A positive half term comes to an end – Head’s Blog

Friday 21 February 2025 | By Erin McKeown

As the first half of the spring term comes to an end, we have many positive things to reflect on following a busy few weeks in school.

Trips and visits 

Students from across the Prep and Senior School have been enjoying an array of exciting trips and visits in the last two weeks. Prep pupils took a trip to London last week, where they visited the British Museum to enhance their knowledge around their current IPC topic The Good, The Bold and The Brave, and also enjoyed a lovely meal and an outing to see Mrs Doubtfire at the theatre.  In addition to this, Senior School students had a fantastic time in the sun on their excursion to Italy! The trip consisted of enhancing pupils’ knowledge of earthquakes, volcanoes and coasts, alongside exploring beautiful places such as Pompeii, Vesuvius, Sorrento and Capri. It was definitely a trip to remember.

Nursery Stay and Play

Other parts of school have also been a hive of activity in recent weeks. Our Nursery Stay and Play event last Tuesday was filled with new faces!  It was lovely to see how the children interacted with each other and how quickly they settled into the Nursery environment. Thank you to Miss Hall and Mrs Candler for organising such a wonderful event. 

The Society of Heads Poetry Recital Competition

Moving further up the Prep School, Isabella in Year 6 has achieved an amazing 1st place in the Year 5-6 solo category in The Society of Heads Poetry Recital Competition 2024-25 – a national independent school poetry competition.  Isabella is a brilliant example of the kind of pupil we have here at THS; motivated, confident and will always rise to a challenge.  I cannot wait to see what she will do next!

ESU Public Speaking Competition

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate  Hannah, John and Isaac in our Public Speaking team.  After their hard work writing and performing their speech at Dame Allan’s School last week, they made it through to the North East finals of the ESU competition.  We are all rooting for them in the next round.

Best in Teesside!

Finally, as you will see from this edition of our school newsletter, we are delighted with our fantastic achievement in the Department for Education league tables!  I would like to say a huge thank you to our parents for their ongoing support and for the messages of congratulations this week.

Wishing you a restful half term break.

Read our latest newsletter here. 

Kirsty Mackenzie, Head