St Philip Howard

The doors at St Philip Howard have remained open for the past few weeks to around 20 key worker children and my goodness they have been a great bunch to work with every day. As well as engaging in their online studies, the staff in school have had them outside playing sport every afternoon as well as some explosive rocket launching and creation of artwork to send to patients at St Richard’s Hospital. All our students at home have been working on their own individual ‘Passion Projects’. This is where we have asked them to choose any topic or skill that they are keen to learn, but one that is not necessarily covered in the National Curriculum. We have had everything from sports punditry and blogs, to learning Makaton, First Aid qualifications and puppy training – the staff have been seriously impressed by their enthusiasm and creativity! It has been brilliant to see how positively they have responded to the opportunities lockdown has presented to them.

Life in our sixth form has continued to thrive and they have appointed a newlyformed wellbeing team that have already been rolling our daily videos and tips to students and their families to stay positive and a charity team that kicked off their fundraising (rather bravely) by hosting an online bingo social for the staff. The student voice team have turned into the SPH media moguls on social media and the student experience team are making plans to enrich the pupils’ school life through new opportunities.

We are so proud of the resilience and growth mindset that we are seeing from all year groups. Their enthusiasm and engagement with their learning has continued to be outstanding and the support from their families, working in partnership with SPH has been great. We cannot wait to see them all back in school!