Head's Newsletter 13 October 2017

including the art trip to Kew, the Geography field trips and the Duke of Edinburgh practice expeditions. This week has seen the House Dance competition. It has been brilliant to see the boys organising their practices and performing in front of their peers. The standard has been extraordinarily high, demonstrating not just the artistic talent of the boys, but also fostering important skills such as teamwork and confidence. Well done to the many boys involved. It is a particularly significant achievement to be one of very few London schools granted a Gold Award by TfL for our travel plan. This reflects the boys’ interest in the environment, as well as their incredibly high use of public transport and cycling to commute to school. Congratulations to the team of boys who have worked on this. Last week was an incredibly busy week with both the 11+, and our Sixth Form Open Evening. I hope that Year 11 boys and parents found the event useful, and I am pleased to say that once again there was huge interest in joining Tiffin School, both at Year 7, and Sixth Form entry. Next week is the last week of this half term, and is also set to be extremely busy with the sixth form play running throughout the week, and the annual Year 7 inter-form singing competition taking place on Thursday. I look forward to seeing as many Year 7 parents as possible at All Saints Church, and hope all boys and parents have a restful half term break, which starts on 23 rd October.

Dear Parents I was delighted this week that the Government published our provisional Progress 8 score for the GCSE exams this summer. This measure is the Government's new preferred way of assessing schools' results, and shows the progress pupils make from year 7 to year 11. With a score of +0.79, Tiffin's performance is officially 'Well Above Average', which is the highest category we can be given, putting the School in at least the top 12% for progress nationwide. Final exact figures are published later in the year. This means that not only is our raw attainment of 78.5% A*/ A grades outstanding, but so is the progress the boys make. Well done to all the boys, and staff, involved. It's been great to be able to watch the rugby at both home and away matches the last few weeks. After some close games, we now seem to be picking up more wins, which is very good. The grounds at Grist’s are looking splendid; do please come along and support the boys, as well as TIPRA, the Tiffin Parents' Rugby Association in their efforts. Other sports are also going very well and you can read about the excellent cross country successes as well as our new table tennis team. I am delighted that they have done so well in their first fixtures, especially against Coombe who have a great reputation for table tennis. Our thanks go to the staff who led the marvellous trip to Pompeii, which you can read about in the newsletter. There have also been a number of other day trips,

IMPORTANT DATES

23—27 October

Half –term

Monday 6 November Sunday 19 November 24 & 27 November

Y13 Parents’ Consultation; school finishes at 2.40 pm

Oratorio Concert. 7 pm in the Sports Hall.

Professional Development Days; no boys in school

Year 10 Art students had a wonderful day trip to Kew Gardens, exploring the current sculpture exhibition, "Sculpt at Kew", with over 70 sculptures, from 30 national and international artists situated within the beautiful gardens.

houses. The students experienced the very high, tree top walkway and visited the "Hive" architectural installation, which responds to the activity of bees. To end the day, we visited the gallery showcasing over 1000 botanical paintings by the Victorian artist Marianne North.

The with professional photoshoots using their newly acquired bride cameras, and drawing from observation tasks, capturing the diverse botanical collections in each of the glass students were tasked

Art trips play a key role in the GCSE and it is great to see how much the students enjoyed their trip, particularly developing their fantastic photography skills.

POMPEII TRIP 47 Year 8 Tiffinians were treated to a long weekend in the Bay of Naples. Highlights of the tour included the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, a hike to the crater of Vesuvius and a boat trip around Baiae.

House of Caecilius

Mount Vesuvius

Endless sunshine, pizza and ice cream only served to enhance their enjoyment further! My thanks go to the boys themselves for their enthusiasm and energy, and to my colleagues who accompanied us over the weekend. Mrs O’Connell

Temple of Jupiter

TIPRA Are you a TIPRA supporter yet; Tiffin parents supporting Tiffin schools rugby? To find out who your TIPRA parent representative is please email ablackburn@tiffin.kingston.sch.uk TABLE TENNIS On Tuesday 10 October a newly founded Tiffin Table Tennis team entered their first tournament at Coombe Boys’ School.

RUGBY The 1 st XV have had a mixed start to the season, winning the first fixture of the season but then losing three on the spin. A resurgence in form recently, however, has seen the squad win 2 from the last three games. Strong performances from Luke Harden, Gavin Griffith and notably Jake Fawsett, led to convincing wins over Haberdashers and Gunnersbury. These results gave the boys the necessary confidence going into Round 2 of the National Cup against Hampton. The squad stepped up to the challenge admirably, with Jake Fawsett and Gavin Griffith impressing once again with Jake scoring two tries and Gavin kicking a conversion and a penalty. Keeping Hampton to a 15 – 10 lead at half time after playing their best half of rugby all season was an impressive display of attack and defence. The future is looking bright for this squad who seem to be finally gelling.

Tiffin 1 st XV results Reigate 24 – 12 W KCS 7 – 29 L Wallington 10 – 5 L Emanuel 36 – 10 L

The U13s, consisting of Harshil Shah, Ashrith Behara, Oliver Cheung and Elvis Anim, impressed from the start and progressed easily to the semi-finals where they defeated Richard Challoner A. In the final against a seasoned Coombe A side, Harshil and Ashrith dominated their opponents, neither dropping a game. Further contributions from Oliver and Elvis in hard- fought contests saw the final tied at two matches each; Tiffin claimed the final winning 5-4 in games. A stunning victory! The U16s, consisting of Luis Bollinger, Tom Ogle, Kunalan Murugathas and Joshua Cruice, showed superb skill and determination in reaching the semi-finals. Despite playing opponents a year older they lost narrowly to a veteran Coombe side. All in all an outstanding achievement by both teams and we look forward to more success in the future.

Haberdashers 30 – 8 W Gunnersbury 56 – 0 W Hampton 42 – 15 L

HOUSE DANCE The House Dance Final took place on Thursday, 12 th October during lunch time in the dance studio. There were various categories that houses needed to prepare for and choreograph: set piece, free piece and, for additional points, solo. Adjudicators Mrs O’Sullivan, Mr Dharmasena, Mr Willison and Mr Bala scored performances based on: use of music, use of space, performance and technique, and finally creativity and effectiveness. All performances were of high quality and really exciting to watch. Huge congratulations to the winners of House Dance 2017 Churchill-Gordon . (pictured left). Well done to all participating dancers.

victory Surrey opposition. Euan Sinclair had a great spin for the seniors and Max McGarrigle had a brilliant Saturday debut for the school to complete a winning team performance. With Kai Pischke, Eyoel Abebaw-Mesfin, Aaron Bruce and Year 9 hordes waiting in the wings, the club looks to build on some impressive performances from last year in the senior section. against strong

CROSS COUNTRY Under the guise of Ranelagh Harriers a quintet of Tiffin students ran in the Southern relays on Saturday 24 th September. A top 50 time for Tom Armstrong and similar team position from Euan Sinclair, Joe Murphy and Will Murphy along with a great leg from Matthew O'Donovan concluded a very strong set of results against athletes over a year older in the majority of cases. With nearly a thousand athletes and nearly three hundred teams competing on the day, the result was a great success. John Fisher match Saturday 30 th September The Tiffin seniors remained unbeaten on Saturday in the Surrey League with Eric Williams (below) returning to form to win narrowly, ahead of the first of stars new to the school, Kieran Desmond, in second.

Jamie Krammer , Humphrey Allen, Keiran Desmond, Eric Williams, Max McGarrigle, Euan Sinclair.

In the juniors Connor Foley sprang to prominence. He was the first Year 7 over the line and came 4th against Year 8s; another great performance for the school. Backed up by Amadeus Lang, Dominic Virley, Harshil Shah and Thomas Latimer, the team looked great. This was even before the two strong men of Kavin Ravishankar and Alex Duffy powered over the line to come in 3rd team position, concluding an even stronger performance than last week when they came 4th in the relays.

The Captain, Humphrey Allen, was 4th and the second of rising stars, Jamie Krammer, crossed the line in 7th to seal a great

 travel options that are free or cheaper than using a private car are promoted  the need for parking spaces is decreased

GOLD ACCREDITATION Tiffin School has achieved Gold accreditation status for its Travel Plan thanks to the hard work and dedication of the Tiffin’s Year 10 TfL Youth Travel Ambassadors. This ranks Tiffin School in the top 10% of London Borough Schools to achieve this level of success. Schools are required to develop a travel plan which promotes safe and sustainable travel to pupils, parents and staff. The plan must meet criteria set by the Department of Education (DfE) and the Department for Transport (DfT) and must also have their travel plans approved by Transport for London. Travel plans usually:  improve facilities for pedestrians and cyclists (showers, lockers and cycle parking)  promote cycling and provide cycle training

Y10YouthTravel Ambassadors

 promote road safety  encourage car shares

Travel plans also benefit the local community, parents, students and staff:  the area often has less traffic - it becomes safer and less congested  people are encouraged to cycle or walk and be healthier  awareness of environmental issues increases

children

develop

road

awareness and safety skills

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