Dear Parents

Following the news regarding schools and the coronavirus featured nationally yesterday and today, Public Health England and DfE have updated their advice, which can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-educational-settings-about-covid-19/guidance-to-educational-settings-about-covid-19 

There will be an opportunity to receive your GCE certificates at an informal get-together at the school, on Monday 16^th December 2019 from 2-4pm in the sixth form common room; please sign in and out at Reception on the day.

Friday 29th November 2019

Miss Hardy and I took 22 Year 10 & 11 pupils on a terrific trip to China during the half term holidays. After 25 hours of travelling we arrived in Chengdu to be greeted by a delegation of Chinese teachers, followed by an even bigger welcome at Luzhou High School. This was very much a theme of the 11 days we were over there, with everyone being so open; both Chinese children with Piggott pupils and Luzhou staff with Piggott teachers. We had a variety of ceremonies, speeches and other events, and were very well looked after all the way through. The pupils from Luzhou High School treated the Piggott children like celebrities and they all got on like a house on fire. We even had a camera crew and a security guard following us around, such was the occasion! The aims were for the English pupils to take in the culture of China, understand the differences and development and improve their Chinese; all of these were resoundingly met and then some.

Over half term, the geography department ran its biennial trip to Iceland, taking 80 pupils and nine staff. We arrived to a beautiful, cloudless evening and had just enough time to stop off at the Bridge Between Continents on our way to the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon, Iceland’s largest natural geothermal spa, was delightfully warm as air temperature dropped below freezing and the sun began to set, revealing an incredible display of the Northern Lights – the best we had ever seen!

The weather was extremely kind to us over the first 3 days – even the tour guides were commenting on how lucky we were to see Iceland in such beautiful conditions. This made the coach journeys to the different sites almost as spectacular as the sites themselves, with fantastic views of interesting geographical landforms around every corner.

One landform which we were able to see a lot of over the trip was Iceland’s impressive and iconic waterfalls. Each one presented a different challenge: at Seljalandsfoss it was the journey into the caves to find the ‘hidden’ waterfall; at Gullfoss it was peering through the mist and fog to see the impressive views behind; and at Skógafoss it was the substantial walk up 370 steps to view the waterfall from the top. All these challenges were rewarded with amazing views, making the visits to the waterfalls amongst the most memorable landscapes of the trip.

One of the most enjoyable elements of visiting Iceland is just how different the landscape is to the landscape we see every day. The students were able to experience black volcanic beaches, hot springs, erupting geysers, glaciers, and monumental coastal landforms carved out of the landscape. Not to mention our luck with the Northern Lights, presenting their incredible displays on 3 of the 5 nights we were there.

The students were simply fantastic. They threw themselves into every activity, even those activities which were initially challenging – walking on top of an icy glacier with crampons and an ice pick did not come naturally to everyone, but every student persevered to the end! A huge thank you must go to every single one of the 80 students and 9 staff members for an extremely memorable trip.

It is non uniform day this Friday 11^th October. Donations of £1 will be for the charity Launchpad

Thursday 26th September 2019

6.00pm-8.00pm

I am pleased to announce another outstanding set of A Level and Level 3 Vocational results for The Piggott School. Our students and staff work exceptionally hard and this is has once again been shown in each of our Academic, Applied General and Technical results.

It has been a very busy time in school with the summer term Activities Days taking place.   Ninety very excited year 7 students spent four days in France at Chateau du Tertre in Normandy, taking part in a wide range of activities and visiting a local town, the D Day beaches and the beautiful Mont St Michel.  This year so many Year 8 students wanted to go on the Holland trip that we had to put on another trip just for them, so in the end a hundred and fifty year 8s and seventeen staff made the journey to Amsterdam in two parallel trips which took in a range of cultural and tourist sites.

Back in the UK we had a range of activities taking place across the whole school which included maths puzzle days, ‘healthy schools’ education for year 10 and a thought provoking ‘personal empowerment and advocacy’ day for year 9.  Day trips also went out to Dinton Activity Centre, Marwell Zoo, Thorpe Park and, for the GCSE Art students, an inspiring visit to Kew Gardens to support their portfolio work.   Year 12 students were busy looking to the future and attended workshops to support them with their forthcoming university applications.

We were also delighted to welcome thirteen students and two teachers from our partner school in IES Las Canteras in Spain.  This was the return visit following our successful trip out to Spain in March and it was great to involve the Spanish students in our activities.