THE ALMONDBURIAN ONLINE

A word from your Chairman

Walter Raleigh

Welcome to the November issue of the Almondburians’ Society magazine. I hope you enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.

Autumn is always the busiest time of year for the Society and this year is no different. We began with the Heritage Weekend in September (report: page: 20) and we shall have the Friday church service to celebrate Founders’ Day and the Annual Dinner on 22nd/23rd November (see pages 12-15). We hope many of you will be able to join us at one or both of these events.

Our aim to give the Society a higher profile amongst present KJS teaching staff has begun. I was invited by the Principal to visit School in the week before the end of term. It was a most helpful and enjoyable experience. I met many former colleagues as well as some new staff who were all keen to learn more about us. This event was possible because of the preliminary work done by Liz Atkinson, a member of the present staff who now regularly attends our monthly meetings.  She had put copies of the most recent magazine in all staff trays together with an accompanying letter explaining what the Society is and its aims. Together with our long standing link Abbi Terry, we now have two members of staff fighting our corner in School.

One member of staff I was keen to meet with was Rebecca Hamlett, KJS Head of Drama, about whom you can read more on page 44; but suffice it to say here that she is a very dynamic and enthusiastic member of staff.  Following our meeting she contacted me regarding my request for student performers at our Autumn events and I can now confirm that School students will be participating in all of them. What wonderful progress in such a short period of time! One of her emails was even sent whilst she was on holiday in Poland!

Rebecca has also set herself some very ambitious targets in her drive to improve and reward student progress and behaviour in her role in School. Not surprisingly this requires funding which School is struggling to find and our help was sought. Thirty or forty years ago we would have contacted someone like Bob Williams and he would have used his little black book of former students working locally to sort the sponsorship out. Unfortunately, we no longer have this list of contacts of former students in local businesses. 

As such it must be one of our aims, in our task of reinvigorating the Society, to gather a list of local businesses owned or run by former KJS students who may have lost touch with their old School. It is as if we have a lost generation of potential supporters of School – and we now need to get them back on board.

I think we could start this process by asking School via its regular emailed newsletter to parents to find out how many students have parents who also attended KJS. The School now has over 1,000 students, so even if only 10% fitted into this category we have potentially a large pool of support – and new members!
At the time of the 400th Anniversary celebrations in 2008 lots of former students contacted School because they wanted to get involved. Many were not members of the Society but held fond memories of their time in School. This is the type of person we need, once again, to get involved.

Another benefit of my meeting with staff was to learn of the successes of recently-departed students. Before I retired in 2010  Greenhead College and New College would send lists each September telling us what our former students were planning for the next stages of their careers. This no longer happens as KJS is itself kept in the dark, supposedly because of ‘Data Protection Regulations’. I feel sure that Data Protection legislation was not introduced with this sort of restriction in mind, but it is a problem we now have to live with.

In my conversations with staff I was told to watch the Taekwondo event at the Paris Olympics as a former student was taking part. (For the benefit of the uninitiated, Taekwondo is a Korean martial art and combat sport involving punching and kicking techniques). His name is Caden Cunningham and as British champion was expected to do well. As requested I sought his event out and was absolutely delighted to watch him achieve a Silver Medal in a closely fought final. Our congratulations go out to him and all his family who must be so proud of his efforts.
The School has a long tradition of students who have excelled in the performing arts. From the early days of the film industry when Sir Felix Aylmer brought fame to the School with his long list of film and TV credits to more recent memories, for many of us, of  Gorden Kaye in ‘Allo ’Allo!’ and Janine Mellor in Casualty,  students from our School have made successful careers on the stage. We now have another name to add to this distinguished list. I was informed that Ellis Kirk, who left KJS in 2017, has been chosen to play the lead role of Marty McFly in the West End production of Back to the Future.



Successful Almondburians: (l to r) Olympics medallist Caden Cunningham, actor Ellis Kirk, musician Jamie Smith

Just as in the days of ’Allo’ Allo! when Dave Bush organized trips to watch the recording of an episode, staff have made arrangements to take students to see Ellis performing. They must be thrilled at the prospect and once again we congratulate Ellis on this wonderful success. His family must be incredibly proud of him.

And finally on my visit I was told of the success of a student I taught. In fact I believe he was the very last student about whom I wrote a School report. His name is Jamie Smith and he was a delight to teach. Jamie was very musical and took part in all the School productions, continuing with this hobby when he left KJS in 2011. He played with the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, amongst many other appointments as a professional musician. This summer he was part of the backing band for Coldplay at Glastonbury. Wow! Again massive congratulations to Jamie and all his family who, I know, supported him along his chosen career.

The reason I’ve recounted my recent visit to School and told you of the success of former students is two-fold:
l It shows how important it is that the Society works closely with School so that the wider membership can be informed of and celebrate the success of these modern-day Almondburians.
l To remind older members that though the School is no longer the Grammar School it was until 1974, it continues to produce wonderful students who are a credit to their parents, School and local community.
We now need to encourage more of our former students, whatever their age, to join us in celebrating their time at School and the part it played in their future success.



From the study

Ian Rimmer (Principal)

IF I had a pound every time someone asked me, on August 22nd and in the days that followed, “how have we done?”, I could retire now. Well perhaps not! Maybe if it was £1,000 each time. Anyway, it was a lot!

Over time, my responses to the “how have we done?” question have become increasingly flippant. Some might suggest that’s an indication of my wizened experience as a headteacher, for I now commence my 10th year in that role; others may cite the prospect of my retirement appearing over the distant horizon. But in reality, it is neither; it is simply a fact that answering that question with any degree of confidence, for the time being at least, is impossible.
Some try to get around the dilemma, by offering an addendum of “compared to last year”. Sadly, that helps little.
A better question would be “how might we have done?” and, if you are in the business of comparisons, complemented with a side offering of “compared to national norms”.

OK, so “how might we have done compared to national norms?” Well, alright actually – I think!
The problem is that these days the principal measure of school performance, Progress 8, depends upon knowing how children with similar starting points did nationally. From those figures, the Department for Education (DfE) helpfully tell you how your children should have done … but that data isn’t released until October. 
So how do we decide “how we might have done?”. Logic would tell you that a reasonable starting point would be the ‘expectations’ that the DfE provided last year and indeed that would be sensible. But then you have the added complication that this year, again, the DfE have lowered pass rates (for each subject) to bring them back in line with performance pre-Covid. Remember there was a good deal of grade inflation during the era of Teacher-Assessed Grades (TAGs). So last year’s ‘expectations’ are likely to be a bit higher than this year’s, so we would need to add a bit onto our performance – but, I agree, ‘a bit’ is hardly scientific!

You then have the added complication, that not every subject has been adjusted in the same way. For example, some subjects like Languages are ‘more difficult’ than others. You have further layers of complexity, as there is inequality even with Languages. French and German are more ‘difficult’ than Spanish – but that’s for another time.
Then you have the extra factor that the impact of outliers within the student data is controlled. A student who achieved well in Year 6 SATS, and therefore is generating a high level of GCSE ‘expectation’, but who for whatever reason fails to achieve these high expectations, will have their negativity capped. And yes, you guessed it, we will only know who they are and what the level of capping is in October.

But surely one can say, “roughly how might we have done compared to national norms?”. OK, for what it is worth, I can offer you the latest projections about how our figures look in the end. The figures for 2022-24, in so far as you can compare for all the reasons stated above, are shown in the table. It is worth noting once again, that from 2022 to 2023, and again to 2024, there has been realignment of grades with pre-Covid figures. This means that, nationally, overall Attainment figures have dropped. There will be some local variability though, depending on each year’s cohort, some of which ‘naturally’ attain more highly than others.



So, an upward pattern with some really positive strides made in certain areas. Some subjects continue to perform more strongly than others but, broadly speaking, things are on the up.

But life isn’t just about GCSE grades. We pride ourselves on our holistic provision which supports the whole child, beyond academic performance. The DfE try to measure some of this, through ‘staying-on rates’ post-16. Obviously, we have limited control over this, but it does to some extent measure the quality of our careers provision. Needless to say, our figures in this area are excellent and well above national norms.

Then there are plenty of other non-measurable outcomes that might support the overall picture of “how we have  done”. No league table will ever record the number of Olympic medals won by former students or the West End performances played by alumni. Yet, I would like to think that in some (small) way the all-round education and support we have given to these students has allowed them to flourish and be the successes that they are. After all, that’s what our motto describes.
Floreat schola!                                           


   
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