Achievement
For the second year
running, Therfield has won a DFES School Achievement
Award. This award recognises the school's success in the
examination results achieved in 2001 and is a tremendous
tribute to the dedication of our teaching staff.
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No
to rebuilding As you may
have seen in the local paper, our ambitious bid for £17.5m
funding to rebuild the school has not met with success.
The Government was not able to support the County's Public
Private Partnership bid although, as yet, the reasons for
this are not known.
We were one of eleven schools in Surrey to apply, all of
which were turned down. A smaller scale bid for a new
purpose-built block for Humanities teaching was also
unsuccessful. The Department for Education and Science
acknowledged that the application was a worthwhile one but
it did not merit priority in competition with the 53 other
applications received.
This is a disappointing outcome for an exciting project.
Therfield is a Beacon school and gets outstanding results
but there is no denying that much of our accommodation is
old and in need of constant repair. Once the reasons for
the DFES decision are known, the Governors and I will plan
a new way forward.
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School
Day Changes During the
time of the public examinations - GCSE, GNVQ, AS, A2, - it
is necessary for us to look at greater flexibility in the
school day so as to allow three hour examinations in the
morning and afternoon. During the main period of the exams
(20th May-21st June) we will be having the lunch break at
12.05 to 12.50 and some timing adjustments will be made to
accommodate clubs on certain days. This means that school
will close at 3.15 pm during this period.
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Academic
Tutoring The next date
is 23rd May - times of individual appointments will be
sent home before then.
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Charity
Money The Sixth Form
hopes to raise at least £1,000 as a result of last week's
Rag Day activities. The sponsored Break Out
resulted in two groups reaching Calais, one got to
Stansted and another to the Isle of Wight. Street
collections were held in Leatherhead and Epsom and a
concert in the Main Hall on Friday lunchtime was loudly
appreciated by a full house of Lower School students. The
money will go to Save the Children Fund and Leukaemia
Research.
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More
About Maths Seven Sixth
Formers from Mrs Cox and Mrs
Wood's Further Maths groups went to Surrey
University for two lectures on Advanced Mathematics. Dan
Richards, Year 12, gives us this report -"The first
lecture was on locusts and predicting when they will
swarm.
The second lecture was on the more practical subject of
code-breaking. The lecturer had succeeded in decrypting a
World War 11 diary and took us through the stages that he
followed. By the end of the afternoon several methods of
code breaking had been both taught and applied. We really
appreciated and enjoyed this insight into university Maths
and would recommend students to go next year if invited!'
[If you take the Readers' Digest, the story of
the code breaking was featured in March 1998, p60]
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Prayer
Group There will be a
meeting on Monday, 29th April at 8 pm in the school. All
parents are welcome or you can request a prayer to be
said. Mrs Jill Poole (01 932 865476)
will be happy to give more information.
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Important
Dates All 14 year-olds
in English state schools will be sitting National
Curriculum Tests in Maths, Science and English next month.
Year 9 parents should have received details about these
tests which will take place on 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and
13th May.
It is very important that students arrive at school in
plenty of time to sit these tests. Information about the
levels reached by individuals will be sent out later this
term.
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Spring
Concert Coming as they
do mostly at the end of term as a mark of celebration,
musical events do not always get the accolades they
deserve. Any of the 250 audience who attended this year's
Spring Concert on 20th March went away impressed,
inspired, happy and pleased with the music on offer.
All the school's ensembles contributed to a marvellous
evening of music With a varied programme making sure that
everyone had something special to enjoy. We shall miss a
number of our senior players when they leave for
university and it was good to note the impressive debut
performance of the Year Seven Band suggesting that future
events will be equally ably performed.
Mr Langford, Head of Music, congratulated
everyone on the high quality of music presented and
commented on how good it was to play before an
appreciative audience in a packed hall.
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Special
Recital This evening,
Year 13 students Holly Ashby, Howard
Ebison and George Wooding
will be performing their A Level Music Recitals in a
public concert at 8 pm in the New Dining Hall. This free
concert vvill finish by 9.30 pm and refreshments are
provided. Any interested students, friends and family are
welcome to attend.
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Exchange
News This year we were
fortunate to extend the exchange to Year 12 students
through links to a new Lycée in Nantes, who combined with
our traditional link also from Nantes, College
Jean-Monnet. The
majority on arrival went straight to a party, which seemed
to set the pace for the rest of the week!
During their stay, the visitors spent some time in school,
saw the sights of London and went on a joint trip to
Greenwich. It was a very pleasant and sociable week as
these quotes from student feedback show:
we were quite similar as we both really enjoyed sport
and liked the same kind of music
it was good she came into school so as to meet all my
friends
every evening we went to someone's house, or to a
restaurant or a party which was wicked
the week seemed to go really quickly
I'm lookng forward to going over there in June but a bit
scared about meeting her family
thank goodness my mum broke the ice with loads of
questions such as "are you hungry?"
you get to do many interesting things while you try and
fleece as much money as you can out of mum and dad
insisting that it is to show the visitor a good time.
Only joking but it is expensive!
you pick up words just by trying to explain. To sum up,
it's great fun.
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Sailing
Success Good weather
over Easter added to the enjoyment of the traditional sail
training week for 34 students and four staff. Having in
recent years faced snow, hail, rain and high winds the
group revelled in blue skies and excellent sailing
weather. Highlights of the week included a day sail across
the Solent from Cowes to Beaulieu and a visit to Ryde for
bowling. 27 certificates were gained, encompassing white
badge, red badge and stages 1, 2 3 in the RYA criteria.
Six students - Joe Fincham, lain
Foster, Jon Kirby, Jo
Manby, David Manders and Duncan
Skinner - were awarded the coveted RYA
Instructor qualification.
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Punctuation
Time Years 7 and 8 will
have particular emphasis placed on punctuation in all
subjects from 29th April-10th May. Punctuation
Fortnight follows on the success of special two
week Dictionary sessions across the curriculum.
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Celebrating
Rugby To underline the
successful establishment of a thriving Rugby squad in
Therfield's sporting curriculum, a Rugby Awards Dinner was
held at the school. As president of Therfield RFC, I was
delighted to present Antony Penny with
the award for oustanding service and to assure all the
boys that they were indeed involved in 'the best team
sport in the world'.
Mr Mayhew and Mr Batchelor,
whose vociferous support from the touchline in all winds
and weathers was much appreciated, were especially pleased
with the end of term victories over Howard of Effingham.
The Team Captains, appropriately wearing bow ties, spoke
up well and presented their own awards.
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Footballing
Honour James
Montgomery, Year 7, who is a member of Reading
Football Club's Academy, has been invited to display his
footballing skills to HM The Queen. On 10th May he will be
taking part in Berkshire's Golden Youth Festival as part
of the Golden Jubilee celebrations., The event is to be
held at Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre and the Queen
will be in attendance.
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Success
at Badminton Sixth
Former Chris Langridge was one of
England's players when they defeated Denmark in an
international Badminton match recently. He was also one of
the Surrey players selected to take part in the
Inter-Counties Tournament at Nottingham.
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Have
you got? Any old
electric toothbrushes the Technology students can take to
bits for one of their electronics projects?
Also, the English Faculty is still in need of a video
recorder. Although they would prefer one that uses
standard VHS tapes they would be grateful for anything
that works! So if you have invested in one of the
up-to-the-minute camcorders please let Ms English
know if you no longer need your old cumbersome one!
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Help
Wanted The Trust Fund
Committee would like to hear from anyone who can spare a
few hours on a voluntary basis to input and analyse data
relating to the Fund. For more information, please contact
Mrs Howarth, Finance officer, at school.
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Help
with French Malika
Litim, who is our Language Assistant this year,
is keen to take on some coaching out of school hours. A
native French speaker, Malika can be contacted via the
school.
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Still
Collecting Many thanks
to all of you who have sent in Tesco Computer Vouchers.
They are no longer being issued but there is still time to
send in vouchers which have got 'lost' at home. We plan to
spend the vouchers on scanners and a digital camera. We
didn't reach the challenge target of 6,900 vouchers for Books
for Schools but are still actively seeking the
remaining few tokens from crisp packets before sending off
the final order.
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Please,
please, please Please,
please, please do have names put on your son's/daughter's
clothing. It is so frustrating to see the piles of lost
property we accumulate each week and have no means of
returning. Students come to the office to report missing
items and if it is named when handed in we make sure it
gets back to the rightful owner.
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Marathon
Run Matthew
Thomas, who is in Year 13, ran his first London
Marathon this year and completed the course in the
excellent time of 3 hours 54 minutes. Matthew is
collecting for the Mark Holland Leukaemia Research Fund
set up in memory of his uncle and has been promised £700
in sponsorship.
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Sports
Clubs The Summer term
sports clubs have now all started with opportunities for
athletics, cricket, tennis and rounders. Miss
Nicholls and some very keen Year 9 students are
planning to start a Girls' Cricket Club. If there is
sufficient interest it is hoped to arrange some fixtures
and extra coaching.
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Musical
Success Membership of Surrey
County Youth Orchestra requires not only a high
level of musicianship but also a strong sense of
commitment and self-discipline. Congratulations then to Tom
Early, Year 11, on being a member of one of the
finest youth orchestras in the country. Tom, of course, is
well known to Therfield music followers as the drummer and
youngest member of the very successful jazz group, The
Stompers.
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Study
Leave Year 11 starts
14th May, Year 12, 20th May and Year 13, 23rd May.
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Day
Out Sunday, 12th May
from 10am - 5pm is Emergency Services Day at
Surrey Police Headquarters at Guildford. So long as you
can negotiate the traffic queues which build up around
Mount Browne this is a
wonderful day out. |
Issue 98 24th April 2002