Community Connect - July 2024

Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome to our latest edition of Community Connect, which details some of the many exciting aspects of life at GHS as the year comes to an end.  If you would like to look at past editions of Community Connect, you can find these on our website under the ‘Parents’
tab here. You can also find our fortnightly Parent Connect newsletter in this location too.

We have had another wonderful year at Greenford, with many successes. Students and staff have all been working very hard, and we have managed to cram in lots of additional activities and experiences for students, many of which you will see outlined below.  

This year we will say goodbye to a few of our long term key staff who are either retiring or moving on to promotion. I want to pay a particular tribute to Mr Jeremy Dudman-Jones who is retiring after an incredible 31 years of service at GHS. Many of you will know Mr Jones as a wonderful Head of 6th Form for so many years - he has worked with hundreds, if not thousands of families over the years, and led the way in getting so many students into university. He leaves a wonderful Post 16 Centre in Mr Lewis’s capable hands. We will also be sorry to see Ms Hirani, our Head of DT and Faculty Leader for DT also retiring, and we wish all the best to Mrs Grimley, Deputy Headteacher, who is leaving to become a Headteacher and Ms McCarthy who is leaving to become a Deputy Headteacher. 

I am immensely proud of all of our staff who go on to achieve promotion, and we wish them all well in their new schools.

A reminder that all students will return to school on Thursday 5th September 2024, with Year 7 and Year 12 only attending on Wednesday 4th September 2024 

I wish you all a truly wonderful break over the Summer and look forward to seeing all of our students back in full uniform, ready for learning in September

Mia Pye
Headteacher

Waving Goodbye to Year 11 and Year 13

Summer is always a bittersweet time when we wave goodbye to Year 11 and Year 13, once they have finished their final exams. It was a joy to be part of the final assemblies for Year 11 and Year 13 and also celebrate during the wonderful Year 11 PROM. We look forward to welcoming many of our Year 11 students back to Post 16 in September, and wish all of our Year 13 students the best of luck with their forthcoming examination results.

Year 9 St Mary's Residential

25 students took part in the residential session on Wednesday 26th June-Friday 28th June. Pupils got to experience living like a university student in student accommodation with their own room with an ensuite bathroom, and activities to help them get a real taste of what university education will be like. This was all for FREE!

Duke of Edinburgh Awards

This year we have seen the return of the Duke of Edinburgh Award and what a success it has been! 30 Year 11 students have received their bronze award, having completed their qualifying expedition in Swanage in October whilst finalising their skill, physical and volunteering sections by February half-term prior to embarking on their GCSE examinations this summer.

We started our first ever Silver award at GHS in December, with 24 of our Year 12 students completing their three sections whilst training for their practice, and qualifying expeditions to Swanage and the North Wessex Downs in June and July. We look forward to their completion of the award in the autumn term.

The D of E team are welcoming new applications for the 2024/25 season for the Silver award and have already received interest from the current bronze award cohort who wish to progress. We still have spaces for the new intake and welcome students who are new to D of E. Please contact Mrs Rayner by emailing krayner@greenford.ealing.sch.uk.

Trips, Trips, and more Trips!

As usual, we have had an astonishing number of trips take place this year - all in all, there have been 119 trips that have taken place over the course of the year! This is nothing short of incredible and has ranged from theatres, universities, rewards trips to various leisure and theme parks, music trips, the House of Commons, galleries, places of religious observance, sports stadiums, geography field trips,, museums and places of employment and industry. We are very proud of the work that our staff put into organising trips and also our students who take part. We frequently receive lovely feedback from members of the public about what a credit our students are to us.

Oxbridge Trips

We pride ourselves on sending our most academic students to Oxford and Cambridge each year, alongside our other Russell Group acceptances. One of the most engaging ways we support our students is by guiding them through tours of both universities where they have the opportunity to meet potential tutors, current students, see the unique colleges and get a sense of university life. Our eight potential Oxbridge students in Year 12 thoroughly enjoyed the most recent trip to Oxford and are currently settling on which college to apply to themselves for an October deadline. 

Aim Higher Awards

A massive well done to Mrs Phull who scooped 2 prestigious awards for her work with Aim Higher at the Aim Higer Practioner Awards: The 'Most Inspiring and Motivating Practitioner' award and also won the 'Best School Award' for the school!

At the awards ceremony we got to hear about all the amazing work that Mrs Phull has done this year with Aim Higher and St Mary's University, who had nothing but praise for her.

This is a wonderful achievement, and all down to her incredibly hard work this year.

Music Update

Winter Concert 2023
The winter concert played out to a packed audience in December, with well over 100 students taking part in musical performances. The drama department joined in this year with their winter panto and the event was a success, playing out to a packed hall.

Ealing Music Service Encore
A battle of the bands style event with participants from five Ealing schools, with each school submitting two performances. The students performed incredibly well on the big stage and came away with one of the prizes. 

Louder than Life music workshops
This company provides workshops to understand and perform music workshops from different cultures. These workshops were provided to selected year 7, 8 and 9 students for their excellent attitude in music lessons.

The Mozartists
This company provided an all-singing, dancing and acting workshop to some of our year 7 and 8 students that have shown an interest in these areas and participate in extracurricular music activities at GHS. The students really appreciated this experience. 

Vocal performances at St. John Smith’s Square by Royal Academy of Music students
We took our small choir to see students perform as a reward for their dedication to the group. They received an email from another guest regarding their impeccable conduct at the event. We am very proud of these students. 

Ealing Music Service Tutti
This event sees 200 students from multiple schools gather to form a massed orchestra. Each school learns five orchestral pieces and the performance took place at the Ealing Christian Centre in front of a packed audience. It sounded amazing!

International Day

On Wednesday 10th July, our annual International Day was beautifully executed with students engaged in a vibrant, colourful and celebratory occasion. It is always wonderful to witness our demographic of students proudly embrace their background with pride. During the day, students were able to partake in or view a cultural fashion catwalk, a mini-concert, lessons with a difference and an amended canteen menu. Students, from September, begin asking staff when International Day will be and their behaviour this year was responsible and compassionate on the day with respect to all in our school community. Thank you to all our students and to parents for preparing children for the day with their international attire. 

Sports Round Up

At GHS, we are very proud of the amount of cricket that has been played this year, and we are making great strides in developing our teams. Highlights this season have included both the year 8 and 10 teams making it to the finals of the Ealing Borough championships, while a fledgling year 7 team showed real promise in finishing second in their league.

Year 7 to 10 Rounders teams competed in the Borough leagues and tournaments and we have had great turnouts in training sessions, so have high hopes for next season.

Our athletics teams once again showed that they can match it with the best in the borough, with four year 7 and 8 students representing Ealing at the Middlesex Championships. 

We had a year 7 Ealing 100m champion in Trey Denny Abdallah, while a host of students made it into finals, meaning GHS finished in the top 6 in the whole Borough.

Sports Awards Evening

July saw the inaugural Greenford High School Sports Awards ceremony, celebrating everything that is great about school sport here at GHS.  We had a great evening with the following students taking home trophies for their efforts

Year 7 Boys Sports Performer of the Year - Trey Denny Abdallah
Year 7 Girls Sports Performer of the Year - Piper O’Toole-Nicholls
Year 8 Boys Sports Performer of the Year - Charly Lleshi
Year 8 Girls Sports Performer of the Year - Zainab Kagalwala
Year 9 Boys Sports Performer of the Year - Abdulbasit Bakhshi
Year 9 Girls Sports Performer of the Year - Minkalia Hamid
Year 10 Boys Sports Performer of the Year - Om Sharma
Year 10 Girls Sports Performer of the Year - Dhiya Premraj
Senior Boys Sports Performer of the Year - Preet Singh
Senior Girls Sports Performer of the Year - Simona Sharma
Team of the Year - Year 9 Boys Football Team (Ealing Borough Champions)
Outstanding Achievement Award - Samarjeet Singh (Middlesex Men’s Cricket)

Sports Day

Sports Day was a huge success once again with sunshine and smiles the order of the day as Greenford’s biggest festival of sport descended on Perivale Athletics Track once more.

There were medals galore and a number of school records broken, although Bukayo Saka’s long jump record remains (phew!)

The winning forms were:

Year 7 - 7T1
Year 8 - 8M3
Year 9 - 9W2

Well done to everyone who competed and earned points for their form - You showed a fantastic community spirit!

Your Life, You Choose

In March this Year 7 students participated in Your Life you Choose, a carousel event run by the police and other services. Students learnt about important topics such as Knife Crime, Emergency First Aid, and drug awareness. As a school, we are following up this learning with an event called Safety First for Year 8 on 22nd July- this will further help to safeguard students by teaching them about Mental Health, Youth Violence and Road Safety. This promises to be an interesting and informative end to the year. 

Library Update

The library continues to provide all pupils with up-to-date books to support learning, and for reading enjoyment. 

A reminder of borrowing limits:

• Year 7 & 8 - 2 books at a time.
• Year 9 - 3 books at a time
• Year 10 - 13 - 5 books at a time.

All books can be borrowed for 3 weeks at a time, after which they must be returned or renewed.

Accessit Library and eBooks

Our Library catalogue, Accessit, is a wonderful way for pupils to get to know what books are available in the library. The Accessit home page is updated regularly -  recent themes have been World Book Day and the Euros 24. By signing in pupils can check what books they have on loan and reserve books. You can view the library catalogue here. If they check the catalogue regularly, pupils can also take responsibility for their own books, ensuring they know what books they have on loan and when they are due back.

E-book library

As well as having a well stocked school library, we also have a great eBook library, called Wheelers. The eBook library link can be found here. All pupils will have been emailed their usernames and passwords, but if in doubt, they can email ghslib@greenford.ealing.sch.uk to check. Please do encourage your son or daughter to borrow books from the library before the end of term, and to keep reading over the holidays.

Join Our Alumni Network

We are calling on all former Greenford students to sign up to our new alumni network with national education charity Future First.

This is an opportunity for former Greenford students to network, keep in touch with the Greenford community and pay it forward by helping our current students progress to the next stage in their education or career. Indeed, your experiences since leaving could help to motivate and inspire our current students to feel more confident in making decisions about their future.

You can choose how and when you help – perhaps you can act as a career and education role model, provide work experience, become a mentor in person or online, or even apply to become a governor.

It doesn’t matter when you left us, whether you’re in further education or employment, whether you still live nearby or have moved further away, there are still ways you can help.

In order to sign up, just follow this link and fill in the online form – we promise it will only take a couple of minutes: https://www.futurefirsthub.org.uk/register/greenford-high-school

Teach for Spain Visits Greenford

A delegation from Teach For Spain visited Greenford High School to find out more about careers education in the UK.

Teach For Spain is a partner organisation to Teach First in the UK and the visit was arranged to demonstrate the impact that careers education and leadership can have on student destinations.

Greenford High School Careers Leader Will Halsey presented the school’s vision and strategic objectives as part of a new three-year strategy that is currently in development. The visitors from across different regions in Spain then had the chance to discuss careers opportunities and events with a selection of Greenford students from Year 9 to Year 13.

Greenford High School Headteacher Mia Pye said: “It was a great pleasure to welcome educators from across Spain to discuss careers education in our two countries. We have a longstanding and hugely valuable relationship with Teach First and look forward to many more opportunities which can help develop both our staff and students.”