Welcome to the blog for this week.

I will start by saying how proud I am of the six year 8 students who attended the Faraday Challenge at Christ the King College this week.  The challenge was to create a new device or system to improve road safety.  Inspired by island roads, the team came up with a very impressive idea of a device that alerts cars on blind corners that an on-coming car is coming. They impressed the judges with their prototype, organisational skills and confident presentation.  They won! By beating teams from Island Free School, Ryde School, Priory and two teams from Christ the King, and have a chance at attending the grand finals at Silverstone this summer.  Congratulations to the team and huge thanks to Mr Roux for organising and taking them. 

The Student Council voted last week for a colour themed mufti day on Thursday 28 March. The colours are as follows: Year 11 – Black, Year 10 – Blue, Year 9 – Green, Year 8 – tones of Grey/Brown/Beige and Year 7 – colours of the rainbow. It is £1 and payment can be made via Arbor (school shop) or cash on the day, whichever is preferred. The money raised will go to The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust.

Last week we had our monitoring visit by the Hampshire Inspection Advisory Service. Lessons and social times were observed and students and staff invited to discussions. They observed positive behaviour for learning, felt the school was calm and that students were well behaved, polite and able to communicate confidently. We will get a written report in due course.

Parents/carers of Year 10 are now able to book appointments for the face to face Parents’ Evening on Wednesday 17 April using the Arbor App. This is an excellent opportunity to discuss your child’s progress in school and raise any concerns that you may have. If you have any problems with booking appointments, please contact donna.keogh@iwef.org.uk.

As a school, we celebrate the achievements of students in and outside of school. I am delighted to share the success of one of our year 9 students. Summer competed in her first archery competition last weekend, competing in three competitions against juniors from the island and the mainland. She won all three of her competitions achieving personal bests and has achieved a Hampshire County record. She went on to receive the tournament championship trophy over the whole competition which included the adults as well as the juniors. Well done Summer, you should be so proud of yourself, as are your parents and the Carisbrooke community.

Can I please remind parents/carers of the importance of using the Arbor App. This is how we communicate with you and where you can see a breakdown down of your child’s time in school including attendance, behaviour and achievement points, detentions, timetables etc. It is also where you book parents’ evening appointments. If you have not already downloaded the app, please contact donna.keogh@iwef.org.uk for login details.

Congratulations to our top achievement winners from last week. Year 7 joint winners – Evie, Lexi and Shayna, Year 8 – Riley, Year 9 joint winners – Logan and Zach, Year 10 – Deacon and Year 11 – Harriet. Well done to you all.

Finally, information regarding revision sessions that are taking place during the Easter break for Year 11 has been emailed to parents this afternoon and can be found here. Please do encourage students to access this valuable additional support. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Begley

Head of School – Carisbrooke College