Dear Parents/Carers

Successes

The best place to find out what is happening at St. Julie's Catholic High School is our website, www.stjulies.org.uk but let me highlight a couple of the current stories you will find there. The sporting successes continue with our Cross Country teams winning the Merseyside Saturday morning League in Years 7, 10 & 11, with Year 11 having won the League every year since Year 7. The students in Year 8 & 9 also put in a strong performance and finished runners up in the League. Football continues to be a strength of the students. Our Year 11 students were the U15 National Champions last year and remain on course for the double this year, recently beating Ormskirk High School 4-1 to go through to the National quarter finals. A fantastic achievement! Our U14 students also beat Wirral Grammar to progress to the semi-final of the Merseyside Schools League.

Our latest STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) activity day saw 50 Year 10 students take part in an Engineering design competition to build the strongest structure to hold a wind turbine. They also heard about careers in the STEM industries. You can see some of their designs on the website.

Accommodation

In the first week after half term we will be opening our new Learning Resource Centre (LRC). This new accommodation will house 45 computers and a new library for the students to access from 8am until 4:30pm. Students can arrive early in the mornings, enjoy a range of breakfast snacks in the dining hall and research or do coursework in the LRC before their normal school day even starts. In the summer term we will be opening our modernised Sixth Form accommodation which will include a Common Room with various study and relaxation areas and Wi-Fi access, new Sixth Form LRC with over 50 state of the art computers and a new and expanded Sixth Form Bistro. Watch out for the launch event on 28 June.

Standards and expectations

We recently revised our mobile phone policy in school to a much stricter policy which can be viewed on our website under the ‘Information for Parents' section in the policy called Behaviour for Learning. The last part of this policy refers to the confiscation procedure. I would urge all parents to read this procedure and encourage your children not to have their mobile phones out in school. The school accepts that students will want to have the security of a mobile phone while travelling to and from school but will not tolerate these items being turned on and used in any way on the premises. Mobile phones will be confiscated if seen during the day and we ask parents to support us by disciplining your children at home also if they break these rules. Please refer to the policy for a fuller explanation and rationale for this procedure.
Can I also ask that Parents continue to support the school by insisting that the students wear only the correct uniform, carry the correct bags, wear no jewellery, nail varnish or make up and bring all the correct equipment to school. We expect the highest standards from our students in all aspects of school life as we work with them to achieve and be the best that they can be.

We have recently upgraded our First Aid facilities to assist with students who have recognised medical requirements for conditions such as diabetes or epilepsy and as such need to administer medication orally or sub-dermally. Occasionally accidents happen in school and First Aid is administered prior to referral for treatment at a walk-in centre or hospital. What we cannot do is diagnose illnesses or give medication that has not been prescribed and sent in by a parent. In November, we had 400 separate visits to the First Aid room by students. The majority of these were students saying they had a sore leg or arm, a headache, stomach ache, earache or other very minor ailments. Staff are obviously very sympathetic but in these cases there is very little that we can do and have to send the student back to class or home. I would be very grateful if you would speak with your daughter (or son) and explain the importance of remaining in lessons as far as practicable owing to the impact that absence has on their learning.

Parents Evenings

The Parents evenings have been very successful this year with the vast majority of Parents telling us that the information they have received has been informative and have valued the comments by staff. As with any event there is always room for improvement. One such area is the waiting time and appointments system. I can only apologise to those Parents who have had to wait a long time to speak to a teacher or who may not have had the chance to speak to a certain teacher at all. If this is the case, please feel free to contact school for another appointment or for a return call from a teacher. We will continue to improve our Parents evenings with your help and support and welcome any comments, which you can make by phone, in writing or via the website using the feedback form in the purple box on the left hand side.

Feast Day

Wednesday 2 February is a special day in the life of our school, being Founders Day, when we celebrate the anniversary of the day the Order of the Sisters of Notre Dame came into being. Therefore we will celebrate with services for all Key Stages in the afternoon. Year 12/13 will have their service lesson 5 then go home early. Years 10/11 will then have their service lesson 6 and go home one lesson early. Years 7, 8 & 9 will have their service lesson 7 then go home about 15 minutes early.

St Julie's Catholic High School is proud of its heritage and will celebrate 160 years of education of girls by Notre Dame Sisters in Liverpool on 28 March. Look out for further details of what we have planned to celebrate our great Catholic tradition on our website shortly.

With kindest regards.

Yours faithfully

Tim Alderman
Headteacher