Weekly round-up from the Principal!

I can’t believe we have just competed the penultimate week of term! Life is a busy as always at ECC with plenty going on to celebrate.

Thank you to all staff, parents and students who attended Year 11 Parents’ Evening last week. Having moved to a virtual event this December after face to face events for Year 11 Information Evening and Tutor Evening, we were delighted to have our best ever Parents’ Evening turnout. Individual meetings with subject teachers are crucial for personalised feedback and productive two-way conversations. Year 11 are now working hard to plug those gaps identified in the October mock series, and increase their knowledge ready for their next sets of mocks in February. We are incredibly impressed by the way Year 11 are focussed on their studies and the mature way in which they are approaching their lessons and independent learning. Later in the week, Year 11s will be able to pick up the bundles of past papers they have ordered – the reprographics team are busily getting these ready for collection, with the biggest ever order we have seen!

Year 11s are also fully immersed in ‘next steps’ conversations, thinking about their destinations after Year 11 – will it be ECC Sixth Form, a local College for a vocational pathway or an apprenticeship? There are lots of great options available and its important that students research these fully. Last Friday, we welcomed Sharron Robbie from the DfE ASK programme to talk to students about apprenticeship routes.

Next steps destinations are also a hot topic for Year 13. 73% of the current Year 13 cohort are in the process of putting together and submitting their application to university ahead of the January deadline. The Art department also hosted an event led by University Plymouth last week to work with Sixth Form students on assembling an art portfolio in readiness for applications to university and employment.

Sixth Form students are impressing us with their commitment to volunteering through our ‘Give an Hour’ Loyalty Card scheme. So far, we have 5 students who have already completed over 20 hours of volunteering and 12 students who have completed over 10 hours of volunteering. Many more have nearly completed the hours on their current loyalty card (a further 10) so these figures are increasing daily. Fantastic efforts all round. Students so far have been volunteering in lower school lessons, after College clubs and College events.

The Art department ran a Photography Competition for Year 8 – well done to all who submitted an entry. A particular well done to Alfie S and Lily C for their winning entries which now feature on the ECC Christmas card this year. Brilliant effort and excellent photography skills!

Our Golden Ticket scheme continues to build momentum towards the grade prize draw on Friday. Last week, we also recognised all students who had achieved 100% attendance that week with a Golden Ticket, and the same will happen again this week. I have thoroughly enjoyed congratulating students on receiving Golden Tickets so far and never fail to be impressed upon hearing the reasons they have been awarded. We really are lucky to have such wonderful students at ECC.

Talking about attendance, it has been great to see significant improvements in student attendance across the College, with 12 students coming out of the Persistently Absent category last week. Well done, this is excellent news! (‘Persistently Absent’ is a measure defined by the government where attendance is less than 90%).

Mr Calderwood and I had the pleasure of meeting the Student Council this week too – they shared with us some of their great ideas as to how we can revamp and improve Student Leadership across the College. We look forward to working with them all in 2025.

Thank you to all families of students who are part of Hearing Support Centre for joining us on Friday at our inaugural Coffee Morning. How wonderful to showcase the great work of the HSC and most importantly, the progress and growth of our students. They all did a phenomenal job and we could not be prouder. A huge thank you to Mrs Northcote for organising this. Watch this space for a bigger write-up post.

We will continue to enjoy festivities this week alongside brilliant lessons, with Rewards Assemblies all week, Christmas Dinners on Wednesday, the Golden Ticket grand draw on Friday, Christmas Virtual Assembly to end the term on Friday and Christmas Jumper Day to support Save the Children.

Our Sparx Maths winning Tutor Groups this week were 10AKS (Mrs Spake was very excited that her group finally beat Mrs Nunn’s!), 9MHW, 8GOC and 7HMG.

Students of the Week were:

Year 7: Jude W

Year 8: Harry W

Year 9: Immy B

Year 10: Angel-Keela B

Year 11: Petula R

Year 12: Ciara T

It was great to meet them all collectively and also see how genuinely proud the students were, not only of their own significant achievements, but also those of each other. Congratulations to you all.