Praise from Sir David Carter, National Schools Commissioner

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Visit from Sir David Carter, National Schools Commissioner

Sir David Carter, the National Schools Commissioner, visited us for a tour of the school and to host his “Race to Outstanding” seminar. We had been chosen as one of 12 schools in the South West; to have been selected was an honour enough in itself, but to have been asked to host the seminar was a real acknowledgement of our staff and students’ work.

I led a tour for Sir David and the heads of the 11 other schools and they were all full of praise for our staff and students; they were very impressed with what they saw both in and outside of the classrooms. One of the main things that struck Sir David was the aspirations and self belief that TA instills in our students. He spoke to our students at every opportunity and they were a great credit to the school. From the moment Sir David arrived he spoke about how impressed he was last time he visited, but how far we had come since last year. It was a great privilege to be able to show Sir David around our school.

Sir David often tweets a message when he visits a school – we got three that evening and another mention at the weekend when he was outlining the highlights of his week!

ParentMail

If you have not yet registered with ParentMail, please can you do so as our current email/texting system finishes on 19th March.  You will have received an email or text from ParentMail inviting you to register. If you choose not to register, you will not be able to receive text messages or e-mails from the school so it is definitely worth your while to log on and verify your account so you can keep up to date with correspondence from the school.  Thank you.

Finlake Riding Event

Jess attended a horse riding event on Saturday at Finlake Riding Centre, Chudleigh.  Jess performed dressages on her 5-year old horse, Luna, and was awarded with certificates for her riding ability.  Well done Jess!

Drama Practical Exam

Year 10 drama students took part in their 6 hour practical exam worth 30% of their entire GCSE this week. Pupils explored the topic of ‘the London Riots’ using various dramatic explorative strategies to enhance their understanding. They explored various stimuli from photographs to music all relating to the topic. Now pupils must write a 2000 word essay about the exploration.

Cenre Parcs Devon County Badminton Tournament

Pictured : George Fenn, Jack Bell, Edwin Chan, Cameron Knowles

Following their recent success in the Torbay tournament, our winning KS4 Boys Badminton Team competed against all the other winning schools in Devon, hoping to progress further as Devon champions. Having been here twice before, they knew it was going to be difficult and a huge challenge lay ahead. All boys rose to the occasion, displaying some absolutely fantastic Badminton, never giving up and fighting for every point. The team only got beaten by two other schools, and eventually went on to win the Bronze medal. This secures their position as the third highest ranked school in Devon. A fantastic result !!!

Lexia

In recent weeks we have had a rush of students completing all five levels of the Lexia Literacy programme. Lexia has a huge impact on the student’s reading and spelling ages with student’s seeing an average increase of two years. Pictured are Cody Kniveton and Kody Darke, both in Year 8, who turned their last session of Lexia into an intense competition to see who would finish first.   Other recent finishers include – Cassie Seal, Liam Doris, Luke Bianco, Joshua Hayman, Leo Loasby and Louisa Birchall.

Asian Banner

Tom pictured with Mr Toorneini

Geography department had an outstanding homework from Tom Bowden in Year 7. He’s been learning about Asia and has researched the names of all of the countries in Asia as homework, and then made an amazing banner of all of the flags of all of the countries of the continent. Well done Tom !!

Engineering Opportunities

Some of our Year 12 A’ Level Maths students were lucky enough to visit AMTEK PRECISION ENGINEERS factory in Totnes on Wednesday afternoon.  We were invited by Mr Matt Jones, a Consultant to the family run business.  The aim of the visit was to raise awareness of engineering opportunities within the area, and to educate them about the work that goes into producing the simple everyday items that we all take for granted e.g. Fruit Shoot bottle tops.  We had an informative talk from Matt and then a tour of the impressive factory.  It was a most enjoyable and informative afternoon, and we will look forward to repeating the visit with the rest of the group.

First XI close in on English College League Championship

The team continue to go from strength to strength with an 11-0 win this week to go top of the South West table. On Wednesday the first XI beat Bideford College 11-0 thanks to goals from Owen Stockton x4, Nathan Hebbes x3, Alex Constantinou x2, Morgan Harford and Sam Hebbes. This means that the team have now scored 30-0 goals in the last three games without conceding. With results also going their way on Wednesday thanks to South Devon College beating Exeter College it now means that the team only need to win 2/3 last three games to win the league.

We have a new piece of software that allows our coaching team to fully analyse every match.  You can see our goals from our home game at Plainmoor last week.

On Tuesday the year 9 football team beat Paignton CC 9-3 to progress through to round two of the South Devon Cup.

Year 11 Photography

Year 11 photography students are busy preparing for their forthcoming GCSE exam, which takes place in April. Here is a shot of Jack Cross taking his exam prep very seriously. The photograph was taken by fellow student George Mallen.

South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company choose TA student

Year 8 student Reece Whitehouse has been chosen by the South Devon Players Theatre & Film Company to play the part of Duran in the film Mordred,   They were very impressed with his reading at the casting stage and found it hard to choose between the talent that they saw but offered him the role of King Arthurs ‘legitimate’ son (and half-brother to Mordred) Duran.  A fantastic achievement, well done Reece !!

Students of the Week

Pictured with Mr Jones : Kelsey Riley, Alex Jones,  Mateusz Bacynzki, Louis Egan, Kelsey Batt

Sports Round-up

The Year 7’s competed in the house basketball tournament this week and again turned up in huge numbers. The tournament was excellently run by our fantastic year 10 sports leaders;

Elle Bryant, Maia Crook, Cody Marker, Zack Chalmers-Wood, Keiran Bailey, Alfie Edwards, Ben Tolman, Aaron Harris and Sarah Penny.

Both Darwin and Harrison accumulated the most house points, having so many participants they had to have 2 teams. Thank you to their tutors Miss Cape and Mr Brinson who lead these year 7 tutors.

The girls tournament was split into 2 leagues with their finishing position determining what final they played in, 1st place, 2nd place or 3rd place.

Darwin girls had a very successful tournament with both their A and B teams reaching the final, culminating win a Darwin A win.

Pengelly won the 2nd place play off final and Kitson won the 3rd place play off.

Mya Miles scored 9 baskets and won player of the tournament, selected by our sports leaders.

The boys were entered into 2 leagues with their finishing position determining whether they entered the Plate or Cup competition. Harrison B won the Plate competition for the boys and a mixed team won the Cup competition. Each student who enters achieves 10 points for their house. Overall, Harrison the gained the most house points from the tournament with a great turnout of 10 participants scoring 100 points before the first tip off.

The next house competition is on the 16th of March where our top 16 year 7 and 8 girls travel to Haldon Forest for the next round of the cycling qualifier’s. The top 4 from each year group will represent their houses at the Velodrome, Newport Wales. They will join the year 7 and 8 boys who have already qualified. On the same week our year 8 basketball tournaments will be taking place.