Letter sent to all parents regarding the developments in the House Structure at Longhill

21 May 2009


Dear Parent/Carer

I am writing to inform you of a significant development within the house system at Longhill.  
The houses will reduce from six to five in number by the end of this year.

It is our intention to amalgamate Jenner house students into the other five houses.

The current Year 7 students will move into their new houses from 15 June 2009 and will not enter into Jenner.

Jenner House students from Years 8 - 10 will be integrated into their new houses on 29 June 2009.

The Head of Houses, Ms Barton (Assistant Headteacher) and Mrs Youngman (Head of Behaviour
and Attendance) have met and considered in depth the strategies and support that will be offered to our young people at this time.

The House and mentor group students formerly in Jenner House have been assigned to their new houses to ensure that family and sibling links are maintained and that friendship groups are reinforced not negated.  There will however be situations where the identified new mentor group raises concerns for the students moving.  We invite you to contact the school to enable you to raise these concerns and allow us to satisfy any fears about or surrounding the movement.

We have met all students from Jenner in year groups and informed them of the intended movement.  In addition I have met the whole school in a sequence of Assemblies and informed those young people who will be receiving additional students to their mentor groups.

Mrs Buttifant will have met and spoken to each individual Jenner student to try to ensure that they understand the reasons for this move and to enable a smooth and supported transition.

The need to reduce the number of houses has arisen out of financial and management factors.  The outcome financially means that we will be able to set a balanced budget in increasingly difficult circumstances without the need to make staff redundant.  The flexibility within our pastoral system as a result of this action will result in a much more flexible mentor pool which we will be able to cover reliably without additional expense.

There is an agreement at national level that schools can no longer expect or ask staff to cover for each other unless it is an absolute emergency.  Reduction in the number of mentor groups and pairing up staff gives us a greater capacity for cover during mentor periods.

The increase to each mentor group will be an additional two to five students from Jenner or approximately 40 additional students per House.  It is expected that these additional numbers will
take the average mentor group size up to around 23.

The new intake in September 2010 will increase the school to a ten form entry.  We will maintain Year 7 as a transition period but in ten groups rather than the present nine.

The House mentor groups in Years 8 through 11 will then increase to around 25 students in each.

The financial saving as a result of this move will be directly reinvested into Learning and Teaching
to the benefit of all our students.

The school is also restructuring some of our staffing systems and I will be able to offer this to parents both on our website and as a presentation at the start of the new academic year during our regular planned curriculum information evenings.

If you have any fears, doubts or questions please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Buttifant, fellow Heads of Houses or the Senior Leadership Team here at Longhill.

Clearly there will be a concern that this change will impact more upon the Jenner students than other Houses.  I accept that this is so and we have planned to make this as smooth as we can.

I believe wholeheartedly that these changes will impact positively on all our young people in the long term.

In the short term, please express any concerns to the school to allow us to best meet the needs of your children at this transition stage.

Yours sincerely

Mr Haydn Stride
Headteacher