All the premises staff

All the cleaning staff

All the IT staff

The extra fetchers and carriers drafted in Hobson & Porter Ltd and all their sub-contractors

EC Harris Ltd

Broadway Malyan Ltd

All the teaching and other staff who donned their scruff and got behind a sack barrow or a trolley

And – working with them all – Alan Woodcock, Director of Resources

Dear all,

Thank you.

There were just two short weeks either side of Easter for us to get out of the old buildings and into Oak. You did a magnificent job. Rarely has so much been transferred by so few and so fast!

On Monday, 12th April, students arrived to use Oak for the first time. There was stunned gazing. There was wild exploring. There was a certain tendency to open-mouthedness. “Wow” was in everyone’s mind and on the lips of many. After 5 years of planning, several life-times of design meetings and, for this last one, 20 months of construction, the buildings of Wyke are now entirely renewed. You made it all possible. At different ways and at various times, you did the hard graft and the subtle thinking. It’s down to you that it has proved a resounding – well acoustically controlled, actually – success.

Oak is a delight to work in. The library is everything we planned for: always full and always quiet and purposeful. The refectory is beautiful – and always has room to sit. The theatre is stunning and the sports hall beautiful and BIG. More than anything people comment on the light and space. The building has subtle moods and aspects. It changes from moment to moment during the day. May it do so for many years and for generations of learning young people.

Yours very very sincerely,

Dick Smith

But Easter approaches and with it — the Great Move. Progress on Oak, our final building, is excellent. We’ll be moving all the major College services and the teaching for PE, Performing Arts and many tutor sessions in over the two week break. This must be done because demolition of the old buildings begins immediately. Music, music technology, media and film studies will move more gradually since they are currently in temporary accommodation.

The final internal shape of the building is very clear now as the last finishes, decoration and furnishing are underway. The central concourse, the library, the theatre and the sports hall are very special and far beyond any facilities the College has had before. We will be seeking an opportunity for an early viewing of the inside of the building after Easter for parents of past and prospective students.

Meanwhile, the essential endeavours of students continue. The countdown to examinations is in crescendo. Already there are less than 10 working weeks to go before AS assessments begin. The spring review of individual progress is underway and you can expect to hear the outcomes soon.

Equally, the rich life of the College has continued. The group of media students who visited New York earlier this month have – fittingly – provided a film record for you. You can view it on the home page. Other students are preparing for trips to Spain and South Africa. The latter group will be engaged in charitable community work while staying near Johannesburg and they are busy raising funds for their trip. If you would like to assist then please e-mail Assistant Principal, Mark Rothery: mark.rothery@wyke.ac.uk .

Of course, in better weather, the huge campus garden space between the three buildings will remove any pressure on internal space.

The need for all this space is growing though. The College has been rebuilt for about 1300 students and current indications are that it will not be long before that figure is exceeded. Applications are flooding in! I mention this now because if you are reading here and planning an application for a place — lose no time in getting it in! For the last two years we have had to turn away late applications. The definition of late is changing, though. As a date in the calendar it is rushing forward. We will try to continue to take applications for as long as we can but the funding available for places is constrained – as is everything in current financial conditions. Don’t wait.

It is no surprise that so many young people want to come to Wyke, perhaps. The figures demonstrate the advantages very clearly. There are lots of ways in which success is measured and we’re delighted that Wyke students come out so strongly across the whole range of them. The latest to be published are the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) Achievement and Attainment Tables. You can find these at

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/performancetables/16to18_08.shtml

The essentials are that Wyke students achieve the highest average points score per student of any state college or school in East Yorkshire or Hull. You can tell that students are leaving a school or college well-equipped for their futures if this is a relatively high figure. The England average for publicly funded post-16 education is 721. In Hull and the East Riding, the scores range from 832.5 down to 586. The average points score in the city of Hull is 743 and in the East Riding it is smack down on the England average, at 721.

That last fact often surprises people. After all, at GCSE, the two authorities are miles apart in the opposite direction. Research comes up with interesting answers. 18 year olds in Hull – predomiinantly in the sixth form colleges – do very well on this average compared to authorities across the Humber, too. The score for NE Lincs is 691 and for North Lincs it is 737. Leeds is down at 694, Sheffield at 682.5. The story is similar in Bradford and Barnsley and Doncaster. Why?

The way education is organised has the most significant effect. Where there are sixth form colleges – as in Hull, Huddersfield and Wakefield – average points scores per student are much higher, year on year. In a sixth form college students choose from more courses and complete more courses. Because sixth form colleges take many students and have high averages, the local authority scores are dominated by their better outcomes. Hull got it right, educationally, in 1988, when it changed to a sixth form college system.

What about the average points score per entry. These are often impressive. They show something about how high grades were. They don’t tell you where the students started, of course. Many private and selective schools show high averages. The students may have started with averages of A*, A and B grades at GCSE, though. So how far have they travelled?

They might have gone further than average after two years in the sixth form. They might have travelled the average distance. They might have coasted to success. To try to show which is the case – for all students – the government is publishing a contextualised value-added score. This is quite a challenge. Contexts are complicated. The statisticians don’t claim to have got it right yet. The bigger the ‘confidence interval’, the less reliable the result but I’m afraid even this confidence interval does not cover all aspects of reliability.

So what does all that add up to? The average points score per student is a good guide to the overall outcomes that any school or college is achieving with its students. You can tweak this assessment by looking at the other two scores but beware, the contextualised value-added score is massively distorted by unindicative things like whether all the students do a general studies A level or not.

Here’s a little HANDY GUIDE:

Average points score per student

Each A level (or equivalent) grade counts for a given number of points. All the grades added together as a total number of points for each student. Then the average score is calculated.
It shows the worth of the full package of achievement for students leaving. It’s a good indication of how well AND how much they have done.

Average points score per entry
This is the average achievement in each subject the students have taken.
It indicates how high, on average their grades were – but not how much progress they made.

Contextual Value-added score
A calculation of students’ achievements in context of their individual starting points and their background and several other factors.
Something about how well all students are doing regardless of where they started. Tricky, though. Look at the “confidence interval” numbers. They’re there because there are many distorting factors in the sums.

It’s probably worth mentioning that learning at Wyke has very rarely been interrupted by adverse weather. Even in the great flood of 2007 we kept going through most of the day! Essentially, so long as it is possible to get here, the College will operate.

That’s important in January because it is the second most important month for examinations. They start on 11th and go right through to the 29th. Please do whatever you can to ensure the right conditions and approach for revision. Simply making a warm quiet place available is the first step, of course. Physical conditions can be important. The right psychological approach is crucial too. Revision is not repetition. It is seeing things anew. This is a creative, questing, investigative process and we need to approach it with confidence, determined to make this understanding and knowledge our own. It then becomes much more straightforward – and enjoyable – to present it to an examiner.

Looking further forward, the next Open Evening is approaching. Anyone who hasn’t already done so – and those that have but would like a second visit – can come to College between 4.30 and 7.00pm on Wednesday, 10th February to talk to subject staff and students and to look around. There will be other events but this is the last opportunity when all staff will be available.

Enjoy the genuine winter!

The Winter Concert on Wednesday night in St Albans Parish church was superb. The balance of voices in the choir currently is one of the best we’ve ever had. Bach himself would have been proud of the opening cantata – and I’m sure he’d have sung to the rhythm of the Big Band and tapped away to the Ceilidh Band later on. The dance students did a great show on Tuesday night and I’d recommend the March show, when they will perform their final pieces. The ballet sections are challenging – and impressive.

Then on Thursday night, the College Corporation met. Yes, it was one of the programmed meetings but it had a significant decision to make. It took it – by accepting the Secretary of State’s invitation for the college to “designate” as a sixth form college. Now this may puzzle you, because, of course, the College already is a sixth form college and always has been. That’s true. However, the latest education Bill to be passed by Parliament, just a month ago, created a legal “designated” category of sixth form college. Previously, sixth form colleges were a variety of further education college, distinguished in practice and activity but not through legal definition. Now, we are legal as well as decent, honest and truthful!

This is important in another more practical way. The title “sixth form college” is associated – through years of outstanding success – with the best education and outcomes of any type of post-16 provision. That makes the title, like any successful brand, prone to attempted “hi-jack” by imitators as others attempt to piggy-back on the success. This has happened locally and recently. If you’re in any doubt about whether what you’re looking at is what someone has put on the tin, there is now a second simple test. Is it designated as a sixth form college under the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act, 2009? (The other test, already available, is to ask whether it is a member of the Sixth Form College’s Forum.)

Well, I’m sure the Law Lords have packed their bags and gone of to prepare to feast by their Yule-Tide fires some time ago, so it’s my pleasure to do the same. Have a really good Christmas break – designated or not!

In April – during the Easter holiday – we move into the Oak building and then the last of the empty shell of the old cocoon will blow away in the wind (well, alright, in front of bulldozers). Over the middle months of 2010, the ground between the new buildings will be landscaped to make new seating, eating and socialising outdoor space. There’s a pond and a stage area and many trees to be planted. There’s one tree in a special location too… but we’ll leave that until it is seen.

It all makes me more than happy to come to work. It is making lots of students want to come, too, and the rate of applications has gone through the roof – though fortunately a metaphorical one. This is good. It is what the College has been rebuilt for. We will be doing our best to make sure that the arrangements to support the education of all these young people are made. Even so, I thought I’d mention it in this, the first Principal’s blog so that anyone reading it who was thinking about applying some time later realises the danger of some time later being some time too late. (I don’t like having to talk to late applicants about the lack of places for them.)

I’ll round off this inaugural posting because I have to get other things done before the Christmas concert tonight in Hall Road Church. I know this is going to be great because we’ve already had three previews (prehearings?) in morning staff briefings. There are some seriously talented young musicians involved. I would like to finish, though, by congratulating Dani Brettell, recently selected for the national Colleges netball squad. This is high honour and selection out of a rich pool of talent. Well done Dani!