to investigate, and then conduct research to develop a response. This sits alongside their A level studies with the aim of preparing them for independent study at university. I will share a few of their project titles to give you a flavour of what they’ve been exploring:
- What are the potential uses of nanotechnology in medicine?
- To what extent is Surveillance Capitalism an existential threat to privacy?
- How has Chinese language and culture influenced the beginning of Korean language?
- Is financial literacy more important than financial income for long term wealth accumulation?
- Is it more sustainable to remove the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or leave it?
- Does the use of AI and autonomous weaponry in modern warfare raise liability issues under the UK legal framework?
Students have produced an essay or artefact based on their investigation and have presented on their findings and what they have learnt about the process of working through the project.
And so, we really are up and running – both literally and metaphorically. The next stop on our journey through autumn is our Harvest Festival, but I will leave you to read more on that in next week’s blog.
Ben Adams
Assistant Headteacher