Good News for Year 10 and 12 Btec Students – Sport, Business and Media

I am pleased to inform parents that the examination boards will be issuing results for assessments due to be taken between 20 March and 31 July 2020 for all students taking these qualifications, where appropriate evidence is available. The boards will use a calculated results approach similar to that used for other examinations using all the evidence available. Students do not need to submit any further work or evidence to support this process.

Re-opening Schools

I am sure parents and students were all interested to hear Boris Johnson’s road map for the future last Sunday.

His plans suggest it is unlikely that Years 7, 8 and 9 will return to school during the summer term.

His announcement did contain the ambition for Year 10 and 12 to return for some kind of face to face contact with their teachers this summer.

The details and timings for this plan are not clear. I will update parents as soon as more concrete proposals emerge.

Miles for Mills

I would like to thank Mr Tansley for setting up the “Miles for Mills” challenge which replaces this year’s Mills Match which is played to celebrate the life of former Verulam Student Oli Mills who sadly died of cancer in 2005 and to raise money for charity.

We are asking students, staff, parents, governors and Verulam alumni to raise money through sponsorship or donations over the next 2 weeks.

You can find the Just Giving page with the link here:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/

verulamschoolmilesformills

Year 10 will not sit an end of year assessment and instead will have their Trial 1 exams moved to the two weeks im- mediately preceding October half term.

This decision has been made to ensure that all students have maximum teaching time should they return to school after the May half term or be working remotely.

For Year 12, the BSV consortium have agreed that an ex- amination week will be held in the week beginning 22^nd June, undertaken remotely. This will be held either in school or at home depending on the government’s advice regarding re-opening. Further details of the nature of these exams will be sent shortly.

Headmaster’s Commendation

This week’s HM commendations go to:

Victor Artemi 7C for his hard work and dedication to his online learning.

8JPY1 have HM commendations for continued outstanding work in Maths during lockdown: Alfie Fowler; Adam Gardner; Fadi Hanania; Austin Kennedy; Ryan Kennedy; Mohammad Miah; Dylan Norman; Jamie Perrin.

Corey Percival Year 9 English Literature – for the consist- ently high quality of his independent work on ‘Power and Conflict’ poetry.

Bayley Hoggarth in 7C – his work this week was brilliant and clearly showed the awesome and amazing effort he has put in.

Jake Larkin 10B – Excellent work from home in a number of subjects highlighted by number of house points given.

Sean Tidd 10J – Fantastic commitment to self study shown in number of house points given.

I will be walking 19.38 kilometres this Saturday in support of the event. I would encourage pupils to see what they can do! We hope to hold the next formal Mills Match next May.

Further detail can be found overleaf about this initiative.

Changes to Virtual Learning

After half-term the diet of learning for Year 7, 8 and 9 will see some changes which Mr Emsley will be communicating in full next week. We aim to vary the diet experienced by boys in Key Stage Three by introducing some longer project based learning which will be divided into segments, to revise some key learning and to assess progress in the core subjects. This will allow us to issue reports to parents in Years 7, 8 and 9 at the end of term.

 

Victory Europe Day:

I hope all parents and students enjoy a peaceful break on the 75th anniversary of V.E. day.

Good news for Year 10 GCSE English Literature students

I was delighted to receive the following announcement from Ofqual this week which confirmed that Year 10 will be awarded a calculated grade for English Literature this summer. The school will submit centre assessed grades to the examining body based on the full range of evidence available from the whole course.

“In line with our consultation proposal, we have

decided that students entered for exams in year 10 and below will be eligible to receive calculated grades this summer. This follows the majority of responses

received, which indicate that the progression of some students would be disrupted if they were not awarded a grade this summer, and to exclude them would have an unfair impact. Amongst the responses we received were concerns about the potential impact of excluding early entrants on disabled students or those with special educational needs, who might wish to spread their

GCSE exams over different years.” Ofqual.

Ofqual have made it clear that the centre assessed grades are confidential and schools are not allowed to share these with you. We would request that you do not contact teachers, heads of subject or senior leadership in relation to your child’s centre assessed grade as this is vital to the integrity of the system.

I would also like to take this opportunity to respond to a number of questions from Year 11 students:

I have been offered a place in Verulam’s Sixth Form. What happens if my grades this summer do not meet all of the entry criteria?
If there any problems regarding meeting criteria for the Sixth Form or individual courses, please speak to Mr Tromans or Mr Ramsey on results day.

How will be results be issued and how will I collect them?
Results will be issued to schools in the normal way and will be available for collection on Thursday 20^th August from 10am. Year 10 results from 11am.

A level results on 13^th August from 9am.

What about English speaking grades?
All grades submitted to the exam board are subject to moderation by the examination board and therefore could change.

Will in class assessments be taken into account for calculated grades?
All evidence from the two year GCSE course will be used in the calculation of centre assessed grades.

What happens for summer work set by Beaumont or Sandringham?
The summer work for all A level courses will be available at induction. Bridging work is now availa- ble on the Verulam website for courses taught at Ver- ulam.

What about retakes next year?
Ofqual have not yet published their plan in relation to retakes.

When will we know the status of our Sixth Form applications?
Sixth Form offers are confirmed after results day.

Headmaster’s Commendation

This week’s HM commendations go to:

Bayley Hoggarth in 7C for his work on Mother The- resa which was is exceptional.

Nikolai Cherniaev (7P), Jacob Hamilton (8P), Adam Smart (9H) and Victor Artemi (7C) – all for produc- ing posters to display in their windows to persuade people to comply with the government advice on so- cial distancing.

Anish Madhewoo for his superb art work which can be seen on page 4 based on a photo he took of a homeless man.

Louis Mostyn Year 9 for his fantastic performance of the Eagles Hotel California; and

Adam Goodwin Year 10 for his outstanding effort and organisation in Design and Technology. All work completed/up to date and submitted on time!