Week 12 (18-22 November 2024)

Examinations – Countdown

December examinations begin soon!

The countdown to the December examinations for Years 11 and 13 continues, and we hope that students are working hard to prepare for these important assessments, with art starting next week.

In case you missed it, the exam timetables are available, as well as handy revision guidance for each subject.

We recommend making a daily revision timetable – our website has templates to help with this. 

“Think Hard, Work Hard”

More about our Theme of the Week

Teachers continually strive to push students to challenge themselves through our “think hard, work hard” approach in daily classroom interactions. This mantra is a very conscious ploy to train students to become more resilient, brave and courageous on their own journey to gaining independence. In the classroom, “think hard, work hard” activities see students translating images into words and vice-versa; there should be very little if any copying-out. Students work collaboratively to solve problems; for example, learning how to correctly sequence both theoretical and practical skills. At its best, ‘think hard’ activities involve students prioritising, memorising, and summarising extracts (verbally or in writing) as well as applying new knowledge and skills through deliberate independent practice.

To support this objective, the phrase “I don’t know” is banned in the classroom. Instead, students are allowed to select a number of alternative verbal options, namely:

• “Can I have some thinking time?”
• “Can you re-phrase the question?”
• “Can you provide an example?”
• “Can I have a sentence starter?” 

Such in-class verbal support ensures that every student is challenged. No student is left out.

Punctuality

Making sure students complete as much learning as they can

As we mentioned above, we are proud to have above average weekly attendance to school. Work continues to improve students’ punctuality to school – being on time.

Good punctuality at school is essential for students to achieve their full educational potential. It is also vital for students to form good habits for later life. Punctuality records form part of references passed on to employers as well as further and higher educational institutes. Given this:

• Check INSIGHT to monitor the attendance and punctuality of your son/ward.
• Ensure that students get up in plenty of time to be ready and prepared for school.
• Ensure your son/ward has organised their bag and equipment the night before so that this does not delay departure in the morning.
• Discuss any issues of lateness to ensure this does not become a habit.

Coming Up!

Dates for the diary, into the new year

You can access the entire calendar via this link.

Senior School Production – ‘Julius Caesar’

Less than a week to go!

There is less than a week to go until our senior school production of ‘Julius Caesar’, taking place on Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 November at 7.00pm. You can see the full cast below (click to view full size).

As you can see, the cast made up entirely of students in Years 11-13. This means that the adaptation will feature some mature themes that may not be suitable for Year 9 and below.

Information about tickets can be found via the event’s ticket page – they are just £5 for adults and £3 for students/children/concessions.

School Closure

A reminder about important changes to the school calendar

On Wednesday, we sent a letter to all parents/carers with changes to school arrangements next week – namely, that school will be closed for students on Friday 29 November and Monday 2 December.

Read the full letter for more information, including a link to remote learning to be completed during Friday.

Lampton Leisure Survey

Help support a local community project

Lampton Leisure has been awarded funding to continue their ‘Free to Be Me’ project from January 2025 for young people in the borough. These events have been very popular with our students in the past. So that they can plan activities and timings, Lampton Leisure would be grateful if parents/carers could complete this survey and give their ideas for activities. We recommend the form is filled out with your son/ward’s school email address.

Area Forum – November 2025

Feedback from this community meeting

The second Area Forum of the academic year for the Osterley and Spring Grove wards was held at West Thames College on Tuesday evening. The event allows local people to hear about the strategic direction of travel of the London Borough of Hounslow (LBH) as well as a platform for neighbourhood people to share and air their thoughts. Key, relevant themes at this meeting were:

• Traffic – we will be hosting a twilight community meeting soon on school site about local traffic issues. In particular, discussion points will include safety concerns about the vehicle “rat run” between the A4 and the London Road as well as the illegal parking outside of the school gates which all too regularly endangers the health and safety of our students.

• Walk and cycle – encouraging more students to travel to school in a sustainable as well as healthy manner.

• Trains – South Western Railway understand the desire for greater scheduling of their services and, as a result, have acquired another 710 new trains for their network. There was scepticism at the meeting about whether this would improve services at Isleworth train station.

• Road maintenance – plans to narrow the junction between College Road and Ridgeway Road.

We plan to take a group of our House and Citizenship Ambassadors to the next Area Forum in March 2025 meeting so please use this form to send in any questions which you might want our student leaders to ask. (Please label your comment with “Area forum question”.)

Extra-Curricular Spotlight – Board Game Club

A fun and friendly space for students

Board Games Club gives students the chance to play Jenga, Connect 4, UNO, chess and other less well-known games like Dobble, Brain Master, Top Trumps and Exploding Kittens. The club began as a way for students to make new friends and have somewhere to hang out if they do not want to play sports outside. It is a welcoming space and we would love to have donations of new games! Everyone is welcome in Room 120 on Tuesday lunchtimes (1.05 – 1.35pm).

Winter Concert 2024

Tickets now on sale

Tickets are now on sale for our Winter Concert, scheduled for Thursday 12 December. Tickets are just £2 for adults and £1 for children/students/concessions. All money will be donated to the school’s chosen charity – the Ivybridge Link.

Please do come along if you can for an evening of festive fun, featuring over 120 students from Years 7-13. There will be musical pieces, drama performances, and much more besides. Get your tickets by clicking the poster below.

Pride of House

A new set of award winners

Our weekly Pride of House awards are a fantastic way to reward students for working hard and contributing to the life of the school. Each week, the pastoral staff nominate a student from each house! You can check out the full roster by clicking a house badge below.

Careers Corner

Year 12 student pursues work experience

Throughout the school year, Sixth Form students are expected to take up opportunities out of school, signposted by our Careers Leader. We also encourage students to seek out their own opportunities, which is exactly what Year 12’s Kellany Bordalo Sanches did during the October half-term. After making contact with an architecture firm, The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Kellany was placed with a London-based practice called Galmstrup. Throughout the week, he was given a brilliant snapshot of life in an architectural practice. This experience culminated in a presentation to the team on a confidential project. Kellany described the experience as “really inspiring”, commenting that it helped him decide his future career path. Well done!

Success Stories – Ruby Balfe

The last in our series

Ruby Balfe (2022-2024)
Gumley House Convent School
Isleworth & Syon School
Gap year before pursuing the film industry

Ruby quickly became accustomed to school life. She reports how Sixth Form school life was “welcoming … as it can be quire nerve-wrecking coming from an all-girls environment into one of all-boys”. Having always enjoyed sport, Ruby opted for the vocational CTEC double pathway in which she achieved two distinctions. Her A level pathway in film studies was also inspirational and successful, achieving a grade B. Having always loved film, photography and the arts, Ruby really enjoyed creating little projects within small groups. This gave Ruby a glimpse of what she wanted to do in the future because of how much she enjoyed it.

Staff remember Ruby as actively seeking a challenge and being wholly positive; she perseveres, is persistent and determined. Looking ahead, Ruby plans to take a gap year but is eager to build on her love of photography as well as film and become a cinematographer/director of photography on films. Ambitiously, she would eventually want to become a director.

Safeguarding and Personal Development

Relationships and Sex Education at I&S – give your views

The vision for Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) at Isleworth & Syon is to provide our students with the information they need to help them develop healthy, nurturing relationships of all kinds within a framework in which sensitive, open discussions can take place. 

Each year we consult with parents/carers on our RSE Policy, which you can read in draft at this link. This is to gather feedback on our provision and raise awareness of all stakeholders’ rights and responsibilities. This policy sets out the school’s arrangements for delivering both effective relationships and sex education which is an integral part of the school’s ethos and values.

The strategic objectives of the policy are to prepare students for puberty by providing them with an understanding of sexual development as well as the importance of health and hygiene. We intend to help students develop feelings of self-respect, confidence and empathy. We wish to create a positive culture around issues of sexuality and relationships. Importantly, we aim to teach students the correct vocabulary to describe themselves and their bodies.

As the policy sets out, parents/carers have the right to withdraw their son/ward from the non-statutory/non-science components of sex education within RSE up to and until three terms before the child turns 16 years of age. After this point, if the student wishes to receive sex education rather than being withdrawn, the school will arrange this. Students in Year 10 scheduled to receive RSE in the Spring Term will receive a letter with further details. 

We thank you for your attention to this important part of our curriculum. If you have any feedback, please complete this form by midday on Monday 9 December.

If you have a concern about the safety or welfare of your child, please email the safeguarding team at safeguarding@isleworthsyon.org. A member of staff will be monitoring the account. If there is an emergency call 999 or, for non-urgent matters that require police attention, call 101.

News

Students have their say about the running of the school – plus keen readers meet an author and we dominate borough badminton again

Former Student on BBC News

A few weeks ago, one of our former students appeared on the BBC London news. Johnny Byamungu, who left us in July 2023 after eight years at school, was highlighting his struggles with a rare kidney condition. Born with Prune Belly Syndrome, Johnny had a kidney transplant at the young age of 16.

Fast-forward four years and he is now coaching primary students in Richmond. He also represented England in the football Transplant World Cup earlier this year. We are really proud of how hard he has worked to get to this point; you can read more in this BBC news article.

Student Council

On Wednesday, Head Student Blake Lawrence and his deputies, Hafidh Abdalla and Nishant Brahmbhatt, hosted our first Student Council of the school year. They were ably supported by our four Senior House Ambassadors – Pasquale Vollaro (Adam), Jiya Mangat (Brunel), Shahjahan Akbar (Shackleton) and Arjun Ruprah (Turner).

Taking place in the dining rooms, House & Citizenship Ambassadors from each form were invited to air their views on a variety of topics, including safety in school, PPA (homework), active play, teaching & learning, and much more. Several proposals from the meeting have been passed to the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). The Sixth Form student leaders did a fantastic job helming the meeting and steering the conversation, so well done to them – and everyone who took part in this important example of student voice in action.

Sixth Formers at Sky

In the first half-term of this year, two Year 12 students took part in a special day at Sky. Taha Butt and Ibtisam Chaudrey learned about the opportunity because of their volunteering work at the Bridgelink Centre, based on the local Ivybridge Estate. The Centre is one of Sky’s flagship digital hubs as part of the SkyUp programme to promote digital inclusion for all ages.

Students spent time on the Sky campus in Osterley and met staff from Sky Sports and Sky News. Afterwards, they said, “We loved our day at Sky. We learned about jobs that we’d never thought of and roles we never knew existed. It was really interesting meeting all the people that were working behind the scenes in producing programmes. We thoroughly enjoyed the day and the food was brilliant!”

Year 11 Parents/Carers Evening

Thursday night was our first Parents/Carers Evening of this school year, as Year 11 families were invited into school for five-minute meetings with teachers. Discussions were very constructive, looking at progress made so far this year and how students can maximise their performance in the December examinations and beyond. Thank you to all the parents/carers who attended!

Hounslow Teen Read Launch

As part of our whole school drive towards reading for pleasure, the library team have organised for us to be a part of the Hounslow Teen Read. This borough-wide competition involves students in Years 8 and 9 reading through a shortlist of six books over the course of this term. They will meet during the weekly Reading Club to discuss each book before submitting their favourites to the judging panel.

The launch event took place at school yesterday (Thursday), with students able to meet the author Frances Hardinge and learn more about the process of writing. Students cannot wait to get stuck into the shortlist and share their love of reading with each other and students from across the borough.

Badminton – KS3 Borough Champions

Our borough badminton dominance continued yesterday as our KS3 ‘A’ team were crowned borough champions.

We took six teams to the tournament at the Osterley Sports Centre. Three of the teams reached the semi-finals, where our ‘A’ team triumphed over our ‘D’ team while the ‘B’ string lost unluckily to Lampton by a single point! In the final, our ‘A’ team comprehensively beat local rivals Lampton – richly deserved after months of training. Congratulations to the team Jonas Pardo Buikus, Fin Wood, Eddie Covill and Miguel Ponchio Lamenza.

Special mention must go to the young leaders who assisted with the event. Well done to Ridwan Ahmed, Sam Goldsmith and Fahad Uppal, as well as the four Year 7s helping for the first time – Kian Chohan, Oliver Hooker, Nicholas Main and Aleks Titovs. They were a credit to the school, along with our squad of Year 12 Sports Leaders. The school spirit on display was superb!