Message from the Headteacher, Mr Richards
You will be aware that we have had a visit from Ofsted this week. It was an ungraded section 8 visit of schools which have previously been judged as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ and we were last seen in 2019 when we were judged to be ‘Outstanding’. You may also be aware that schools are no longer awarded a one-phrase judgement such as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’. We will receive a report in the next few weeks, which we will share with you, giving feedback on how we are currently meeting the Ofsted standards. We are not allowed to share any feedback on this yet as the draft report will be subject to quality assurance procedures before being published. Thank you to all those of you who completed the parent view survey and thank you to your children who were involved in conducting pupil tours, sharing their work and giving inspectors their views on the school.
Life at school goes on even whilst being inspected and we are grateful to those parents of year 12 students who came to our parents evening on Thursday and to Mr Houlihan-Jong who ran the Audacity Performing Arts Workshop all day on Thursday for our Key Stage 3 students. Today we are running our Higher Education Fair for our year 11s, 12s and 13s during the morning and look forward to hearing more about this in our next bulletin.
Alumni Event: Class of 1977-83
On Thursday 13th March, a group of 40 Alumni from the Class of 1977-83 attended a reunion at our school. The group were welcomed into the Sixth Form Centre with an exhibition of old photographs of the school and its pupils, year books and copies of the old school magazine, ‘Recess’. They were also taken on a tour of the school by our Sixth Form representatives where the group was able to reminisce about their time here throughout the 70s and 80s.
With feelings of nostalgia and joy, the group caught up with old teachers and their classmates whilst also meeting and speaking with our present staff members including the Headteacher, Mr Richards.
The group shared their experiences with our children while on their tour, pointing to parts of the building they remembered and were in awe of the parts that had changed. One Sixth Former recalls an Alumnus telling her about their time at Villiers and how it ‘evolved’ them and helped them gain a place on the British Airways Apprenticeship Scheme. Others talked about having become Police Officers, Human Rights Officers, Lawyers and Solicitors.
Overall the group was overjoyed to be reunited and expressed how important this event was in helping them look back on their school days and reconnect with old friends. They truly appreciated how the school has become a landmark within Southall’s community. Thank you to Ms Cosmas and the year 12 and 13 sixth formers students for helping with the smooth running of the event!
Repair Workshop
In partnership with ‘West Waste Management’, Sustainability Managers in Schools (SMS) and the Repair Team, the school ran an interactive workshop where pupils could learn about electronics and circuits. Pupils were able to work together to fix video-game console parts such as screens. We surveyed participants at the end and the vast majority said they’re now more confident and willing to try to fix devices rather than buying new ones. Pupils described the workshop as “fun and useful”.
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