Today I am sharing an update on the progress made towards our school priorities.

This includes notes on the following priority areas.

Students achieve the highest academic outcomes

All staff seek to become even better

Leadership at all levels

Collaboration and community

Creative and entrepreneurial spirit

Please click on this link to read the full update.

Impact Case Studies

Also this week, I’m introducing the first of our Impact Case Studies documents which will become an annual publication.

DHSB is a school that has high expectations of all who are part of our community, we know that we provide excellence in many areas of the school and this is reflected in the feedback that we have collected from all stakeholders, students, staff and parents in our annual surveys.

However, we know and understand that there are areas that we must improve and we value your communication and commitment in helping the school to be the best that we can possibly be.

The feedback from all stakeholders is used as part of our quality assurance measures to monitor and evaluate the performance of all aspects of the school. This all helps form the school development plan which we form annually and an executive summary of this is found on our website at this link

We believe that it would be beneficial for all stakeholders to take a deeper look at some of these priority areas each year as part of our school improvement journey and that is why we have now produced these impact case studies for you to look through.

We hope that this provides a further opportunity to gain a deeper understanding into how the school is developing for the future.

Theme of the Week

Each Friday I share our theme of the week to give an opportunity for you to discuss this at home as a family with your child.

This week our theme is ‘aim high’ and this was explored in our whole school assembly on Wednesday led by Mr Coombes.

Please click here to read his presentation.

And finally

I'm very much looking forward to our traditional end-of-term events and hope to see you at Speech Day on 11 December or our Carol Service on 16 December.

Sports Update

Swimming

Huge congratulations to Cameron Williams who swam a fantastic 100m breaststroke yesterday breaking his own British record.

He swam the heat in 1.01.64 and then went on to break his own British record again in the finals finishing second in the Junior Finals in 1.01.3

Well done Cameron!

Rugby

Well done to the U14 Rugby team despite losing to a very good Ivybridge side 27 - 5 in the West Devon Cup final. Good luck to Ivybridge in the next round.

Basketball

The Year 7 Basketball team is pictured here ready for their full-day tournament.

The team secured wins against All Saints, Plymstock, St Boniface and Lipson - very well done!

Football

On Wednesday the 2nd XI enjoyed a match against Plymouth Uni 5ths.

Future Events

8 December

PTFA disco for Years 7 – 9 (by ticket)

11 December

Speech Day

13 December

Year 12 report

16 December

Carol Service

17 – 19 December

Refuel Christmas Dinner

20 December

Final day of autumn term two