Prev
Next
Welcome Back
Message from Mr Clutterbuck, Headteacher
I was pleased to welcome our pupils back to school on Tuesday 5 September 2023, and also, it seems, to have welcomed in a late summer. It is a first for me as a headteacher to declare hot weather mitigations, and the option for pupils to wear their PE kit, so late in the year and also in a week when Year 7 and Year 10 pupils have their formal school photographs!
Despite the unusually hot weather, it has been a pleasure to have the pupils back in school.
Pupils in Year 8 to Year 11 have settled back into the routine of school, seamlessly picking up on our school values of Trust, Kindness, and Determination where they left them when we broke up for the holiday in July - although I suspect the values were not left at Deer Park in July but carried across the summer holiday.
One or two pupils have pushed back against our routines and rules (and ultimately our values) and I have had to sanction them accordingly. I am confident that they will quickly remember the importance of our habits, routines, behaviours and culture and how these are needed to make a big organisation like ours work, and work for the people who are part of it.
Year 7 pupils have hit the ground running (mostly metaphorically, as for many it has been too hot to run anywhere, apart from in their PE lessons). These young people have made an extremely positive impression on all our staff and have brought a smiley but steely determination to their learning. We look forward to welcoming Year 7 families to our Learning and Conference on Wednesday 13 September (6.30-8pm in the Main Hall) to build on the strong start they have made to their studies.
In our Welcome Back assemblies, I took the opportunity to share with pupils some of my holiday experiences (most of which are completely irrelevant but there’s nothing like a captive audience) and, most importantly, to restart the school year with a focus on the key drivers of attendance, behaviour and learning which will ensure a successful year for all:
- Attendance: aim for 100%;
- Behaviour: follow our rules and expectations and behave in a way that allows you and others to flourish;
- Learning: work hard and with pride and be like a Chinese Bamboo Tree.
These drivers are not achievable without our values of Trust, Kindness and Determination guiding our decisions and actions. In doing so, this helps everyone achieve our aims of feeling safe, happy, and successful. And thus, our mission - to be the best we can be every day - becomes much easier to achieve.
Please do look at our How We Talk at Deer Park poster, which lays out the ways in which we encourage our whole school community to talk with each other. This is one example of our mission to be the best we can be every day.
We have had a very positive start to the year, which makes me excited about the year ahead at Cirencester Deer Park School.
Richard Clutterbuck, Headteacher
Temperatures are forecast to settle and we confirm that from next Monday 11 September, all pupils should come to school in normal school uniform.