St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School Parent Portal

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2025. It has been a positive start to the year culminating with our first Ofsted inspection in 10 years on 28 and 29 January. This was a positive experience, and more details can be found in my letter to parents/carers which can be accessed here.

There have been many highlights, including the start of Year Service, Year 11’s engagement with the Macbeth performance that we hosted on site, the activity of our student leaders, and increasing student engagement in the after-school clubs that are on offer. I would like to pass on my thanks to the staff and partners who are making it possible for us to offer an increase in the number of clubs and activities.

Communication

As part of our self-evaluation, we regularly review our communication strategy. A key milestone was the introduction of a new website in 2023.

We recently wrote to parents and carers in January to update on changes we have made based on valuable parent feedback. You can access the letter here.

We recently revamped our newsletter format from PDF to web page format. Thank you for the positive feedback on this change. In addition to providing a more engaging interface, this change was made to enable easy translation into a range of languages.

To translate the newsletter (and any webpage) please select the three dots in the top right corner of the Google browser.

Then select translate

Then select the three dots.

Then select ‘Choose another language’

Then select the small downward arrow to see the languages available and select your preferred language.

Attendance

Regular school attendance is an important part of giving children the best possible start in life. The aim should be to attend 100% of the time. Students who miss school frequently can fall behind with their work and do less well in exams. Good attendance also suggests to potential employers that a young person is reliable. Below is a table showing how children’s percentage attendance equates to the amount of school time missed.

Thank you for your continued support of student attendance. Our attendance rates continue to be above local and national rates although below our ambitious target of 97%. Although we are above key thresholds, our focus is on achieving the best for every individual student, and we are aware that every circumstance is different. School staff will make contact when attendance falls below the key threshold of 95%. Please do contact your child’s Tutor, Learning Mentor, Deputy Head of Year, or Head of Year if there are barriers or concerns. Our desire is to support you and your child.

Punctuality

It is also important to arrive at school on time. If a child arrives late for school every day, their learning begins to suffer. Below is a graph showing how being late to school every day over a school year adds up to lost learning time over one academic year.

We have seen improvements in punctuality following communication during the last academic year and the start of this academic year. Thank you and do continue to communicate if there are challenges. We have seen that the reintroduction of student planners has helped students with their organisation and punctuality to lessons. We do have high expectations and will continue to apply our behaviour and Good Relationships Policy where punctuality is a concern.

Sixth Form

Well done to Mr Shaw and the Sixth Form team who have supported our students in submitting their UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) applications. This year we have submitted 320 applications, which is the highest ever in the school’s history.

Choosing GCSE Options (for Year 9 Students)

Year 9 students will begin the process of selecting their GCSE option choices this term. This is a lengthy and detailed process, which will include ViP lessons on options, assemblies, information for parents and carers, additional support for key groups of students, and a dedicated section on our school website. We are currently finalising our curriculum offer for 2025 to 2026 and will begin to share information with students, and parents and carers towards the end of January with a view to finalising option choices in Term 5.

Community News

Our new School Business Manager, Mrs Bunce, started work at the end of January, and is working hard to get up to speed. She is very experienced, having worked in a number of school settings.

We welcomed back some of our staff who were on maternity leave, so students will be seeing Mrs Apps (Science and P16 Progression Coordinator) and Ms Mullins (Deputy SENCo) in school again this term.

We have also been joined by our new staff in PE: Mrs Belinger (who is also covering the Second in PE role until the end of this academic year, in place of Mrs Hall), and Mrs Lochrie. They are both settling in well. Mrs Baggaley is covering Dr Lynch’s Geography teaching now that she is on maternity leave. We also welcomed Mrs Appleby to the LSA team last term and will be welcoming another new LSA in the near future.

Mr Planter

We are now entering the start of the period when Year 9 students will choose their GCSE options for next year.

Our offer at KS4 really reflects our school values of diversity and choice and our aim is that each student will become “fully alive” and develop the skills, knowledge and Alive qualities which will allow them to make their unique contribution to the world. This approach is designed to increase choice, maximise access to the English Baccalaureate subjects and provide an appropriate curriculum offer for students who might find the demands of a full suite of GCSE subjects too much of a challenge.

This week we had our 'Bright Futures' event where all Year 9 students had the opportunity to get some fantastic career input from a range of local employers, including the NHS, the Army, the Police, Burgess Salmon Law and Arup Engineering and Construction.

On 6 February, our Year 9 Options page on the school website will go live. We will send a message to parents and carers and students with a link to the page. This will have more detail on the subjects we are offering and (later in the process) will have details on when our online options system will be available for students to submit their preferences.

In the same week, we have our Year 9 Parents and Carers Evenings. This is a great opportunity for parents and carers to get feedback from staff about how students are progressing in their current curriculum subjects (all of which will be available as GCSEs) in order to make an informed choice about options.

The following week - February 13 – we have our Options Evening for Parents, Carers and Students from 6 to 7pm. This will be a presentation by me about our Key Stage Four offer, with a range of different subject 'stalls' with more information about some of the subjects we offer. There will be more details about this event emailed to parents and carers in the week beginning February 3rd.

On 24 February, the online options form goes live. This will be the opportunity for students to submit their preferences with a dedicated email support to address any questions they may have.

On March 7th, the online options form closes. This is the deadline for submitting preferences. At that point, we will start allocating students to choices and make a decision about which subjects we can run (including our additional twilight GCSEs) as we can only run subjects where there is enough interest from students and sufficient specialist staff to deliver the course.

During term 5 we will finalise classes, find alternative options for students who don't get their first choice subjects and communicate the final choices during term 6.

We are always keen to hear ideas from parents, carers and our students for ways that we can improve the curriculum offer, so please do share any thoughts or suggestions.

You can find out more about our Alive Curriculum for each key stage in the Curriculum section of our website, The Alive Curriculum.

Mr Taylor

We now have a student chaplain team following a very rigorous selection process. We received over 40 applications for 12 roles. We were so impressed with every student who applied and choosing the final team was a real challenge. We have now selected our chaplains, and you can read a little bit more about them below. We are excited to hear all of their ideas and see how they grow and develop in their role across the school. Please keep them in your prayers.

Worship Team

Chaiya – I would like to help people struggling with their faith. I would like to make sure people are okay. I would like to help with the church services.

Hannah – I applied because I believe Jesus is the living God; the friend who loves us enough to keep pursuing us and I believe everyone deserves to know that love. Jesus is reviving our generation- as a worship chaplain, I want to make this school a place where His name is alive and more than just a word to all of us, where the Holy Spirit is working and turning hearts to Him.

Daniel – My aim as a student Chaplin is to make the services more engaging and to help the community of Bristol to know God

Verity – I want to help people to worship openly and confidently in school. I also want to encourage and help more people to get involved in worship at school.

Adeire – Spread the love and word of God, even to those who don’t believe in God. Help those who are struggling to find out who God is and how much he loves you. I will help you find that

Community Team

Thomas – This year, I'm hoping to further involve St Mary Redcliffe school in the wider Bristol community. I want to continue to make our school as active and positive as possible, keeping God at the centre of all our decisions.

Dylan – I would like to help people find faith in the services we run, which I will try and make as accessible and fun as possible to all

Elisia – I wanted to be a student chaplain because I want to make a difference and help our school and wider Redcliffe community. I enjoy organising events and I hope to support some amazing charities and bring the hope of Jesus to our community.

Astrid – I’m hoping to play a part in helping build community between our school, people, and churches all over Bristol.

Buddy Team

Demilade - As a chaplain, I hope to build trust, provide guidance to younger individuals, and help navigate them in the right direction by being kind, helpful, empathetic, and understanding to them. As I have been chosen as a chaplain this year, I pray that I will be able to have the ability to make a meaningful difference.

Christvie - As student Chaplain, my goal as a buddy is to be a respectful, kind figure who will be able to guide students through difficult situations and be a light for younger students as they navigate through a difficult part of life. I pray that I will be able to make a purposeful impact on our school community.

Yuventhan - What I want to do as student chaplain is create fun lunchtime and breaktime clubs for people to attend. Also, I want to give ways on how we can pray in school.

Sophie - I wanted to become the buddy student chaplain because I believe our school should become a community where everyone is included and no one is alone. I believe that for this to happen we must have Jesus at the centre. I hope to do my part to make this happen.

Zoe - I want to make the school a more welcoming place and to give people struggling to make friends or who are between friend groups a place to go to hang out or just have someone to talk to.

Joby - I would like to be a student chaplain as I feel I care for others and I also like to socialise. I like making sure others are OK. I like looking out for my peers. I am good at treating everyone equally.

Chaplain Josh