Aude Sapere Dare to Know

Newsletter 28th February 2020

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Heads’ News

Dear families, Welcome to our newsletter, we hope you enjoy reading about everything going on across school. I’d like to thank our hardworking staff, on your behalf, who go above and beyond to share their passions and interests with our students. A reminder that we will also be sending out a newsletter to you on: 24th April 12th June If there’s specific information you would like to see included, please email Jennifer Ojo. We publicly welcome all of you who have signed up to be family ambassadors. We wrote to you separately today to tell of three upcoming times where we invite you to help. The ambassador programme allows you to have your say but also to give as little or as much time as you can afford on the areas that matter to you. This edition of our newsletter coincides with our annual musical and we invite you to join us for our production of Grease on 18th, 19th and 20th March at 7.30pm. Detail of tickets are below. We have now received the draft of our Ofsted report. Once it has been finalised we will be able to share the link with you. We are unable to confirm the publication date at the moment. Although we do not contest the overall judgements, we are challenging some of the detail that conflicts with the messages we received in person from the team of five inspectors over the two days they spent with us. But more importantly we have now finalised our school plan that responds to Ofsted feedback and continues the successful work we have done so far this academic year. We look forward to continuing to share some of the initiatives in the plan. On that note, we shared with you last week that GST is helping us with our recruitment. We made a number of appointments this week and look forward to sharing names with you as soon as we can. We are very excited to announce that we had 15 applicants for youth workers, over 20 applicants for a Deputy Head post and we have 22 applicants for an Assistant Head role so far. Thanks go to Caroline Barder, a youth work team manager from Milton Keynes council who is helping us with the building of our new youth work team. We thank you for your patience with the change to our phone system. The main improvements this week so far are that the phone is now answered within three rings on most occasions. But also, we now have a clear process of communicating your messages effectively to staff so they can focus on their teaching during the day. Please, keep your ideas and feedback coming. Together we can make the changes that will improve provision for your children and young people. Best wishes, Matthew Gilbert Alison Ramsay Joint Head of School Joint Head of School

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Proud Traditions Grease is the Word Stantonbury students have been working exceptionally hard over the last term in preparation for our musical production of Grease. They have been incredibly dedicated during rehearsals showing enthusiasm, flair and a huge amount of talent. The students only have three rehearsal weeks left before show week and we hope that you will be able to come along and support them. We can guarantee we will have you tapping your feet, singing along or even joining in with the well-known Grease Lightening movements. The show will take place on Wednesday 18th, Thursday 19th or Friday 20th March at 7.30pm in Stantonbury Theatre.

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Wide Horizons

PSV Eindhoven Tour 2020

During February half term, 35 students accompanied by Mr Simmonds, Ms Major, Ms Theed and Mr Bristow travelled to Eindhoven in Holland to train with PSV Eindhoven Football Club. Whilst away, the students stayed in a 4* Sports Hotel, trained at the famous PSV De Herdgang training complex with official club coaches, were given a behind the scenes tour of the Philips Stadium, toured the city of Eindhoven and met and spoke with the first team players of PSV Eindhoven.

The tour started bright and early Monday 17th February 2020 at 6am. The students were all on time and very excited about the week ahead in Eindhoven. As professional as ever, the students boarded the ex-England FA first team coach to travel across 3 countries to our destination, we were very lucky to be travelling in such style and comfort. As we crossed the very choppy English Channel, this did not dampen spirits or the excitement levels of the students. Three hours later we had arrived at the HUP Hotel in Mierlo to start our weeks training with PSV. That evening we were given a tour of the luxury sports hotel and were able to use the facilities such as 5-a-side pitches, mini golf, the gym, the swimming pool, bowling alley, squash courts, football museum and the famous ball pit and slide that takes you from your room to main reception. All students and staff were in awe of the hotel and how amazing this was.

Throughout the week we trained at De Herdgang PSV Campus and were rubbing shoulders with first team players and rising stars of the club. We were given excellent training sessions by the coaches at PSV and skills and knowledge were improved on a daily basis. During our

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training sessions we learned about the culture of Dutch football, why the Dutch National team are so successful and also showed the PSV coaches how football players in England train and play. Whilst at De Herdgang, we were lucky enough to watch Ruud Van Nistelrooy and the O19s train for their upcoming game against FC Groningen. After this, we were then invited to go and watch the PSV Eindhoven first team train before their weekend match against SBV Vitesse Arnhem. The students were in awe when they were able to meet and speak to international players such as Robbin Ruiter, Denzel Dumfries, Ibrahim Afellay, Konstantinos Mitroglou and Cody Gakpo. As if things couldn’t get any better, students were then able to speak to Dutch football icons Guus Hiddink (Ex PSV, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Netherlands Head Coach) and Bolo Zenden (Ex PSV, Barcelona, Chelsea, Liverpool and Netherlands Midfielder). This was a highlight of the trip and both students and staff will never forget this experience.

The students were then invited to have a behind the scenes tour of PSV Eindhoven’s Philips Stadion. The students were able to go pitch side, sit in the dug outs, visit the home and away team dressing room, visit the famous trophy room which are home to the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League trophies and also access the directors and sponsorship box and hospitality suites. The students were able to sit in comfort and take in the surroundings of the 30,000 seater stadium. After the tour of the Philips Stadion, the students were able to visit the city of Eindhoven. This is where they were able to visit local shops and take in further cultural lessons of the Netherlands.

On Friday 21st February 2020, we had our last training session at De Herdgang before we travelled home. We were given a presentation from the PSV Eindhoven coaches at the training ground and souvenirs were given to the students to remember their week with the football club. We then travelled back through Holland, Belgium and France before arriving back to school around 11pm Friday evening. Even though the week had been very busy, all the students arrived back to SIS excited and in high spirits. This truly was a week to remember and both the staff and students created memories to last a lifetime.

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Mr Simmonds would like to congratulate all the students who took part in the trip whilst away in Eindhoven. They were a true credit to SIS and Mr Simmonds couldn’t be prouder. Due to the attitude of all the students whilst away, SIS were invited back again by HUP Hotel and PSV Eindhoven Football Club for future trips in Eindhoven. Well done to all!

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Stantonbury Sounds

On Tuesday this week the whole of year 7 took part in our first ever immersive day of music, Stantonbury Sounds. Students spent the day singing and performing in a series of workshops with some of the UK’s leading practitioners in music education. Our visiting musicians consisted of performers and stage directors from The Royal Opera House, choral directors from Voices Foundation and percussionists from the internationally renowned ensemble, Beat Goes On. We were also joined by fellow Griffin musicians from Saxon Way Primary School and the Trust’s Wide Horizons team.

The aim of the day was to develop students’ skills and knowledge of performing, composing and listening through a selection of songs by composers Jonathon Dove and Errollyn Wallen.

It was a truly wonderful day of music-making and year 7 did themselves proud. I am looking forward to seeing how they progress through the rest of the year. Any students who wish to

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develop their singing even further and are interested in joining the school choir please come to the main music room on Friday lunchtime. Alternatively, we also now run an after-school percussion ensemble that is also on a Friday from 3:30 to 4:30pm in the keyboard lab.

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High Achievement

Bucks Schools Cross Country Championships 2020 Jessica Vaines in year 8 overcame a field of 100 junior girls to battle to 9th position and earn herself a consideration letter for English Schools Cross Country representing Bucks County. The county competition took place at Stowe School in perfect conditions albeit still wet under foot. The undulating course was a challenge for many of the competitors, but Jessica's training has been rigorous and effective and allowed her to gain the advantage during the later stages of the race. We hope Jessica will get through and represent the school and county on the bigger school stage. Well done and good luck. Kick Boxing Black Belt Master Mason Kelly in year 8 has been training furiously to become a black belt in kick boxing and compete to be the best. In late 2019, Mason competed in two competitions. At the Nottingham Open for black belts aged 11 to 15, Mason came 3rd. Also, at the WAKO in Birmingham in the 47Kg+ category, he also came 3rd. Since 2020, Mason has now been concentrating on his boxing style and hopes to start competing in this discipline and achieve the same success. Well done and keep up the hard training. VIth Form News We’ve had a successful week preparing our students for higher education. On Wednesday we hosted Trinity College, Cambridge for a presentation on UCAS-higher education, Collegiate Universities and Super Curricular interests, all useful information for our students preparing to make university applications. We have also had initial conversations with Brunel and hope to build a relationship there that supports our science and technology provision. Aaron Davies, our Head of VIth form, has been in contact with Pembroke, College Cambridge and Wadham College, Oxford in his determination to build links that increase access for SIS students to top UK universities. School Equipment Looking for ideas for presents!! A reminder of the super seven (our equipment list):

1. Pen 2. Pencil 3. Green pen 4. Ruler 5. Rubber 6. Calculator 7. Planner