Dear Parent/Carer,
As the end of another academic year approaches, I wanted to write to express my gratitude for your ongoing support with all that we do at St Mary's.
It has been another very successful and rewarding year and once again, your children have stepped up and risen to many challenges and made the best of the range of opportunities available to them. I must start by congratulating the outgoing Y11s on the way in which they concluded their time at St Mary’s. We obviously won’t find out their grades until later next month but we do know that their behaviour and approach towards their GCSE exams was commendable. Similarly, it was fitting that they had a memorable leavers’ day and a fantastic Prom, where they all looked so incredibly smart and grown up! Please keep the year group in your prayers as they await their results.
As one year group leaves, we prepare to welcome our new Y7 cohort in September. It was great to meet the parents and pupils at the recent Y6 Parents’ Information Evening. This was followed by a very positive ‘Moving Up’ Day where all of our new starters came to St Mary’s for the day. I’m looking forward to working with this new year group and to making sure that their time at St Mary’s gets off to the very best start possible.
All other year groups have been working hard and completing their internal end of year exams in recent weeks. Our various departments will now use the outcomes arising from these to inform their planning and interventions going forward. You may have seen a parentmail and via the school’s website, that we are launching a new approach to Assessment in September. We feel that this revised system will improve the quality and accuracy of feedback, tracking and monitoring. It should, based on your feedback, also make information regarding your child’s progress far easier to understand. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read the guidance materials yet, you can find them on the website under the heading ‘Assessment’ KS3, KS4.
From September, we will also be fully utilising Edulink for the setting of homework, as again, we feel this will be a more effective way of communicating between school and home. If you haven’t done so already, please do remember to download the Edulink app, as this is where you will be able to see the homework your son/daughter has been set and deadlines for submission etc. If you require any support with this please contact EdulinkApp@st-maryshigh.hereford.sch.uk
