Sending love and happiness #InternationalDayOfHappiness to our twinned school Röntgen-Gymnasium Remscheid. This collaborative ceramic art piece was created as part of our Summer School international/art activities.
To show our solidarity to Ukraine we are holding a non uniform day on Friday 25th March. All money raised will go to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. We are asking staff and students to wear something blue or yellow. This could be socks, hair bands, tights, t-shirts etc. You could even make a badge! We are asking for £1 as a suggested donation if people are able to donate. We will have an activity to complete in tutor time next week and cakes will also be on sale on the day.
Donations will be collected at the doors in the morning.
Keep up to date with the latest labour market updates on our school website. This is a great source of information when helping your child plan for the future or considering your own career pathway.
On Thursday 17th March we will be holding our Y11 and 13 Results and Parents’ Evening. This will take place between 4pm and 6pm at the Duke’s site. The evening will provide an opportunity for parents and students to collect the results of their recent mock examinations and for follow up conversations with teaching staff. All teachers of Y11 and 13 will be present and will discuss student performance in the mock examinations and provide advice on what students can do to improve between now and the final summer exams. Our school Careers Advisor and a member of the Sixth Form Team will also be present to answer any questions you may have about Sixth Form options or careers progression. Tea, coffee and biscuits will also be provided.
To help with parental contact in regards to Attendance please use the attendance email to send information/absence notice/ attachments photos/appointment cards etc.
This is an efficient way to communicate between home and school alongside telephone contact.
Please see below a copy of this week’s National Online Safety Guide to parents. The focus this week is an app called ‘Wink’, which has raised a number of concerns.
Wink is a messaging app which allows children to connect and communicate with other users. In a similar style to the popular online dating platform Tinder, Wink uses the ‘swipe’ method for browsing profiles and accepting or declining them. Once two users have accepted each other by swiping on each other’s profile, they can then communicate and play games online together. The fact that Wink allows children to share photos, personal information and their location with other users has caused significant concern.
In the guide below, you’ll find tips on a number of potential risks such as grooming, cyberbullying and inappropriate content.
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.
