Message from The Headteacher
20 July 2022
Dear Parents / Carers
As we reach the end of yet another academic year at Roselyn House School and RHISE, it has been a year of challenges, both with Covid and all the building works that have gone on at the main school site.
Everyone has coped unbelievably well and despite all of this, we have seen excellent outcomes from our students with progress being made across the whole curriculum and particularly, at a social level. Students seem to have become closer together and have learnt more than ever to understand others’ differences and needs.
We have a record number of students who have taken GCSE, Functional Skills ,Entry Level Certificates and AQA UAS. We look forward to the results which are available 18th August 2022. The results will be emailed to students.
We are excited by all the building works being completed before we come back in September and to be back into sparkling and more modern classrooms, whilst maintaining our homely feel.
We will also have permanent additions to the outside of main school too with additional log cabins for Nurture and Therapy, outdoor reading and music area, wellbeing area and more areas for play including basketball and table tennis.
We are welcoming our own Speech and Language Therapist from September along with continuing with our Play Therapist.
We have a large intake of Year 7 and Year 8 students for the coming year and look forward to meeting them all.
We have more students moving to Sixth Form at The RHISE Centre and further developments within Adult Pathway and Enterprise. Students have completed some wonderful projects in creating a new chill out zone, upcycling furniture and the whole Centre is going to be decorated.
We have once again been able to award the Sports Trophy along with the Literacy Award Trophy for exceptional progress and would like to extend a well done to all students who participated.
Sadly, at the end of the Summer we are saying goodbye to Miss Holmes, Assistant Headteacher who has been with us for 16 years. Professionally, Miss Holmes came to ourselves as a Teaching Assistant and later qualified as an English Teacher whilst working alongside myself delivering English to the school and later becoming the Lead. Miss Holmes has brought so much to the school and in particular, her work within Safeguarding and for Looked After Children. She has worked tirelessly to bring understanding to the School and has delivered many a successful INSET to the staff group with her knowledge of SEND and specific diagnosis. Miss Holmes has worked with some of our most complex and challenging students over the years with great success. She has achieved Stonewall Silver status for the School and is aiming towards Gold before she leaves. She will be sadly missed but will be remembered by everyone who has been fortunate enough to cross paths with her. Miss Holmes has left a lasting memory with many and will continue to be part of the Roselyn family in some capacity. We wish her well in her new venture moving forward working with animals for a change instead of young people.
Mr Wilkinson, after 5 years, will also be leaving us to have a change in career and we cannot thank him enough for the development of vocational provision, profiling and post 16 applications that he has brought to the School. He has been part of the vocational development and in particular Sixth Form and The RHISE Service where he has put his expertise to help students find the skill areas that suits them best and future training/ education on leaving us. We promise to carry on the good work you have done and foundations you have successfully laid. We wish you well in your future career and hope you don’t have to work too hard.
Finally, Mr Hartley, our Maths Teacher at RHISE will be moving to a new school. He actually did two stints with ourselves totaling seven years. He was instrumental in the developments of The RHISE Service and finding out the best individualised programmes that would be suitable for our students. We wish him well and hope he continues to bring positive educational experiences and exam success to many more students for years to come.
We would also like to congratulate Mr Birkenhead who I am sure you are all aware of by now. He has proven his dedication to the school and continues to give relentless support for both staff and students alike. He strives to support the school in being the best it can be. For this, he is being promoted to a Deputy Head, (in addition to Miss Willacy) and I look forward to working with him to develop the school even further moving forward. Really well done. This is quite an achievement but one that is well deserved.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our staff group as they continue to work extremely hard and all have the best interest of students at heart. They really are an exceptional group of people and we admire and appreciate them all greatly. A special shout out has to go to Mr Cooper, our Chef who achieved a 5 star rating for our school kitchen this year and has produced fantastic food not only for school dinners but as food packs during school holidays.
We have some wonderful new developments for September and this will include our new 1-4 levelling system which will feed into a new style End of Term reports, introduction to Parents/ Carers evenings and Annual Review process.
We will continue to provide FSM Vouchers for the Summer period and a catch-up resource pack for each student.
Finally, I hope that you all have a safe, restful and fun six weeks break.
Miss D 😊