Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Warbler.

As we get closer to the end of the school year you may think the school will start to wind down, in fact it is the exact opposite. There are so many exciting opportunities that you can get involved in the next few weeks!

We are looking forward to our sports day this year, a day that all students will be able to participate in in some way. Be that in subject lessons based around sport, form groups designing and making banners and of course competing in the sports themselves. Good luck to all of you (especially Seisdon House).

Well done to all those students that have taken part and successfully completed their expedition part of D of E, a great achievement and something that students will look forward to being able to do from other Year groups.

I would also like to thank the ‘eco squad’ here at the school, they have done an amazing job. Collecting and recycling old batteries that would normally end up in landfill. The team recycled over 10,000 batteries and The Wilnecote Library is now a designated collection point for used batteries, so none of us can have an excuse for not recycling them properly. Well done to the team, making a real difference to our environment.

Keep working hard Wilnecote School, enjoy the sunshine and get involved with all opportunities that are coming up in the school before we break up for summer holidays – it won’t be long until you’ll be in Year 11 and celebrating with a leavers assembly and a prom, make the most of your time at school!

Mr Mark Herbert

Assistant Headteacher

Over 60 students represented The Wilnecote School at the recent Tamworth District Athletics Championships. Athletes who achieve the top two positions in their age group events then go onto represent Tamworth at the Staffordshire Schools Athletics Finals. With all 5 high schools attending the standard is high and each event is very competitively fought.

For our year 7’s it was their first event of this scale, making many of them extremely nervous. Students in the older years were quick to share their past experience and supported them by leading the warm-up and helping them get to their first events.

With a crowded stadium, the atmosphere grew throughout the afternoon, with the track athlete’s enjoying hearing the crowds cheering in support and clapping each and every athlete crossing the line.

Students competing in the field events stepped up and took part in events like the Long Jump, Javelin, Shot Putt and High Jump. It is amazing to see the standards our students reach in these events, which are not their normal comfortable sporting events. As students took part they found their determination by using the performances of others to motivate them and achieve their best.

Once all the field competitions had been completed everyone’s eyes were on the track as the relay teams made their way to their starting positions. Each race was completed with every student from each of the schools shouting and screaming for their team.

After a recent review of our school reception procedures and some of the security measures in place we have made the decision to utilise the magnetic locks on our external reception door.

This will mean students and visitors arriving at site will be able to enter the building via the automatic doors but will be unable to access reception until the receptionist releases the Magnetic Locks. When leaving site visitors and students will have to be let out of the reception area by the reception team.

We believe this change will improve our already high levels of safeguarding whilst having a limited but justified impact on our open and welcoming school.

If you have any questions or concerns about this please email office@wilnecotehighschool.org. We will regularly review the situation.

Yours sincerely

Mike Stevenson - Operations and Facilities Manager

It all started on a cold, wet school day in January... Duracell was set to launch the 2023 Big Battery Hunt, and Mrs. Glover and Mrs. Taylor eagerly seized the opportunity to get involved. But how? And then the Eco Club was born. The aim of the club is to promote recycling and environmentally friendly activities. Students were invited to participate, and a team was formed. The club held meetings on Mondays after school and during Friday break time. They launched their first initiative - The Big Battery Hunt. Collection boxes were placed in tutor rooms, offices, and the library. Posters were displayed, and tutor messages were sent out... and so the competition began.

The Eco Club regularly collected batteries, and diligent counting commenced. Students did a fantastic job organizing themselves into counting teams and keeping track of which tutor group was leading on the leaderboard. Mrs. Glover updated the count on The Big Battery Hunt website. At the halfway stage, Offlow 5 was in the lead, with Cuttlestone 1 not far behind. The competition closed on 22nd May, and the Eco Club spent their time collecting all the boxes and completing a final count. The winning tutor group and second place were announced:

1st Place: Totmonslow 4 with 657 batteries

2nd Place: Offlow 5 with 647 batteries

Special mention also goes to:

• IT Support with 1,564 batteries
  
• The Powers Family with 2,650 batteries
  

In total, the team collected nearly 10,000 used batteries, which are being sent to a specialist recycling firm to extract the chemicals and other metals, ensuring minimal waste. There is now a battery collection box in the library for the safe disposal of used batteries. A huge thank you to everyone who took part in this competition.

The Eco Squad (our new name) will soon be launching their next initiative, so watch this space. Any students interested in joining the Eco Squad should speak to Mrs. Glover in the Library.

Are you interested in recycling?

Do you care for the environment?

We need you.

The Wilnecote School is proud to launch “The Eco Team”. The club is student led and will focus on improving recycling within school and the local community, with a little bit of wholesome house competition thrown in too.

Speak to Mrs Glover in the school library if you wish to join the team and take part in your first recycling challenge.

This half term, students took part in the Bronze Award expeditions. Arriving on Monday morning, the students' first task was to pack their items into expedition rucksacks. All I can say is we must have some magicians in the group with how much they managed to squeeze into their rucksacks!

The group was smothered in factor 50, with their waterproofs at the ready due to the potential downpour forecast for later in the day!

Staff made their way to the first checkpoint, and the groups started appearing in very high spirits. Water bottles were filled, and students made their way down the canal to checkpoint two. Staff continued to wait for the final group to arrive at checkpoint one. They waited... and waited... and waited. Finally, they appeared in the distance. Once their bottles were refilled, the last group set about making good speed to make up for lost time.

The next two checkpoints flew by, and the groups were well on their way to Kingsbury Waterpark Campsite, taking necessary stops along the way to rest their legs, take on fluids, and top up their tummies.

The vast majority of parents/carers have now downloaded and are using the Go4Schools App to view VPs and behavioural events.

In school we have also encouraged students to download the app, it will be the students and the parents/carers responsibility to ensure that students attend their detentions preventing any further consequences. Students must check the app before leaving at the end of the school day, keeping in line with our Mobile Phone Policy.

If you are having trouble downloading/logging into Go4Schools then please contact the school via office@wilnecotehighschool.org.

Dear Parents/Carers

At The Wilnecote School, we understand that the rising cost of living is having a negative impact on the budgets of our families. We are beginning to see the impact of the crisis in the way our food provision service is used. We have every sympathy with those adversely affected by rising prices across food, petrol and energy bills, but the school is unable to sustain increased levels of debt incurred by some users of our restaurant. Simply put, if debts are incurred and not remedied it is the school budget which pays for them. This means that money which should be spent on the education of our students through the delivery of the curriculum, or to provide extracurricular activities, or to improve facilities, is used to pay for these individual debts. We are sure all parents/carers will agree that this is not acceptable or fair.

Therefore, we now have a strict DEBT policy relating to the school meal service.

Parents/carers of those children NOT in receipt of free school meals, must pay in advance for the school meals using their online Parent Pay account. Students will not routinely be allowed to access the food service if they do not have credit in their account. We understand that on rare occasions oversights can occur. Please be reassured that, if payment is genuinely forgotten, the school may grant a debt allowance of £3.00. However, this must be paid off before any further meal is provided. Whilst that debt of £3 remains, students will be unable to use the restaurant and therefore parents/carers must provide a packed lunch. In a case when the payment of the debt is not received nor a packed lunch provided, the office will phone the parent to ask them to remedy the situation by either placing credit on the account or making alternative arrangements.

For those children who are in receipt of Free School Meals, it is important to realise that students who are entitled to Free School Meals have a set daily budget of £2.41. This meal must be taken on the day. If the allowance is not used it is not rolled over to the following day. If the daily amount of £2.41 is exceeded, this becomes a debt which will need to be paid back.

If you believe your child(ren) may qualify for entitlement to Free School Meals, please contact office@wilnecotehighschool.org for more details. This allowance is a statutory right, and it is important that you use it if you qualify. We will help and support you all we can with your application. Please be aware that, although the policy has been applied from after the Easter holiday in 2023, any current outstanding debt is included within it and therefore any students with a debt on an account will be unable to use the restaurant until all the full outstanding debt is cleared..

Any long-term debt on an account may impact upon access to and/or attendance at to other non-curricular school activities and events which have a charge. e.g., ski trip, prom etc.

We hope that by implementing this policy we are able to help our parents/carers (and students) manage their school dinner money more effectively (particularly given the current cost of living crisis) and at the same time ensure that all money in the school budget is used appropriately for the benefit of all.

If you have any concerns about how the policy will affect you or your family, please do not hesitate to contact the school using office@winecotehighschool.org.

Thank you for your co-operation in the matter and please be reassured that no student with a genuine need on any given day will be disadvantaged by this.

Yours faithfully

M Stevenson - Operations and Facilities Manager

L. Bingham - Senior Financial Manager

On 21st June 1964, 3 civil rights campaigners (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney), disappeared after being released from a Mississippi jail. The 3 were activists from the North who had travelled to Mississippi to try to help black Americans in the state to register to vote. Intimidation, combined with a literacy test, was preventing many black Americans in the deep south from voting and the civil rights movement had identified this as something that needed to change if black Americans were going to have a political voice, which in turn could help bring in laws that would end discrimination.

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were all members of CORE (Campaign for Racial Equality) who were arrested for their part in the campaign known as The Freedom Summer. Their bodies were finally found on August 4th, buried in a dam site. They had been murdered by the KKK, who had been tipped off by the sheriff as to when they would be released from jail. In the short term, the Freedom Summer only managed to get about 1600 out of 17 000 to register to vote. But the events of the Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Murders did help President Johnson to push through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act (the latter banned the literacy tests and led to a significant rise in the number of black Americans voting). These events form the basis of the film “Mississippi Burning”, which, although it is fiction, is loosely based on the case and gives an insight into the racism that prevailed in Mississippi at the time

The Civil Rights movement is studied in Year 11 History.