Debden debaters stand out from the rest!

On Friday, 11 November, year 11 students Haris Duherich and Clare O’Keefe won the Eleanor Laing Epping Schools parliamentary debating competition. Seven local schools competed and the standard of debating was high. Both of our students delivered flawless speeches to argue for the motion: “This house believes that the UK’s investment in the Olympics is money well spent.” They answered all challenges and picked clever holes in the arguments of the opposition while dazzling the judges with their Debden Park flair and confidence.

The Eleanor Laing parliamentary debating trophy will be returning to Debden Park’s display cabinet soon. Over the past four years, Debden Park has produced two second place debating teams and two winning teams; judges have always been enthusiastic about the public speaking skills of our students. Congratulations Haris and Clare, Debden Park is proud of you!

Are you interested in training at an outstanding school?

Are you interested in being supported by outstanding staff?

Debden Park High School is looking to recruit enthusiastic, innovative and inspiring graduates to train on the Essex Teacher Training GTP scheme.   

We welcome all applications and are particularly interested in teachers who want to train in Mathematics, Science, English, Drama and MFL .

If you are interested in applying to train with us in September 2012 then please send your CV and a letter of application to jyates@dphs-tkat.org by Friday 25^th November.

This year’s results secure Debden Park high School as a centre of academic excellence both within the local community and nationally.

Rebecca Caley, Jamie Gregory, Clare O’ Keefe, Lily Ratcliffe, Kira Reynolds, Ronnie Pask, Reggie Clark, Josh Cooling, Haris Duherich, Amber Grace, Rachel Miller, Osariame Osaghae and Eloise Sladden will be working to prepare their speeches for the Speak Out Assembly where they will be competing for the chance to represent our school at the West Essex Finals on 12th May. This year Debden Park is hosting this competition and I hope to see plenty of students in the audience showing their Debden spirit in support of our speakers!

Special mentions go to Alex Harding, Izzy Isted, Mollie McCarthy and Shaan Malik for winning the most improved speaker awards at the end of the workshops. Yeliz Dalmac, Daniel Shoesmith, Summer Cuff, Oliver King, Maisy Smith, Shaun Cooper, Jas Healy, Nandu Pillai, Tanya Svilar and Osazeme Osaghae were notable for their well planned and constructed speeches. Congratulations to all students who were involved; they have gained skills that will make them stand out from the crowd in future years.

J Tyldesley

Madam Robson

On Thursday 3^rd February thirty gifted and talented pupils took part in the UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge. This is a national competition where the most able pupils in the country compete to achieve the prestigious Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates. This year has seen Debden’s first Gold certificates at this level which is a testament to the hard work and excellent level of commitment of the pupils involved.

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Mr Christian Cavanagh is one of the latest headteachers to be appointed to the role of National Leader of Education (NLE) following an announcement that the school support scheme, run by the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services, will be expanded.

In the latest recruitment round Mr Cavanagh is one of only 100 heads to be selected from across the country. To mark the occasion he has been invited to the National College’s Learning and Conference Centre in Nottingham in February for a formal induction and training for the role in driving school improvement.

NLEs use their success and professionalism as school leaders, along with the staff in their school – designated a National Support School - to provide additional leadership capability in struggling schools or those in transition to federation or academy status. The deployment is tailor-made to suit the needs of each school. The type of support provided is flexible and can involve NLEs becoming acting or executive headteacher of the client school or schools. They also have responsibility for bringing on the next generation of NLEs and National Support Schools.

Mr Cavanagh said:  “It is an honour and privilege to be selected as a National Leader of Education. Debden Park High School and its staff can help other schools to improve and achieve their goals, all students deserve to be taught in an Outstanding school.”

It is estimated that well over half a million pupils have already benefited from the National Leaders of Education/ National Support Schools scheme since it was set up five years ago and many in the scheme see improvements in exam results at both the support and client schools with progress achieved in excess of the improvements nationally. The number of NLEs is set to double from 500 to 1,000 by 2015 following the recent announcement by the Education Secretary.

Toby Salt, Deputy Chief Executive of the National College, said: “This is about the best school leaders helping the rest and the results speak for themselves. It’s fantastic that heads like Mr Cavanagh are becoming NLEs, looking beyond their own school gates and supporting others to help more and more pupils get the best start in life.

“School-to-school support is having a growing impact across the education system and this is thanks to the hard work and dedication of all those involved. Helping other school leaders in this way is admirable and something I’d encourage all heads to consider.”

Some interesting information:

• Primary schools supported by NLEs/NSS between 2008 and 2010 improved their KS2 results by 7% while the results of those who had not been involved remained stable. 
• For secondary schools supported by NLEs/NSSs between 2008 and 2010, the rate of improvement in the percentage achieving five or more A*-C grade GCSEs (including English and maths) is almost twice that compared to those who had not had this support.
• Of all the schools that came out of special measures [during 2009/10], 24% had been assisted by an NLE (Annual report, Ofsted 2009/10)

This website is for every 14 to 16 year old learner (and their parents / carers) in the 6 Secondary schools. It also includes the 16 to 19 learners at Epping Forest College, Davenant and West Hatch VIth Forms.

The site is intended to inform and support the decisions you need to make in choosing your options when moving from 11 to 16 education in the Epping Forest area.

Learners in Years 8 & 9 should also check this site in order to see where your GCSE and BTEC course choices could lead to after the age of 16.

Visit the Epping Forest Learners website

Mock interview day is a big event in our Year 11 calendar. All Year 11 students produce a letter of application and a CV for the interviewer. This year the majority of our interviewers came from the human resources dept of a London based company called LexisNexis UK, who organise large events and where one of our Year 11’s had previously completed their work experience.

Students came to school dressed for an interview, they were interviewed for about 15 minutes based on the information they had provided in their CV’s. Afterward they received feedback on how they did and tips on how to improve their interview techniques. Students do find this a daunting experience but one that is very worthwhile and great preparation for the real interviews they will be attending for college and sixth form places in the near future.

Preparing a letter of application for the first time can be a difficult task. I invited a lady named Claire Shenton from British Telecoms human resources dept in Central London to Debden Park to advise our Year 10 students in this process.

Students were given two good letters of application and two poor ones, they were then asked to comment on the content and state what features they felt were good and what was not so good.

Claire spent a lot of time discussing how a letter of application should be presented and how important the opening paragraph is. She also gave the students facts and figures on how many letters her team read in a year and some very simple criteria they use to select candidates for interview.

This is the second time I have lead the school’s application to receive a RoQA award. The award is administered by Essex County Council and is a kite mark indicating that the school has achieved a standard for work experience.

I compiled a folder of evidence of the school’s policies, documentation and forms for work experience. Essex provided me with a tutor to guide me through the process and to ensure all the evidence was in place. An assessor visited me at school and took the folder for inspection. They also met with teachers and some students for the purpose of verifying the evidence I had provided. We were then notified that we had been successful in attaining this award and were invited to a presentation evening at Chelmsford Town Hall on Thursday 25^th November.

I would like to thank Danielle Parry, Hollie Grace, Oscar Pittard, Jack Carlyon and Joe Mintz who assisted in gaining this award.

Graham Tongate, Debden Park

Christian Cavanagh, Headteacher, attended a reception on 17th November at 10 Downing Street and met with the Prime Minister. This prestigious event was to mark the success of the Trust and to recognise its outstanding achievement in improving standards in all of its schools.

It has been a fantastic start to the new academic year and already there have been changes to the LRC. The library area has been opened up by moving some of the bookcases to produce a more flexible learning and teaching area. We have of course kept our wonderful collection of books but wanted to make the learning space more flexible to accommodate different activities and lessons to be held in this space. This also permits pupils to use the area for group work and produces a more relaxed area during out of school opening hours for reading books and magazines as well as the table area for writing and working.

The year has also started with me introducing all year 7 students to “Booked Up”, which is a scheme run by the Book Trust which enables students to receive a free book! Each year 7 class that has come into the LRC for their library lesson has watched a DVD which gave a short description of the book by each author so as to help them decide which book they wanted to choose. We then had an activity using the books that would be available for them to choose from before they made their final decision. I was very pleased with the enthusiasm of all the year 7’s.

The LRC is open to students Tuesdays to Fridays between 8am and 8:30am, every lunchtime and also after school from 3:10pm to 5pm. Madam Haley who has worked at DPHS for many years works in the LRC between 3:10pm and 5pm. The LRC has many facilities for the students to use including computers, books, DVD’s, audio books, magazines and newspapers. Students are encouraged to use the area to work on their ILP’s, coursework and research to enhance their learning and encourage them to become independent learners. The LRC runs alongside a wonderful English Department and due to my knowledge of the staff I am happy to liaise between pupils and staff to help any pupils to improve their learning.

The LRC is also host to events and activities throughout the year such as the Roald Dahl quiz, book clubs, Carnegie Awards shadowing and many more. Year 7 library lessons will have a more interactive approach with students writing book reviews and other activities as well as having time to choose books to read.

Madam Longman
LRC Manager

Mr Hegley, who has published many best-selling volumes of verse, attended the school, in Willingale Road, Loughton, as part of National Poetry Day.

As well as taking part in the school assembly, he headed several workshops with students to perform many of his best-known poems complete with musical accompaniment from his mandolin "Steve".

Mr Hegley is well-known throughout the country having sold-out many venues with his performance poetry, and is a regular at the Edinburgh Festival.

Debden Park head of English and media studies Sharon Palmer said: “We were delighted that John agreed to come to our school. Our students were excited and inspired by his unique approach to poetry. As a school with a Performing Arts specialism and rated as Outstanding by Ofsted, this just underlines how vibrant and innovative our school is.”

From an article by By Edmund Tobin in the Epping Forest Guardian

Read a poem created with a group of pupils here...

Rehearsals for the Summer school show which was originally entitled “Valentine” are now intensifying as we get closer to opening night! Valentine was a working title and since January the plot has changed and been developed by staff and students and so we felt “LoveStruck” was a better title. The show now features several songs, a live band , dance numbers as well as some outstanding acting! Watch this space for ticket news as we expect to sell out very quickly!

Mr Ventura
Artistic Director

Working together with a few Year 7 Debden Students the company is now in full swing working on devising a short piece to be shown in Expressive Arts week after school on the 19^th July. The company members are enjoying learning new skills and collaborating with students from other local schools. We hope to see you in the audience at their debut performance!

Mr Ventura
Artistic Director

Silver certificates were achieved by Albina Yanko, Songyan Yu and Paullomi Khamar in Year 8 and Danny Law, Adem Emin, Billy Matthews and Alex Thomas in Year 7. Bronze certificates were achieved by George Moore, Wojciech Serwacki and Kofi Ofori in Year 8 and Alexis Harris and Jack Ewing in Year 7. Well done also to the other students who took part and narrowly missed out on certificates.

Browse the Debden Park website on your mobile device with DPHS mobile™

Debden Park’s website has gone mobile!  You can now access a mobile version of the school website from portable devices such as mobile phones, smartphones like the Blackberry and Palm Pre series and the extremely popular iPhone.  The mobile site has been designed to allow users to gain quick access to important information, links and files in mobile devices without the long wait with slow connections.

Pupils and parents are able to view up to date news, important school notices, exam information, useful links and documents and contact information - all from their handsets.

Users of more sophisticated devices with larger screens like the iPhone, may also view the full site by clicking the link at the top of the mobile homepage.

If you have any ideas or suggestions on what you wuld like to see available on the mobile site, please leave a comment to this newsthread.

Haris Duherich, Albina Yanko, Fion Tang and Songyan Yu – they really did us proud!

Students had the opportunity to hear from, and quiz Members of Parliament; Eleanor Laing and Bill Rammell. They then engaged in a debate about whether or not the voting age should be lowered to 16. This debate was filmed and can be watched by visiting;

http://www.eppingforestdc.public-i.tv/site/player/index.php?a=36763

The students involved, Abigail Endean, Daisy Morecroft, Haris Duherich, Helen Andrew, Saira Javed, Robyn Buisson, Billy Poulton, Daniel Airey and Ravi Raval, all did the school proud with their confident, articulate and mature discussion points. 

We are celebrating World Book Day this year with our own Reading Day; a day to celebrate reading and enthuse our students. We have organised a range of competitions, displays and strategies designed to inspire our students to talk  and think about the power of books. Students will watch a performance and a video podcast, they will listen to captivating extracts and be involved in a range of activities. In addition, students will have the opprtunity to buy a book for 10p or swap a book they have already read. If your child has old books at home that are finished with - please encourage him/her to bring these old books to school to swap. All students will also receive a £1 token to put towards a book of their choice (Loughton bookshop is happy to receive these tokens). Please ensure that your son/daughter brings a book to school every day, but especially on World Book Day - Thursday March 4th!

We will be using this day to launch reading initiatives throughout and beyond the school. In the future, we will be offering a book club for students and a book club for parents. Watch this space for more details!

If you have any ideas or would like to become involved in reading initiatives at school, please contact Sharon Palmer, Head of English.  Alternatively leave a comment below!

Yr 11

Bronze: Billy Moore, Galina Kocheva, Jack Dainton, Tamara Hendrick

Yr 10

Silver: Jonas Bezzbouas (Best in School)

Bronze: Tommy Fenech

Yr 9

Silver: Haris Duherich

Bronze:  Connor Wood, Reggie Clark

Well done to you all!

Firstly we had the founder of Lonely Planet: Tony Wheeler in to teach a lesson to a Y9 class about his travels. (this was as part of Teach First Week). He spoke about all the adventures he has had travelling the world and documenting it for other travellers. He had many great stories including selling his car in Afghanistan, just after he and his wife had driven it all the way from England! The students were enraptured and asked lots of interesting questions and even attempted their own bit of Lonely Planet style travel journalism.

Our second guest was Caroline Huett, and Urban Planner from Indigo Planning who came to talk our Year 10 Geography class about what Urban planning is like in practice and to run a workshop with them which involved them deciding where to put the 100 new homes needed in the Debden area. Miss Huett was impressed by their knowledge and the students gave excellent presentations.

Thank you from everyone involved in the competition to Mrs Laing and her staff for organising this worthwhile and enjoyable event. Mrs Laing will be presenting the trophies to Alex and Andrew at Debden Park High School in the near future.

The report noted that "the School offers a broad and well structured programme that offers all Year groups opportunities to develop personal and work related knowledge and skills. There is a strong emphasis on raising aspirations and enabling students to understand the pathways to achieving their ambitions..."

Furthermore the report remarked that "strong and productive links have been forged with the local FE College" and that "students have a clear understanding of the purpose and benefits of the career related activities they undertake. "

Many thanks and congratulations go to Mr Tongate for all his hard work in helping the school achieve this award.

Download the full report:

Debden Park RoQa CEG Report

Debden Park has been judged by inspectors to be an OUTSTANDING school in our most recent Ofsted inspection.

The school was awarded a score of 1 (OUTSTANDING) for the "overall effectiveness: how good is the school?".

"Debden Park High School provides an outstanding quality of education for its students. The improvement since the last inspection has been significant and much of the school’s work is now exemplary. The leadership team, led by an inspirational head teacher, have created an environment in which students enthuse about learning."

Please read the full report by clicking here

“A brother and sister, estranged for fifteen years after a mysterious necklace begins to affect Katy’s behaviour, are brought back together at the family home by the death of their father. The Critters of the woodland take over the house and Sam and Katy are once again separated to make their own way through the woods. Sam is soon cocooned and entranced by the Wax Moth, whilst Katy meets the Wild Cat of the Wet Woods. As the Wax Moth builds her army of bewitched Critters, it becomes apparent that the she desperately wants the necklace – but that this will bring terrible consequences…”

On 30th September, 40 year 7 pupils went on a trip to the Pleasance Theatre, Islington to see a devised production called ‘Way through the Woods’...

Click here to read more

Ms Raven

A hard copy will be sent out to parents this week.

Future copies of the newsletter will be posted on the website and emailed via parentmail.

Parents: If you haven’t already done so please can you give your email address to Mrs Phillips, Office Manager, 02084181214 or pphillips@debdenparkhigh.essex.sch.uk .

Should parents wish to receive future hard copies please can they contact the main school office.

We are proud of all our ex students who continue to achieve beyond Debden Park High School, some of whom have gone on to study at universities across the UK, including the most prestigious in Cambridge and Oxford.

"I would like to inform everyone of the schools excellent results and give a brief outline of progress that has been made..." Christian Cavanagh, Headteacher

SWINE FLU AND SCHOOLS – ADVICE FOR THE PUBLIC

Each nomination earns the student a ticket into the Maths Student Leader prize draw – our way of rewarding a student for their outstanding efforts.

The winner of this inaugural prize went to Year 7 student Fion Tang, who received her prize of a digital camera from Mr Ellis (Maths Team Leader) and Mr Orsborne (Head of Yr7). Congratulations to Fion, and also to all those who have been nominated as Maths Student Leaders this year.

Mr Ellis

Since Artsmark began 9 years ago, almost 10,000 awards have been made, with 1649 schools receiving the award this year.

Christian Cavanagh, Headteacher of Debden Park High School in Loughton, said:

“I’m delighted that the Arts Council has recognised Debden Park’s dynamic arts education programme. Our students have really enjoyed working with all of the professional artists who work with our school, and I’d like to thank all our staff for their hard work in achieving this award.”

Read more...

Our production of Dirty Dirty Princess by Georgia Fitch was judged to be the most imaginative and well acted version of this play and everyone involved deserves a huge round of applause.

For ticket information and the full story click here

Read More...

Click here to visit the Operation Get Green blog.