Headteacher’s Update
Dear Families
We have spent this week focussing on Resilience. This is one of our core values and we are keen to ‘catch’ our students demonstrating this core value. Mr Karavadra has led this theme in assemblies this week and we have been highlighting this core value in lessons. At the time of writing more than 2600 reward points for Resilience have been issued this term alone. It is important that we encourage this core value as much as possible. I firmly believe that we are all capable of more than we realise, and we mustn’t have the mindset of ‘I can’t do it’ , we all must try to do better and be the best version of ourselves.
We are currently electing form reps under our new pastoral structure and our Year 10 and 11 students are currently talking a lot about student leadership, and we plan to establish our student leadership team over the next few weeks. If your child is in Year 10 and 11 do encourage them to make applications and talk to their form tutor/trusted adult about whether they are suitable for application and also to talk through the process for applying.
I remind you about keeping our students safe before and after school. I met with the local police this week and had a positive conversation about traffic outside of the school. There are concerns around drop offs and pick ups, both from us, and also some parents. I highlighted the expectations around punctuality in my message last week. Parking is a key issue, please leave enough time in the mornings to drop off at a sensible location a little further from the school to ensure safety of both our students and the students at our sister primary school on site Brookside. When you are running late the temptation is drop your child right at the school gates, but this increases the risk of an accident involving cars, or worse still primary and/or secondary aged students. Our students are old enough to walk a short distance to and from school and this would really help with the traffic at the end of the school. Our local police told me that they plan to be around the site over the coming weeks along with the traffic enforcement team and we would rather show them that there are improvements, rather than see parents fined for inappropriate and dangerous parking.
With best wishes
Mr S Greiff
Welcome Year 7!
You have made a great start to life at Manor High School.
We have decided to extend our adapted Year 7 timings for one more week (a slightly earlier break, slightly earlier lunch and a slightly earlier end to the day). This will help Year 7 continue to adjust to life at a new school.
- Year 7 break time will start at 10:35am (5 minutes earlier than everyone else)
- Year 7 lunchtime will start at 12:30pm (10 minutes earlier than everyone else)
- Year 7 will finish the school day at 3pm (5 minutes earlier than everyone else)
At all points teaching staff will walk out with Year 7 and stay with them until duty staff arrive for break / lunch. At the end of the school day, teaching staff will walk Year 7 to the front of school.
Year 8 Take Your Teenager to Work Day
Thank you to all parents/carers for working with us on this opportunity. It was lovely as always to see some students in school and equally lovely to see so many students engaging with workplaces. We will upload a post experience task onto the iPads for students to complete next week.
Open Evening Thursday 25th September
Letters have been sent to parents/carers asking for consent for some students to help at open evening next Thursday (25th September).
Letters that went out earlier in the week were requesting support in specific curriculum areas. Today letters went out requesting support for tours. Please can you complete the online consent form if you received a letter.
Please note the letters / consent form refer to an 8pm finish – we are hoping the students will be ready nearer to 7:45pm so we ask that any parents/carers collecting students after the event aim to arrive at 7:45pm please. Many thanks for your support and thank you too for so many of our students stepping forward to be volunteers.
Lunch queues
We are asking all students to ensure their QR codes are ready before they get to the till as this will help to speed up our queues. Please could you reinforce this with all students at home.
We ask that all students follow the expectations below for queuing – these have been communicated with all students regularly during tutor time:
- Be respectful
- Queue calmly
- Queue in pairs (no more than two across)
- Ensure we are not pushing up to the pair in front
- Ensure we do not push and ensure we do not try to pass someone who is in front of us
- Listen to staff instructions
- Step into the serving area only when a member of staff asks us to do so
Please also note that the queues are only for people purchasing food or drink. Please do not wait in the queue just to stand with a friend who is buying food.
Students Send Birthday Wishes to Veteran Turning 100
Students have been busy writing birthday cards for Dougie, a former Royal Navy serviceman and Second World War veteran, who is turning 100 years old on September 23rd.
Dougie, who has no surviving family members, will be receiving heartfelt wishes from many young people at Manor High School. The students have taken time to create thoughtful messages, drawings, and warm words to help make his milestone birthday a special one.
By coming together to celebrate his 100th birthday, the students hope to remind Dougie that he is not alone and that his life and service are remembered and appreciated.
Year 10 Botanical Gardens Photography Trip
The Year 10 Art & Design students enjoyed a sunny photography visit to the Leicester botanical Gardens last week. Students spent their art lesson walking around the gardens and greenhouses photographing various flora and fauna for their Natural Form project, including a range of flowers, plants and Koi fish.
Safeguarding Update
Please see attached poster regarding an online safety briefing run with our safeguarding partners – Online Safety
Parent/Carer information session
Wednesday 1st October 2025 – 4pm – 4.45pm
Focus: Online Safety Briefing – this session will cover all aspects of children’s online lives and will cover the risks associated, the latest trends and data and guidance on how you can support their online lives.
The link to access this session will be sent to you one week before the event for you to share – you can share it via your website if you wish or your usual communication channels.
Chatbots and Children – The Children’s Society
The social media sphere has recently gained a new tool in their battle for youth engagement – the chatbot. Chat bots are not particularly new, but the sophistication of their governing algorithms is. These applications are designed to keep people engaged with artificially generated responses. Responses formulated based on the information the user puts into them. This can create a self-reinforcing effect, where the chatbot continually increases the user’s convictions in the truth of their own inputs. False information, reinforcement of poor choices and self-manipulation are common issues with this emerging software. The Children’s Society has recently published an article on the issue which you can find here:
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/blogs/chatbots-and-children
Rethinking Masculinity and Mental Health – Harmless
In male culture showing emotion, crying for example, is seen as a relative taboo. Other outpourings of emotion; anger, sadness or seriousness, is generally discouraged. However, this creates a restrictive environment for males and breeds into their relations, a prohibitive social expectation over emotional engagement. The penalties for breaking this taboo can be bullying or physical abuse within intra-male relations. Psychologically this produces harmful mental effects that can impinge on development and social relations. The Harmless Organisation has recently published an exploration of this phenomena and its related issues over on their site. If interested, please follow the link: https://harmless.org.uk/boys-dont-cry-rethinking-masculinity-and-mental-health/
Year 7 Transition Workshop for parents
Please see the poster from the NHS Mental Health Service, who are running an online workshop around transition to secondary school.
We will send out the link for you to join, nearer the time.
