hazelwick school...

Hazelwick School

Newsletter

Headlines Ms A Fearon, Headteacher

Dates for your diary:

Tues 18 Sept 2018:

Open Evening

School Tours:

Tue 25 Sept

Tue 2 Oct

Thu 11 Oct

Wed 17 Oct

Wed 31 Oct 2018:

Deadline for school

place preference

procedure

Fri 1 March 2019:

Offer date

Mon 8 July 2019:

Hazelwick New Intake

Parents’ Meeting

Open Evening - September 2018

Headlines Mrs A Fearon, Headteacher

Welcome to this special edition of our Hazelwick School Newsletter!

Our newsletter, celebrating the huge number and

range of activities that our students are involved in

and their many successes, is produced at the end of

each month. Past issues can be found on the

school website (www.hazelwick.org).

In this special edition, we have put

together a selection of articles to

illustrate the breadth and variety of

opportunities open to our students here

at Hazelwick. We have also included

some information about various aspects

of school life that we hope will be of

interest to you. There is a great deal

more information on our website, or

please do ask questions at the Open

Evening.

You are also welcome to come to one of our Open Mornings, where you can see

the school in action and talk to senior staff. To arrange a visit, either email

[email protected] or phone Mrs Bending on 01293 403344.

I do hope that you enjoy reading our newsletter and take the opportunity to ask

our students and staff about all the wonderful activities and opportunities that are

offered at Hazelwick.

Year 7 students on their first day at Hazelwick:

Year 8 students look back on their first year at Hazelwick:

‘My Year 7 highlight was Calshot. I bonded with my form and loved all

of the activities.’

‘World Book Day was fantastic.’

‘The highlight of Year 7 was meeting and making new friends.’

‘Xmas Factor was great!’

‘I really enjoyed the ‘Welly Wanging’ as part of Superform!’

‘It was fantastic being able to play with other talented and friendly

musicians in the ‘Battle of the Bands’.

‘My greatest achievement was overcoming my fears and climbing up the wall

at Calshot.’

‘It was great being made Superform Captain.’

‘I made loads of progress in Maths and I was really proud.’

‘I was thrilled to be invited to go on the Ten Pin Bowling congratulations trip

because of my effort and achievement.’

‘Having a celebration breakfast with Ms Fearon was a real highlight of Year

7.’

‘Becoming a word millionaire gave me a real sense of achievement.’

Key Stage 3 Curriculum (Years 7 and 8)

All students at Hazelwick follow a broad and balanced curriculum at KS3, studying a wide range of subjects,

all taught by specialist teachers.

The aim of the curriculum at KS3 is to excite and engage children, to broaden their experience, open up new

areas of knowledge, develop their independent study skills and lay down strong foundations for success in

examination work at KS4.

Students are grouped in a variety of ways that we feel are most appropriate to their age and ability.

Full details of the KS3 curriculum can be found on the school website.

Enriching the Curriculum

Alternative Timetable Day

Year 8 students participated in the ’Enable Me’

initiative aimed at deepening understanding of a

range of disabilities and Year 7 students were

involved in a creative design investigation.

Helen Dennis Author Visit

Helen Dennis visited Hazelwick this year as

part of the Hazelwick Book Awards to talk

about her new book ‘River of Ink.’

Accelerated Reader Students

Year 7 reflecting on their success as part

of our Accelerated Reading Programme.

Our annual summer Art Show

exhibited the high-quality work of

our students across the specialist

areas of Fine Art and Photography.

Hazelwick students brought a firm favourite Oliver! to the stage. A

cast, crew and band of over 100 students delivered a production

which audience members claimed was ‘better than the West End.’

Drama Production

Art Show

Creative Arts

The sound of (live) Music

The Music department keeps busy with their annual concerts.

Recently we had a change in style with a Live Lounge set – very

few microphones and a relaxed, acoustic setting. We saw some

excellent solo performances ranging from Year 7 up to Year 12,

as well as several bands who have formed over the last couple

of years. It wasn’t all quiet, though. Mr Mapp’s Soul Band

launched the evening with a fantastic rendition of Michael

Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and a rather lively choir finished the evening

with ‘Circle of Life’.

Battle of the Bands!

Students had the opportunity to perform

at Battle of the Bands. They also took

part in a band photoshoot and studio

recording session prior to the gig.

Music Summer Concert

We held our Summer concert at the end

of June. Audience members enjoyed

strawberries and cream whilst listening to

our talented students in a variety of

groups.

STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths

STEMfest!

The Wonder of Science

Students enjoying scientific discovery.

Year 13 students Shivam Patel, Duvarakan Gunaratnam,

Krishen Mistry and Ubaas Uthayanan entered a STEM project

‘SKD stealth air’ in the South East Regional Big Bang UK Young

Scientist and Engineers’ competition, where they won an

award in the environment category. The boys researched,

designed and built the project working seamlessly as a team.

Hazelwick competes against teams

from across the region. The team

performed tremendously well,

working together to solve some very

demanding mathematical challenges.

Annual Maths Challenge

Two Year 11 students, Fruzsi Galgoczi and Hafza Hameed, won ‘Special Awards Prizes’ at the Young

Craftsman of the Year competition at the South of England Show.

Design Technology

Charities and Community

Charities and Community

Sixth Form

Festive Friday

Led by six of our Year 12 students, the team organised a wide range of fund-raising activities, including cake

sales, a fun run, a raffle, a sponsored cycle ride and non-uniform days, to raise money for St Catherine’s

Hospice. The school raised a phenomenal £8,017.54 and won the 2018 Enterprise Challenge by a massive

margin.

House System

St Catherine’s Hospice Five-0 Project

Year 7 Fun Run raising money for

St Catherine’s Hospice

The Hazelwick House System runs in addition to the well-established and

highly effective Year Team pastoral system, to increase students’ leadership

opportunities and encourage further participation between different year

groups. All students belong to one of 6 Houses, which are named after great

British achievers - Anderson, Bamber, Brontë, Brunel, Fleming and

Wilberforce. All students earn points for their House across all aspects of

school life. There are regular events that take place throughout the school

year, giving students the opportunity to compete together, often with other

year groups, to earn points for their House. Events in the last year have

included: Dodgeball, House Art competition, Sixth Form Table Tennis

competition, Year 8 and 9 Lip Sync Battle, Year 7 Pizza party, House cricket, Year 7 Boys Football, and a

Hairdressing competition. Each House also has a nominated House Charity for which they raise money

throughout the year.

As well as taking part in events, students are key to the leadership of the House

system with Charity, Sport and Student Voice representatives in every form, led

by House Leaders and House Captains from the 6th form. It is excellent to see

students from across the age range of the school working together to organise,

deliver and enjoy events for other students. The winners of the House Cup last

year were Brunel, with this year’s competition currently very closely fought.

Results

A-Level

At A-Level this summer, Hazelwick again achieved truly outstanding results. An amazing 22% of all A-level

grades were A* or A, with 52% of all grades between A* and B and a fantastic 78% of grades were A*-C.

9 students achieved three or more straight A*/A grades with an

extremely impressive total of 64 students scoring at least one of the

highly demanding top A*/A grades.

In addition to this our top attaining student gained a stunning A* A* A*, with two others achieving A* A* A.

One of our high-achieving students (Hannah King) gained a place at Oxford University to study Biology.

Another (Rahul Patel) has been accepted for medicine at King’s College, London, where he will join Beulah

Beresford who will be studying English Literature. Other high-flyers have gone on to study a very wide range of

subjects, such as biochemistry, engineering, economics and law amongst many others.

We are immensely proud of the performance of all of our Sixth Form students. This excellent year group

showed great engagement and commitment throughout their time at Hazelwick and they fully deserve their

success. We are delighted to have helped them complete their education at Hazelwick with such fantastic

achievements.

A level success!

Results

Academic Excellence Of our highest attaining students, five gained 7 or more of the highest

possible grades (9 or A*) and three students achieved a spectacular nine

grade 9s/A*s (with an additional grade 8). 62 of our students (well above

the national average) achieved the extremely demanding EBacc (English

Baccalaureate), which requires GCSE grades 9-5 in the traditional academic

subjects of English, Maths, two Sciences, History/Geography and a language.

Outstanding Progress Hazelwick is committed to enabling each and every student to make excellent progress regardless of their prior

attainment. This was celebrated when the Department for Education placed us as the 6th top performing school

in the whole of West Sussex according to Progress 8, the measure by which all schools are judged nationally.

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

Full details of all our exam results can be found on the school website (www.hazelwick.org).

GCSE

Impressive Results Once again we were thrilled to receive another set of excellent GCSE

results. 73% of all GCSE grades were 9-4 (or A*-C) and almost a quarter

of all GCSE grades were ‘top’ grades (9-7 or A*/A). This year saw an

immensely impressive number of top grades with a fantastic total of 47

students achieving 5 or more top grades (9-7 or A*/A).

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

First Class Facilities for your Child

Hazelwick School as an

Academy

GROUNDS

Extensive, high quality sports pitches

Increased funding and greater autonomy

Improved services for our students

Site and facilities upgrades and developments

Enhanced curriculum flexibility

No change to our admissions criteria

No change to our ethos

All student toilets across the whole

site are individual cubicles, equipped

with high-quality modern fittings.

NORTH HALL Mezzanine floor housing a fully-equipped

multi-gym fitness suite

More Able, Gifted and Talented Hazelwick is fully committed to ensuring that all students make the best possible progress, tailored to their

individual needs. Within this is the wealth of opportunities that we offer to our able, gifted and talented

students.

More Able Linguists

Teaching Primary School Pupils

Talented Athlete

Programme Students on our

Talented Athlete

Programme attended a

workshop at Blackland

farm Activity Centre.

Oxbridge Trip to Hurst School

Year 10 students visited Hurst School to hear a

presentation about how to begin preparing for an

application to study at Oxford or Cambridge Universities.

Students listened to presentations from a member of the

admissions and outreach team from both St John’s

College, Oxford and Churchill College, Cambridge.

Sport

Athletics - Track and Field Cup

Hazelwick students from Years 7-10 competed over two days at the

annual ESAA Track and Field Cup. This is an event structured to test

every athlete over two events against some of the best athletics

schools in the County. Points are awarded to every athlete for their

time, distance thrown or jumped and then a team total is

accumulated.

Under 13 Rounders Team

The Under 13 Rounders Team finished first in the league.

Town Sports Triumph!

In July, the 62nd Crawley Secondary Schools’

athletics competition took place at K2.

Hazelwick has been the holder of the trophy

since 2009. Students spend many hours in

training prior to Town Sports and for the 9th

year running Hazelwick retained the trophy!

English Schools Championships

Jessica Lambert, Isabella Lehtinen and Katie Bristowe

were all selected to represent Sussex at the English

Schools’ Championships.

The standard required to compete at these

championships is incredibly high and therefore the girls

have performed extremely well.

Sport

Year 7 Basketball

The Year 7 Girls Basketball Team performed brilliantly

throughout the year, enjoying the competitions and honing

their skills.

KS3 Badminton

The KS3 Badminton Team represented Hazelwick School at the

Sussex Schools Badminton Championships.

Year 7 Football Team

The Year 7 Football Team reached the semi-finals of the

Sussex County Cup competition. The boys were exceptional;

their success demonstrates how far a committed and

dedicated team can progress.

Year 10 Netball Team

The Year 10 Netball Team played matches in the Crawley

Area netball league. The girls all attended training every

week and should be thoroughly commended for their

continued commitment to Hazelwick netball.

Educational Visits Calshot

Year 7 students thoroughly enjoyed their

two day residential trip to Calshot Activity

Centre in their first term at Hazelwick.

They developed new skills, formed new

friendships and had lots of fun.

Year 12 enjoyed their annual sixth form trip to

Exeter University. The students experienced life in

a university for a week and adrenalin-inducing

activities such as coasteering and gorge

scrambling.

Aachen

The Year 9 trip to Aachen proved a great opportunity for

the students to experience a taste of German school life

and discover the magic of the German Christmas Market.

Paris Year 8 French students practised

their language skills on the summer

term trip to Paris.

Italy

In July, students (from Years 10-12) took part in the

Latin Department’s 10-day grand tour of Italy, visiting

Florence, Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius, Rome, Assisi and

Venice!

Exeter

Transition at Hazelwick

This is an extract from an article that appeared in the national educational magazine ‘Teach Secondary’, whose

editor contacted Hazelwick in order to showcase our excellent transitional work.

Helping everyone to find their way at secondary school

Transition to secondary school is an exciting process with a great deal to look forward to. It can also feel

daunting to Year 6 pupils with lots to learn about moving to “big school”. The staff at Hazelwick have a great

deal of experience in managing this process and a great deal of work, care and expertise is focused on ensuring

the move is successful, enjoyable and beneficial for every child.

Hazelwick is an 11-18 school and when you look at it on paper, it can

appear to be an enormous establishment. Indeed, the size of our school is

important to us. Being a larger school enables us to offer a broad and

engaging range of subjects, offered to a large and diverse student body in

spacious surroundings. Hazelwick has an enviable landscaped campus that

covers 18 acres. However, it does not feel like a large school. Transition

between lessons is extremely smooth, and visitors always comment on how

hard it is to believe that there are over 1800 students on the site.

Hazelwick has 300 students in each year group, and in September 2018 these students arrived from 29 different

primary schools. We take great care in placing these students into their tutor groups, and then into their

subject classes. We work very closely with our local primary schools, meeting both teachers and pupils.

Through these conversations, we understand the friendship groups that already exist and we are able to

understand the needs of each child to create well balanced form groups that are paired with the right form

tutors.

In July 2019, all students will be invited to attend an Induction Day at Hazelwick. They are welcomed on this

day by the Headteacher before going through an engaging and carefully tailored programme of lessons, tours

and team building induction activities with their new tutor group. This day gives the soon-to-be new Year 7s a

range of experiences and they leave with new friends, an understanding of the school and an exciting and high

quality shared experience with their new form teacher that stands them in excellent stead for their arrival in

September.

During the first week of term, our 6th formers are allocated to support the

new Year 7 settle in. The new forms are accompanied to and from every

lesson as well as being taken to break and lunchtime to ensure that no one gets

lost or can feel left out. In addition, this process introducing them to positive

role models from further up the school. We schedule an earlier lunchtime and

break time to ensure that Year 7s have extra time to become familiar with how

the canteen works.

The involvement of our 6th form students epitomises the diligence and care

shown in the transition process at Hazelwick. We believe that the whole

school community has a role in welcoming Year 7 students into the school.

This approach, alongside the very careful grouping and understanding of the

children that are joining us, enables all students to quickly and happily find

their way at Hazelwick.

‘Your child – your choice’ Secondary School Admissions in Crawley

Does my child’s primary school affect his/her eligibility for any secondary school?

NO – for any of the four maintained secondary schools in Crawley (Hazelwick, Ifield, Oriel, Thomas Bennett),

your primary school does NOT make any difference to your chances of gaining admission.

I hear parents talking about ‘Feeder Schools’ having priority admissions. Is this true?

NO – in Crawley there is no such thing as a ‘Feeder School’. Your child has the same opportunity to come to

Hazelwick as any other primary school child.

Since becoming an Academy, has Hazelwick changed its admissions rules?

NO – they are broadly the same as for the other (Local Authority) secondary schools in Crawley and they have

NOT changed since Hazelwick became an Academy. Hazelwick’s admissions are still administered for us by

the Local Authority’s Pupil Admissions Office.

Is there any selection at Hazelwick, either by academic ability or by ‘aptitude’?

NO – Hazelwick remains a fully comprehensive, non-selective, inclusive school.

What are the main factors that determine admission to Hazelwick?

Living within our defined ‘catchment’ area.

Having an older brother or sister already attending the school.

How close you live to the school.

Having a ‘EHCP’ or other specific exceptional need.

The letter that came with my application form named a secondary school as the

‘catchment school’ for my address. Does this mean that my child has to go there?

NO – this simply reflects where your home is located. It is your decision as to which secondary school your

child goes to. It is only when a school is oversubscribed that living inside the school’s catchment area gives you

an advantage over those living outside it.

What is the size of Hazelwick’s annual intake into Year 7?

Hazelwick’s PAN (‘Planned Admission Number’) is 300 – the largest in Crawley.

How many of Hazelwick’s intake come from within its catchment area?

Just under half. Hazelwick has a very small catchment area for a school of its size, which means that over

half of our intake comes from outside our designated catchment area.

How many different primary schools did Hazelwick’s current Year 7 students come

from?

186 of the children who joined Year 7 this year live inside our catchment area. These children attended 23

different primary schools. The remainder of the intake (114) were children who live outside our catchment

area. These children attended 21 different primary schools.

If I want my child to come to Hazelwick, do I need to put Hazelwick as my first choice?

YES – definitely. Non-first choices are very unlikely to gain admission. If you believe Hazelwick is the best

choice for your child, name Hazelwick as your first choice.

If you have any further questions about admissions to Hazelwick, either contact Mrs Bending

at school or come to one of our Open Mornings over the next few weeks.

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