Dear Families,

Welcome back! I hope that you have had a lovely summer and managed to visit exotic places and catch up with loved ones. It has been a real pleasure seeing the children return these last couple of days, running into school and being excited to learn. Whilst you have been away we have been busy decorating parts of the school, refreshing our IT at Primary and preparing for another brilliant year ahead.

As you may have seen last week, we are celebrating our students’ outstanding success at A Level and yesterday we received another brilliant set of GCSE results. Ever since the Secondary school opened 7 years ago, we have been asked ‘where can A Level take you?’ and also regularly asked ‘aren’t they just for British universities?’ I’m proud to share that our graduating Year 13 students now are going to University of Bristol, Durham and UCL in the UK; Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and St Gallen in Switzerland, IE in Madrid and Ecole Polytechnique and Institut Français de la Mode in Paris. These are great universities and we are so proud of our students getting into them. In terms of headline figures, 47% of all A Level grades were either an A* or A and 81% were A* to B.

Yesterday our Year 11 students received their GCSE results. Like the A Levels a week before, these results are superb and significantly above UK averages. 76% of all grades awarded were at a 7 or above, which is a 2% improvement on last year, 30% above the private school average in the UK and 54% above the UK state school average. Our early entry linguists achieved 100% grades 8 and above, meaning that every one of them achieved at least an A* in French or German.

All of the results above have been achieved in the context of a much more robust marking regime with many schools’ results having dropped. I am so pleased for all of our students who sat exams and am immensely proud of both their efforts and that of their teachers. GES has brilliant teaching staff and they continue to support your children to excel in and out of the classroom.

Parent information evenings
Next week, you will have an opportunity to meet your child’s class teacher at Primary on Tuesday 29 August, 17:00 – 19:30, and their form tutor and subject teachers at Secondary on Friday 1 September, 17:00 – 19:30.

These events are a hybrid ‘meet the teacher’ and parent social event. Based on feedback via our parent representatives, we have planned these so that you can attend all the presentations for your children, with time to socialise together. To make things easier for you, we will also share presentations on My School Portal.

Finally, if your family is new to GES, welcome! We realise that there is a lot of information when moving schools and you may have lots of questions. Please sign up to Classlist, get in touch with parent reps and the Primary or Secondary school office are here to help you. Lots of answers can be found in the parent handbooks but please do ask if you need anything – no question is a silly question!

Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing you in the cooler rain next week,

Matt Williams
Head