Duke’s Alumni Assemblies

21st January 2022Louise Gatti

A big thank-you to Duke’s alumni Alex Brown and Cameron Donnelly, who helped deliver assemblies to Y10 and Y11 this week.
They provided key ‘tips’ on revision, planning, discipline, time management and the importance of a strong work ethic to our students. This will hopefully help our students with their forthcoming mock exams.
They are both inspirational role models to our students.
Cameron is studying Sports Science at Sunderland university and Alex is studying Physiotherapy at Northumbria. They both work part time

, alongside their studies.

Horror games: are they suitable for your child?

20th January 2022Leanne Tonks

This week’s Online Safety guidance focus is around apps that go under the broad title of ‘horror games’. A PDF of the advice and guidance poster can be found below.

In the guide, you’ll find tips on a number of potential risks such as adult themes, psychological horror and violent content.

Horror video games come in a such a variety that the genre can hard to define. The overlapping element is that these games are designed to scare or unsettle the player through gameplay, atmosphere, story, music, setting and ‘jump scares’. The most common sub-genres are survival horror, action horror, psychological horror, jump-scare horror and reverse horror. These games originate from a range of developers, including smaller indie studios which release download-only titles (that is, they aren’t physically sold in shops) and therefore aren’t subject to age ratings.

A thank you from Wansbeck Food Bank

19th January 2022Leanne Tonks

Over Christmas, pupils across Duke’s worked incredibly hard to collect hundreds of food items and raise money for our local food bank which supports people living across our community.

We’ve received a lovely thank you letter from Wansbeck Food Bank which we want to share with you (see below). Well done again to everyone who got involved!

Do you know who your child is communicating with online?

14th January 2022Leanne Tonks

Each week, through our school-wide subscription to National Online Safety, Duke’s receives information about new and ‘trending’ apps and tech which might have a harmful impact on our pupils. This week’s update is about an app called ‘Replika’.

Replika is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot companion that its developers claim users can form an actual emotional connection with. Once users have created an account and chosen a 3D avatar, they select the type of relationship they want with the chatbot: friend, mentor or romantic partner. Using a neural network to hold an ongoing one-on-one conversation, Replika gradually becomes more like the user as it gathers data from their responses. It isn’t the only AI chatbot app available, but Replika pushes the boundaries of the concept to offer a highly realistic conversational experience.

In the guide below, you’ll find tips on a number of potential risks such as possible addiction, inappropriate content and in-app purchases.

Keeping your children safe online

5th January 2022Leanne Tonks

As school returns after our Christmas break, please see below a really useful guide on how to set up parental controls on new (and existing) devices for your children. It might be that you think that setting up such controls might require difficult to follow instructions, or be tricky, but this guide explains in very simple terms how you can add an extra layer of protection for your son / daughter.

The term ‘devices’ includes X-boxes, PlayStations and any other piece of technology that can connect to the internet.

Adding parental controls can help to prevent and restrict access to inappropriate content, block in-app purchases, restrict who can contact your child online, help you with setting automatic screen-time limits.

If you have any questions about this or need any further advice or assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Duke’s Christmas Performance 2021

17th December 2021Leanne Tonks


(If the video doesn’t load in the frame above, click on the icon in the right hand corner of the grey box to view)

We are delighted to share with you these Christmas performances our students have been working on. For many of our students it is the first opportunity they have had to share performances with friends and family for quite some time and they have been working incredibly hard over the past few weeks rehearsing and recording.

We hope you enjoy listening to our students perform Christmas favourites, such as ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’ and we wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Pupils collect over 900 items for local food bank

16th December 2021Leanne Tonks

As part of it’s annual Christmas campaign, The Beacon lunch club at Duke’s Secondary School chose to once again support the Wansbeck Valley Food Bank. This is the third year that the school has collected long-life foods, tinned goods, toiletries and Christmas items such as boxes of biscuits, Christmas puddings, crackers and chocolates to donate to the food bank, which does incredible work to support families and individuals in our local community.

Due to Covid-19 the support the food bank offers is more valuable than ever. Recognising this, The Beacon students went above and beyond to support and promote the campaign and ended up collecting over 900 different food items! All of the donations have now been boxed up and will be collected by the food bank.

In addition to the food collection, the students also organised a raffle and have sold Secret Santa candygrams in-school, so we were also able to make a cash donation to the food bank of £100. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every person who contributed to our collection and to this wonderful cause.

Christmas card competition winner is announced!

15th December 2021Leanne Tonks

Pupils at Duke’s Secondary School were challenged to come up with designs for a traditional Christmas card, inspired by the school’s ‘DNA’ (Differentiated for support and challenge, New and exciting learning opportunities and Active learning).

There were over 100 wonderful entries submitted across the school, but the winning design chosen by Mr Atkinson was created by Christopher Marshall from Year 7 and we think it’s pretty amazing! Well done Christopher!