Updated 30 January 2014

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Created: Thursday, 30 January 2014 10:15

Written by christine

Thank you to all of our year 11 and 12 students who have approached the recent mock exams with such maturity. Our mock exam results day for year 11 will take place on 5 February in order to give the students a true understanding of how it will feel in August when they receive their envelope. We will be following up closely with some students who need to push themselves harder and will be inviting some parents/carers into college to discuss how their child can maximise progress.

Effort was the theme of our assemblies at the start of the Spring Term. I challenged all of our students to think along the lines of the former Table Tennis gold medalist Matt Syed who believes that ‘champions are made not born.’ He states that to label someone as gifted or a prodigy means that it underestimates the sheer amount of hard work that goes into being successful.

At Groby we believe in ‘achieving excellence’ and we have set out clearly in our vision statement that all young people, through the right level of challenge and support, can achieve their potential. I believe that if everyone puts in the maximum amount of effort and purposeful practice then they can achieve whatever they set their mind to.

This does not mean that we don’t have challenge those who master a skill or a subject quickly.  What we do is make sure that certain students can access the higher-level concepts and ideas  at a faster pace than those who need more time to practise the basics.  The challenge for us as a college comes in making sure that all students put in the necessary effort, hard work and practise at the right time. We can only achieve this goal if the mindset is right.  In other words every student must believe they can succeed if they work hard enough.

To support the idea that effort can beat talent, we have further extended the support we give to students.  The extended support programme is now open to year 10 and 11 students. Most subject areas have an extended programme running beyond 3.10pm which is published on the website.  In order to support our students in their efforts, the college now runs late buses leaving at 4.15pm on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I encourage all students to make use of this extra provision in order to master their subjects and I request that our parents/ carers challenge their children to make use of the extra provision available.

Good luck to all of our students sitting exams this year; the hard work starts now!

Mr Coles, Principal