To celebrate European Day of Languages we held a Food House competition where students in Years 7, 8 and 9 were tasked with creating a cake that represented European Day of Languages or an individual European country. Due to Covid 19 restrictions cakes were baked at home and photographs of the bakes were sent in for judging. The standard of cakes was amazing and lots of entries were received. Mr Smith had the challenging job of selecting the winners who all won a prize and house points for their houses. Excellent work!

During the Lockdown school closure period, students showed excellent problem solving, initiative and resilience, several of our school Employability skills. They responded amazingly to work set online and soon my email box was full of images of creations that students had made at home! A range of new culinary skills were developed and other, existing skills were practised and honed. Students tried their hand at lots of dishes- such as family meals consisting of healthy eating ingredients, meals that used a maximum of 5 ingredients due to limited availability of ingredients, several cultural dishes such as tuna niçoise, tartiflette, fruit galette, then there was pavlova, mug cakes, pasta salad, blondies, victoria sponge cake and many more! Although many students sent in work and rose to the weekly food challenge there were a group of students who consistently applied themselves and sent work in every week- often trying out different variations of the same recipe.

These students were rewarded for their consistent effort and application with a certificate and prize when returning to school in September. The prizes were baking-themed to encourage students to continue to develop their passion for food and cooking at home. Students were given some recipe cards for some more complex dishes to further extend their skills. It has been great to see that these students have continued to send in photos of their work this term too including dishes that they have created using their baking equipment and recipe cards. Further prizes will be presented to students for excellence in Food this term.

Sixth Form enrolment for internal applicants will take place on GCSE Results day on 20^th August. Following the collection of your results in your allocated time slot, you will have the opportunity to enrol with a member of the Sixth Form leadership team.

Sixth Form enrolment for external applicants will take place on Thursday 20^th August between the hours of 12:30pm – 2:30pm. In order to enrol you into our Sixth Form we need you to provide the following:

• A printed copy of your GCSE results 
• A valid form of identification (passport or birth certificate)

Please ensure that you have these with you at the time of enrolment.

If you cannot attend on results day, there will be an additional opportunity for enrolment on Monday 24^th August between the hours of 9:30am-1:30pm.

Enrolment will take place in the main Sixth Form block. Please report to the Sixth Form Reception entrance, located on the corner of Trent Road. Please also note that there will be social distancing procedures in place with a one in, one out queue system.

In order to enrol you into our Sixth Form we need you to provide a printed copy of your GCSE results. Please ensure that you have these with you at the time of enrolment.

We will look forward to congratulating you on your GCSE results and welcoming you to Etone College Sixth Form.

Results will be available as follows:

A Level/AS Level/BTEC Level 3 – 13^th August 2020 

GCSE/BTEC Level 2 – 20^th August 2020

You will receive a letter advising you of the time you can collect your results and detailing the arrangements that have been put in place to ensure a safe environment during results day. To keep numbers inside to a minimum, please do not bring your parents/carers or friends into the building with you.

Here is a video from Ofqual with more details about how they are making grades consistent with previous years:

The BBC and the government have put together daily lessons for children across the UK. If you have finished the work we have set or you fancy something different, take a look.

Oak National Academy

I’m very pleased to welcome Oak National Academy, a new online classroom and resource hub, which has launched to support teachers until schools re-open. The online classroom will provide free lessons and resources for pupils from reception through to year 10. All resources, lessons and more information can be accessed here. 

As part of a collective response to the crisis, 40 teachers will be producing over 180 free online lessons each week, which will cover a range of subjects from English and maths to arts and languages.

BBC Bitesize 

This week the BBC is launching its own education package as part of their Charter across TV and online – helping to keep children learning and supporting parents. You can find more information about this here. 

The key difference between the BBC offer and the Oak National Academy is that the Academy is a planned and sequenced series of lessons for schools and trusts to use as part of their planned curriculum offer. Whereas the BBC offer is aimed more at parents and pupils.

Please note that we are not responsible for any of this content. If there are any technical issues, please contact the BBC or Oak Academy directly. We have found that the Oak Academy videos work best on Internet Explorer (the sound doesn’t always work on Chrome, but we are sure they will be ironing out these teething issues moving forward).

Starting Monday 23rd March Joe Wicks The Body Coach is going to be hosting a free workout aimed at kids LIVE on his YouTube channel.

With the schools closed and with us all spending more time at home, it’s more important than ever that we keep moving and stay healthy and positive. Exercise is an amazing tool to help us feel happier, more energised, and more optimistic.

The workouts will be fun and suitable for all ages and even adults can get involved.  You don’t need any equipment, just tune in on YouTube at 9am each morning for a 30-minute, fun workout. 

Etone College is seeking to appoint a Parent Governor to be a member of the Governance Advisory Board. A Governance Advisory Board is vital to a school’s success. Our Governors have an important role to fulfil that directly affects the education and wellbeing of children and improves standards throughout school.

You will:

• Support the school at big events
• Contribute to school improvement
• Be required to attend a minimum of 3 meetings per academic year
• First and foremost, make a difference to your child’s school

If you are interested in joining a hard-working Governance Advisory Board then please submit a letter of interest by Friday 27th March 2020 to mthomason@matrixacademytrust.co.uk

An amazing 81 entries from Etone College have been selected to be published in this year’s Young Writers ‘Through Their Eyes’ anthology! Well done to all those who entered.