Specialisms Health Check

On Wednesday we received a visit from an advisor from the specialist schools and academies trust. The purpose of the visit was to undergoa health check on our specialist areas of Media, The Arts, Maths and IT. We are very pleased that she recognised the high standards of achievement and quality of opportunity that we provide for our students and community partners.We are delighted by her observations that, ’you can feel justifiably proud of your achievements!’ as ‘it is clear that the specialism has a majorimpact in and beyond the school’.Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to or participated in our specialist work to make it so impressive. We look forward to anothersuccessful year.

Mathletics – Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Maths Challenge 15th June – 22nd June

Year 7-9 students from Specialist Schools and Academies in the United Kingdom will battle it out in a one off Mathematics challenge! Students will have the task of answering as many correct questions as they can to make their school the SSAT Champions!Students will compete using Mathletics, an online Maths programme and can compete in two ways:

• Live Mathletics – Students compete against other students in a 60 second mental arithmetic showdown.
• Mathletics National Curriculum Topics – Students tackle curriculum based questions.

Students gain 1 point for each correct answer in Live Mathletics and 10 points per correct answer in the Curriculum Topics. These points determine the rankings on the Hall of Fame. We set the students the challenge of gaining 1000 points and this will earn them a Participation Certificate for the week and exciting prizes. This competition is Internet based so the students will have to access www.mathletics.co.uk and will need a username and a password to complete.

This will be available from the students’ Maths teacher. Once the students have their details they will be able to practice using the programme before the challenge. The accounts are already active and the students can begin using Mathletics right away. The challengestarts at 10.00am on Monday 15th June and finishes at 3.00pm on Monday 22nd June.

The students can use Mathletics and their account 24/7 but only the points gained after 10.00am on Monday 15th June will count for the challenge.

Hayes School Motto

You may recall that in recent weeks we have been conducting a survey of views (staff, parents, students, and governors) on a new motto forHayes School. Thank you to all those who voted. After counting all votes we would like to announce that our new school motto is to be:

‘Excellence Through Endeavour’

We feel that this accurately expresses our view of what Hayes School encourages and values. We feel it is a motto that can be applied to all students and to all situations. It is about academic, personal and social challenge. It is also about ‘ipsative’ progress where the priority for students is improving on their previous best. We wanted a motto that could be used by everyone, for everyone and in all situations. We feel this motto provides this. It will also have the great asset of being immediately understandable! In the weeks ahead we will start publicising this more and more throughout our school. We will also be inviting students to come up with adesign for this new motto.Thank you again to all those who took part .

Mr L. Preston, Assistant Headteacher

Dates for your Diary

19th-20th June – PTA Bag2School fundraising initiative

20th June - Wickham Common Primary School Summer Fair

28th June - Pickhurst Primary School Summer Fair

1st July - Olympic Torch Day – torch is visiting localschools

4th July - Hayes Primary School Summer Fair

10th July - PTA Stephaneez Dance Craze

Spotify

This brilliant music streaming service has been on-line since October and haspassed the 1 million download mark. Essentially this software lets you listen toany track / album / artist / playlist from your computer desktop legally, for freewith adverts every 5 songs or so. They have signed up most of the major musiclabels. And tracks/albums can be purchased and downloaded. The service canbe found at http://www.spotify.com/en/ Enjoy.

Mr Veldtman, ICT Director

New Head Boy and Head Girl teams for 2009/10

Fourteen Year 12 students were interviewed on Monday for the positions ofHead Boy and Head Girl of Hayes School. All gave eloquent speeches andanswered testing questions about their motivations for wanting the roles. Itwas an exceptionally hard decision to make, all of the candidates acquittedthemselves very well, but a decision had to be made.Our final decision was to appoint two teams of three deputies for each HeadBoy and Head Girl to ensure they have a good mix of skills to help them carryout their duties as figureheads for the whole school. The teams are as follows:

Head Boy: Henry Smith
Head Girl: Alice Jones
Deputy Head Boys: Kenneth Agyei-Kyeremateng, Stephen Fisher, Stefan Taylor
Deputy Head Girls: Amy Cornwell, Charlotte Marsh, Samantha Rothery

Please join me in congratulating them on their appointments.

Mr K J Osborne, Head Teacher

Remote Access to Hayes Servers

As part of our Maths and ICT Specialism we have invested in remote access to our servers for all Hayes School staff and students. This will allow all students to access their user areas (N drive) from home as well as the shared student user area (U drive).

To download the software please go to: http://www.hayes.bromley.sch.uk/downloads/
Click on the Download Ranger Outpost, and follow the instructions on screen to install the software. Once installed students simply logon using their school username and password. The student needs to then click on their user number and their files will appear. Drag
the file that you need to your desktop to download it. Work on the file. Save the file to your desktop and drag it back into the Outpost folder you want to save it in. Please remember that normal ICT school policy applies when uploading work to the server.

You will need to use the same software that you used at school to continue working on the files. To that end we have free Microsoft Office 2003 disks for students. Unfortunately other software houses do not allow us to give software away for free. Please collect a Microsoft User Agreement form from the library or the finance office, return it with 50p for the cost of the disk and install on your home PC. If you have any issues with the software please speak to your ICT teacher.

Mr Veldtman, Director of ICT

Interview with Keith Quince, Chair of Governors

On Friday 15th May, we had the pleasure of interviewing Keith Quince. Mr Quince is the current Chair of Governors, but is stepping down at the end of June. We asked him a few questions:

• How long have you been a School Governor? 11 years, and I’ve enjoyed every single one.

• What made you apply to be a School Governor in the first place? I didn’t actually, I was put forward for it by a friend which led me to think that it was a good idea.

• What has been your best memory? Not so much a best memory, but my association with
the school is something that I will always be proud of. Appointing Kieran Osborne also, a decision that I still feel was spot on.

• What has been your most difficult moment? Having to deal with unfair treatment appeals; it was a sensitive matter that could have been difficult to deal with. Aside from that, there has been no real challenging moment.

• If you had to give your successor one piece of advice, what would it be? To take advice and talk to the people around you. I’ve found their input invaluable.

• Would you do it all again? Yes, without a doubt. It’s been a pleasure and an experience that I would recommend to anyone.

• What are you going to do next? Spend more time with my family.

On behalf of all the students at Hayes School we are extremely grateful for the dedication and support that Mr Quince has shown us and wish him well in the future. James Busby, Head Boy & Sarah Perryman, Head Girl

On behalf of all the students and teachers at Hayes School I would like to thank James and Sarah for performing so admirably in their roles this year. I would like to wish them well in their exams and as they move onto University.

Miss Moss, Assistant Head

Hayes School Race Night

Hayes School are trying to raise money for a new school rugby kit for each year group. We are hoping to raise £3,000.00 for this worthwhile cause especially as the school has recently been awarded the Rugby Football Union (RFU) Development Schools Award which highlights our commitment to teaching rugby at Hayes School.

As part of the fundraising we are organising a Race Night at Hayes School on July 3rd 2009. Tickets are now available from the PE Department for this fantastic event. Remember you can still help in one of the following ways:

• A donation of a generous prize that would be associated to a race.
• Sponsoring the whole evening for £300.00 where we would do everything possible to advertise and promote your company on the night.
• A donation of £500.00 that would purchase a rugby kit for one of our year groups with your company logo on the shirt.

We would appreciate any support that your company could give us in raising this money. If you wish to discuss this further please do not hesitate to contact me either by telephone or by e-mail m.stamato@hayes.bromley.sch.uk.

Year 7 Trip to Greenwich

Year 7wx had a successful day out in Greenwich at the Royal Observatory Greenwich on 21st May. Below are some of the feedback from the students:

“We enjoyed the science trip because it was very educational. The best bit was when we went into the Planetarium.”
- Adedayo Odukale 7SMW

“I thought the Science trip was very enjoyable and I learnt lots of things on astronomy. There were loads of equipment to play around with in different rooms. In one room, there was a brilliant model of the Sun and the Earth and it taught me why there are different seasons.”
- George Cowley 7JR

“ …..My favourite bit was the Planetarium where I actually felt like I was moving in space. I saw what the Solar System is like, how the Sun worked, how the Earth is tilted and how long it takes to go around the Sun…”
- Phoebe Purkiss 7NJS

“…We were shown what the Solar system and planets are made of. We went to Activity Space and talked about which countries have day and night. In the astronomy galleries we had a chance to play with exhibits….”
- Samuel James 7SMW.

Year 9 Maths

Year 9 students were informed in an assembly during period 1 on Wednesday 3rd June that their GCSE English, Maths and Science courses start now. Students were given details on how to become independent learners and online support available to them. They were also reminded about equipment and we would like you to encourage your child to have these items on them for all Maths and Science lessons:

• Pens Pencils
• Ruler Eraser
• Sharpener Compass
• Protractor (angle measurer)
• Calculator

It is important that students have these on them so that firstly they know how to use them and secondly, they do not eat in to valuable lesson time.

London Youth Games

The Hayes Handball team are competing in the London Youth Games Handball competition on Saturday 4th July representing Bromley. We wish the team the best of luck.

Year 10 Maths Modular Exam –11/06/09

About 40 Year 10 students will be completing modular Maths assessment on Thursday during period 1 in the Sports Hall. The students will complete two 20 minute assessments. They will be allowed to use a calculator for the first section, but not for the second section. Students affected by this are taught by Mr Solomon and Mr Appah.

There will be two after school revision sessions for these students – one on Tuesday 9th June and the other on Wednesday 10th June. The first session will cover graphs and the second one will look at averages and probability. If your child is affected by this, please encourage them to come along to these revision sessions. They will be held in A2H on both days.

Extra Curricular Clubs at Hayes School

As part of Hayes School’s commitment towards providing more opportunities for learning, better relationships and more self esteem amongst students, we have scheduled a list of over 60 extra curricular clubs! We are delighted that over 50% of Year 7s, 35% of Year 8s and nearly 38% of Year 9s have all tried at least one of these clubs during the Spring Term.

However, that still leaves a proportion of students yet to take advantage of the opportunity to really make the most of their time at Hayes School. Find out for yourself why so many students have taken this chance… check out the Summer Clubs menu (displayed in all tutor rooms) for more details!

Mr. D Hazlehurst