Welcome back to DHSB.
It’s been a busy start to the year but we’ve provided time this week for students and staff to celebrate and reflect on the successes and events of last year before planning for the next exciting chapter.
Results
We are very proud of all our students at DHSB. They have worked extremely hard and have achieved excellent results. I would like to express my sincerest thanks to all our dedicated staff who, with our families, have provided fantastic support to our students to enable their success.
Our results, in all the key headline measures have increased to our highest ever.
Individual Student Success
Cameron Williams
Congratulations to Cameron who competed at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Baku over the summer where he won three silver medals (100m breaststroke, a new British record for 15 year boys in 1:03.12, mixed medley relay and the medley relay.
There is a BBC article about Cameron, please click this link to read more.
Jackson Spry
Congratulations to Jackson who achieved silver competing for Team GB U19s at the Underwater Hockey World Championships, also finishing top scorer for the team.
Jackson also competed at the England national finals. He finished ninth in the English National Championships final of the men’s 200 m backstroke and 19th in the very different 5000m open water swimming English finals.
Lewis James and Thomas Jones
Congratulations to Lewis James and Thomas Jones who represented Team Gb U17s in Ultimate Frisbee at the European Championships in Poland.
Oliver Lee
Congratulations to Oliver Lee who reached the semi-finals of the National Boxing Championships.
Samuel Wilcox and Alfie Yates
Well done to Sam and Alfie who are both gig rowers for Fowey Gig Club. They have had a long summer competing most weekends winning every race bar one. At the end of July they competed against 25 clubs for the U16 County Championship at Newquay.
After a long day racing numerous heats the boys were crowned well-deserved champions.
New Staff
A warm welcome to our new staff.
Mrs Pyle – Teacher of Business & Economics Mrs Webb – Teacher of English Ms Cummings – Science Technician
School Development Plan
I’m pleased to share these examples of key priorities from the School Development Plan.
Focus on our curriculum
We have a wonderful curriculum and what is unique about it in this day and age is that despite all the pressures it still prepares our students for life. We have kept it broad and balanced with the subject offer when many schools have not for various reasons. We will be looking to make more connections between our students learning and deepening their knowledge.
Focus on student leadership
Student leadership is a real strength at the school, we continue to develop more and more opportunities for students outside of the classroom, other schools across the country are cutting these opportunities back and we are bucking the trend. We are encouraging students to take on these opportunities or even better develop their own.
New for this year
We are relaunching Devonport Voice, the purpose of this will be for students to play an integral role in improving all areas of the school and to provide a formal representation of all student voice at DHSB
There will be more partnership work with our potential selective schools expansion plan with Ms Nally and more international partnership opportunities developing. Mr Berryman and Mr Carpenter will have more details this year.
Focusing on improving our environmental ethos
We have signed up to the journey to become an international Green Flag Award Eco-School. The programme is designed to raise environmental awareness among young people and is run by the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy. Internationally, the programme is the largest educational programme in the world present in 67 countries and 52,000 schools. Our school is now part of this global community working to create environmental change for the benefit of future generations.
The Eco-Schools programme empowers students and staff, raises environmental awareness, improves the school environment and can also lead to financial savings for schools. Being an active member of the programme will be something our students will remember for the rest of their lives.
The programme focuses on ten important global issues: Biodiversity Energy Global Citizenship Healthy Living Litter Marine School Grounds Transport Waste Water
We will look to improve these areas by assessing where we are now and forming an action plan to improve areas over the next couple of years
Focus on the Arts
The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools and education settings, accredited by Arts Council England. It supports settings to develop and celebrate their commitment to arts and cultural education.
It is of course an opportunity to improve and enhance those specific subject areas however it is much more than that.
There are three areas that we hope to improve and embed:
Build young people’s confidence, character and resilience through arts and cultural education – this builds on our recent development priorities such as oracy.
To embed creativity across our whole curriculum and use it to address school improvement priorities – once again linking to our work on the curriculum.
Celebrate the long-term commitment to cultural education with pupils, parents and our local community
Linked to this there are some physical spaces and environments that students get to experience this year:
Our new Createch hub Arts hub (Burrows Drama Studio) Our new Maker Space in the Learning Commons The new Devonport Market Hall – We are a partner in the £7million hub for digital skills, research, learning and entertainment that will also house a huge immersive dome.
Future Events
14 – 15 September
Greenpower competition
14 September
11+ session one
18 September
PTFA meeting
21 September
11+ session two
24 September
Year 7 parents and students event – 7C and 7P
25 September
Year 7 parents and students event – 7E and 7S
26 September
Year 7 parents and students event – 7N and 7W