Dear all,

We've had an excellent week at HP, but before diving in, I'd just like to draw Year 7 parents' attention to the fact that there will be an opportunity to meet your child's tutor 1:1 to discuss how they've settled in over the first term on Thursday 14th October. This will be an online event using Edulink, and further details will be sent to Year 7 parents next week. We have opted to keep some events like this online, as the overwhelming feedback from parents has been that you have preferred the virtual parents' evenings, as it has been much easier to keep to a schedule. 

This week has been a rather poignant one too. On Wednesday I attended the funeral of Chris Lammiman. Many of you may remember Mr Lammimam, who was the founding Headteacher of Beaufort School in 1971 (indeed, some of our staff were taught by him!). When it opened, it was the first comprehensive school in Gloucester. Though much has changed since, his belief that all children deserve an excellent education will always remain the cornerstone on which our school is built. That's why our first value is Work Hard: there is no limit on what children can achieve when they really set their mind to it. 

Mr Lammimam's family are compiling a book of memories, and if you would like to contribute any, please email them to Mrs Harrison ([email protected]) who will collate and send them on. 

Moving on, I have spent most of this week showing prospective parents and students around the school, and it has (as always) been an absolute pleasure to hear their comments on how calm the school is, and how focused our students are. I always start by setting them the challenge of finding one student off task from the 1,250 we have here, and I'm delighted that none of the groups I've taken round have been able to spot one this week. It's been particularly encouraging to hear that so many are considering Holmleigh Park after hearing recommendations on Social Media from other parents - so if that's you, then thank you!

The main focus of my letter, however, is to talk about our plans to turn HP into one of the most environmentally friendly schools in the county. In the past two years, GLT have spent close to 2 million pounds on replacing the roof, windows and doors. All of these dated back to 1971 and had absolutely no insulating properties - the windows were still single glazing! This should mean we need far less energy to heat the building, and should hugely reduce our carbon footprint. 

Since the summer, we've been working on two more projects. First, we have now nearly finished covering the roof in solar panels. You can see our progress below, and we hope to finish the roof by half term. Again, we hope that this will mean we mostly use renewable energy to help reduce our environmental impact. Students will have the opportunity to learn about this in Science and Geography lessons. 

Our third strand is dealing with litter. We've invested in new bins around the whole site with separate receptacles for recycling and general waste. All of the packaging we use for our food is fully recyclable, so we hope that with students' support we can drastically reduce our waste output. Again, we will be speaking to students about this next week and studying this in more depth in lessons. 

I hope you'll agree this is an exciting development, and a great opportunity for our students to learn about sustainability.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend,

Mr Farmbrough

Headteacher