Category : Front Page News

Upfront Theatre Company 

On Thursday 27th March Upfront Theatre company came to Duke’s to perform a theatre in education play as part of year 9 and 10s PSHEe curriculum. The play focused on the themes of consent and relationships and was accompanied by a fantastic post show workshop. All students in years 9 and 10 benefited from the fantastic workshop and performance. 

Mentoring Works

A group of year 10 students who have been completing the Mentoring Works programme this week celebrated the mid point of their mentoring programme. The students taking place in the programme meet regularly with a mentor from Linklaters Law. The project is student led and all of our students have been benefiting from the programme massively.

Skate and Celebrate! 

What a way to end the half term – Skate and Celebrate was our latest positive reward event – open to all students who had achieved over 95% attendance and zero negative points in the previous half term. The event was put together by Ms Iqbal and Ms Roach and was a fantastic community event – delicious food, roller disco, giant games and a raffle – much fun was had by all who attended.

We’re all very much looking forward to the next event!

Poetry Live 

This week the English department led a group of year 11s on a trip to ‘Poetry Live’ at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in the West End. 

Students were provided with key exam insights from GCSE examiners and enriched through live poetry performances from some of the nations best poets – Carol-Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage and John Agard. 

Thank you to everyone involved in supporting this trip and a big thank you to Mr Avevor and Ms Rodney for organising.  

Parent Forum 

We had a fantastic parent forum this week. A brilliant way for our parent community to come together and share their views. We were delighted to see so many parents with us on the evening and it was wonderful to hear from so many in our local community. 

Holocaust Memorial Day

This week we’ve been marking holocaust memorial day with tutor activities and assemblies. This important historical moment was discussed by students as part of their tutor programme with some thought provoking discussions. 

Ideation WorkshopThe Steve Browne foundation were also in Duke’s this week to facilitate an ideation workshops with some of our students. The workshop focused on the idea of ‘self’ and students discovering more about themselves and the world around them. Questions posed by the workshop were: How might we create a school environment where every student feels seen, respected, and valued before behaviour becomes an issue? An inspirational workshop with loads of fascinating ideas.

Sporting Success 

This week 14 Year 8 pupils competed in a borough athletics competition at St Thomas More School. We competed against Alexandra Park School, St Thomas More School, Mulberry School, and Fortismere School.

The PE department are extremely proud of our student performances. They put a great deal of effort into their endeavours and were highly competitive, despite the very high standard of pupils we were competing against. This marks a huge improvement from last year, when some pupils gave up during the longer races. This year, our pupils demonstrated real perseverance and determination, finishing every race they entered.

We finished most events in 2nd–4th place and came very close to winning the boys’ relay, only missing out after our final runner unfortunately tripped in the last stretch.

If last year we struggled to finish races and this year we finished competitively, then next year could hold a very positive surprise for us all!

‘Reflect’ programme with Linklaters  

 This week saw one one of the final sessions of our ‘Reflect’ programme with year 9 girls. The facilitators, Foxy and Kianu were fantastic working with our girls on this project that has explored target setting, resilience and behaviour modification techniques. All of the girls involved in the project agreed that it was fantastic and they were sad to see it finish.