What an exciting summer!

The Olympic Games inspired the nation with some wonderful sporting performances. Our school certainly struck gold on GCSE results day. Our examination results were outstanding and broke all previous school records with 93% of our pupils achieving 5+ A*-C grades. Of these 80% achieved the standard of 5+ A-C grades including English and Mathematics. In a year when there has been a highly controversial national decline in pass grades in English I am proud that our A*-C pass rate in English was an exceptional 92%, this was only bettered by the ICT department where every pupil in Year 11 achieved an A*-C grade, 100% pass rate for the third consecutive year.

There is a common misconception that August is a quiet month in school but not so at Blessed Thomas Holford. At the beginning of the holidays we arranged a Literacy and Numeracy Summer School for our incoming Year 7 pupils. A group of our Sixth Form students visited Lourdes and had a wonderfully uplifting time. Another group went to the Olympics and were equally inspired at the great atmosphere and sporting endeavour. In school we have had a lot of building work including three extra classrooms, a new reprographics room and two new toilet blocks ready for the start of the new term.

We can’t wait for the new term to begin and look forward to welcoming our 208 new Year 7 pupils and 14 new staff to what promises to be another exciting and successful year for our school.