As up and down the country employers and educators alike celebrated National Apprenticeship Week, Duke’s Secondary School in South East Northumberland announced an exciting new partnership with UK housebuilding giant, Bellway.

The partnership will see a range of opportunities become available to pupils throughout the school, including employer masterclasses, careers guidance and field visits.

The partnership is multi-faceted. As well as supporting Duke’s Secondary School to deliver the National Career Ready programme, it also forms part of a regional pilot project for Bellway to help introduce young people to the wide variety of career opportunities available in the construction sector, including apprenticeships. If successful in the North East, Bellway intends to roll out its school outreach programme across all 22 of its housebuilding divisions nationwide.

To celebrate the official launch of the project, a cohort of Year 12 students from Duke’s Secondary School’s Sixth Form provision took part in a Career Ready Masterclass on ‘preparation for work experience’. Students were encouraged to think about what skills they already have, what skills employers might look for in job candidates and how they can make themselves a model employee.

The full-day visit also included a tour around Bellway’s North East headquarters in Woolsington and also one of its prestigious new build sites near Ponteland.

Danielle Towers, Head of Sixth Form and Careers Lead at Duke’s Secondary School (part of NCEA Trust), commented:

“We are honoured to be working alongside Bellway at the cutting edge of its new school outreach programme.

“At Duke’s and indeed, across all of the schools within the wider NCEA Trust, we are committed to providing pupils with high-quality careers education covering a wide variety of industry sectors to help them make informed decisions about their futures.

“What our pupils have been most surprised by since we first established contact with Bellway is the scope of the career opportunities available, beyond traditional trades and construction. For many of them, it has been a real eye-opener into a sector which they might not otherwise have considered.”

Employing over 3,000 people across the UK alongside several thousand additional sub-contractors, Bellway has come a long way from its humble North East beginnings just over 75 years ago. The five-star rated homebuilder now offers its own in-house apprenticeship opportunities and graduate schemes covering everything from bricklaying right through to architecture and sales.

Laura Bell, Group HR & OD Manager at Bellway, commented:

“We are absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to partner with Duke’s Secondary School. As we strive to help meet the need for more high-quality homes, it is vital that we continue to attract more people to the industry from a diverse range of backgrounds and that we offer them the support and training they need to succeed.

“By showcasing the range of roles available at Bellway and offering opportunities where people can earn while they learn, we hope to open up the possibility of a career in construction to those who may not have previously considered working in the industry.”

For more information about Duke’s Secondary School and Sixth Form, visit www.dukes.ncea.org.uk or for more information about careers at Bellway, visit www.bellwaycareers.co.uk.

On Thursday 20 January, we received an interim inspection from Ofsted to see how we have been getting on with our plan to improve professional standards across Duke’s Secondary School.

A great deal of work has been going on behind the scenes and we are delighted to see that our collective efforts have been recognised in our latest monitoring report, a full copy of which can be found below.

Key summary points:

• Leaders have taken significant strides towards the removal of the serious weaknesses designation.
• Leaders have developed a culture in which school improvement is everyone’s responsibility.
• Faculty leaders, working with their teams, have developed curriculums that clearly identify key learning aims for each year. It is now clear what pupils need to know, and when.
• Staff and pupils are unanimous in praising the transformation in the behaviour strategy since the previous inspection. It is allowing teachers to teach, and pupils to learn.
• Two external reviews of SEND provision have helped to refine the school’s development plan so that pupils with SEND are better supported.

Details of all of our past Ofsted inspections can be found here.

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.

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.

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.

Dear Parent/Carer

The Department of Education has reintroduced the wearing of face masks in school. Face masks are now compulsory in communal areas and on buses for all year groups (unless medically exempt).

Can we also please ask that students continue to take lateral flow tests, twice weekly, at home.

These measures have been put in place to protect each other and hopefully ensure everyone gets to enjoy a wonderful Christmas.

We thank you for your continued support.

Thanks,

In line with the Government’s challenge to all schools to reduce the use of single use plastics by 2022 (Schools challenged to go single-use plastic free by 2022 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)) we have made the decision to phase out the selling of bottled drinks over the course of this half term.

Drinks bottles are probably one of our major sources of plastic waste at school and, having already removed the use of plastic cutlery, we are keen to reduce our plastic footprint further.

We have water fountains installed around the school and have recently installed a new larger capacity fountain in the dining hall so that all students have regular and easy access to drinking water and we would like to encourage all of our students to bring their own reusable bottles so that they can continue to stay hydrated throughout the day.

Please help us to achieve our aim of reducing the use of plastic in school by providing your child with a reusable drinking bottle for use in school.