21 March 2025 - Letter to Parents

Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope that you had a great week. Thank you to those of you who completed the Ofsted survey. Many of you have noticed the hard work we have put in to improving the school and I want to thank you for your support in that. We will receive the final report in a few weeks, and I will update you when we have it. In the meantime, we are proud of our pupils every single day and we will continue to support them, and you as families, in every way we can. We will always work together as part of the Orchard family.

We’ve also had a busy week elsewhere, with events such as the Comic Relief activities and our usual full list of sport fixtures. This week, the U12 girls’ football team won 5-2, which places us top of the North Bristol league. We are awaiting confirmation that we will play the winners of the South Bristol league to see who will take part in the County final in May at Cirencester FC ground. Our Y8 boys’ football team won again 3-1 and are also waiting for their progression.

We have also had an amazing trip to see the Merchant of Venice at the New Theatre in Cardiff and a Year 8 trip to the Tower of London. So, another busy, fun, challenging week of new, exciting experiences for our students; a reminder of the importance of sending your children every day so that they can really take part in our outstanding personal development commitment to them.,

Next week, we have a Cinema Reward trip for our highest achieving students, in terms of receiving house points. We also have another theatre trip, this time to see Romeo and Juliet at Bristol Old Vic. On top of all of that, we have our usual amazing extracurricular activities, with over 70 clubs running for our children.

Dates for the Diary

Year 11 Exams Prep Information Evening – Wednesday 26th March 5 – 6pm

Year 7 Parent Consultation Evening - Thursday 3rd April 3.30 – 7pm 

Attendance 

Year 8 achieved their best attendance on Wednesday with their highest daily record since November!

Please remember that punctuality matters, too. All children are expected to be on site by 8.20am for lineup. If there’s a problem, and you need support with this, please reach out to your child’s Pastoral Manager.

Below is a table showing the impact of lateness in terms of lost learning. As you can see, if a child is 30 minutes late each day, they will miss out, over the year, on 19 days of learning. That’s around 95 lessons, which makes catching up so difficult to do. Please make sure they arrive on time every day. Every minute with their expert teachers and tutors really matters.

Attendance and punctuality winners:

Year 7 - Dorchester

Year 8 - Butterfield

Year 9 – Avalon and Dorchester

Year 10 – Butterfield

Year 11 – 11D2

Attendance and punctuality are the first steps to success

Comic Relief

We celebrated Comic Relief’s 40th birthday this week. It was great to see students participating in old school games of tag, hula hoop, skipping and hopscotch. As the House cup competitions reach their final two weeks, participation in clubs and events is essential so please remember to check the clubs and activities on offer on our website here: Orchard School - Clubs and Enrichment

Safeguarding

We have received some reports of isolated pockets of poor behaviour by a few students in the community to and from school in the lane that runs between Luckington Road and Monks Park Avenue. This has involved the handling of broken glass and discarded litter. We are reminding students in school about how they represent our community and that some of these behaviours can be dangerous. Please support us in talking to your child about the importance of being great ambassadors for their school and their families in the community. We know most of our students always do the right things, so please also remind them to let us know via the Whisper report if they see any behaviour that doesn’t reflect the Orchard values in the community.

School Drop Off and Pick Up

Some parents and carers are using the nursery school car park, which is next to Orchard School, to drop off their children. This causes a significant safety concern to the parents/carers who are dropping their very young children at the nursery who, at times, are having to dodge the traffic coming in to drop off Orchard School students. Helpfully, there is a car park which is free to use about 100 metres from the school on Filton Road next to the South Gloucestershire boundary. Please use this car park instead of the nursery car park, which does not belong to us. It is only a short walk to school for students from there. In addition, some parents/carers are using Northwick Road as a drop off/pick up point and we have received concerns from residents about this. This causes serious traffic problems on this road, especially for patients of the doctor’s surgery. If there is a medical emergency when traffic is parked on pavements blocking driveways, this can lead to a serious incident. Please do not use Northwick Road as a drop off/pick up point.

Community Events

For those into cooking, or wanting to learn more, there is a new, free, 5-week cooking class starting at Stoke Park Children’s Centre, starting on Thursday 24 April, 9.30am- 12pm. To sign up, email Richard.davies@bristol.gov.uk.

A huge thank you to those who came to our school Iftar event on Wednesday evening and contributed to such a lovely celebration in honour of Ramadan. Our students spoke beautifully about the significance of the holy month, and everyone enjoyed a shared meal afterwards. We appreciated the chance to open our doors to the community.

Wishing you all a restful weekend.

Kind regards,

Mel Sweet, Headteacher