Supporting West Berkshire Special Needs Information Day

On 1st February, Parent Voice will be hosting a wonderful event for anyone to attend. The event runs from 9am to 7pm and will be held at Thatcham Rugby Club. As an additional incentive to go, our amazing students will be supplying the catering for the event. Fiona Worby, of Parent Voice writes on their website:


Parent Voice (soon to be West Berks Parent Carer Forum) had a wonderful email from Jan Vaughn, the fantastic lady who supports the students at Post-16 The Castle School, regarding the Special Needs Information Day.
'The students from Post-16 The Castle School would like to say an enormous "Thank you" to West Berkshire Parent Voice, for allowing us to provide all the refreshments for this amazing event, on the 1st Feb, our students are already busy planning for this event and shall be volunteering several hours of their time after school to support a successful day.'
We are very pleased the students are coming along, and would like to thank them too,  for giving up so much of their time to help with the event. We are very much looking forward to sampling the various sandwiches, cakes and cream teas which will be for sale  throughout the day, and complimentary tea, coffee and hot chocolate will available all day for everyone who comes along 
We are really looking forward to seeing you all there, and with your support it will be a fantastic  informative event.


You can visit the Parent Voice website by clicking here

Calamitous Cafe!

As part of their Functional Skills learning, Donnington Class have been completing a unit on cafés. Last week, Donnington came in from break to discover that their classroom had turned into a café! Quite a few things went wrong... students got the wrong order and had to wait too long to be served. This resulted in the students writing a strongly worded letter of complaint!



Today, Donnington Class visited the café at The Nature Discovery Centre. All the students successfully ordered what they wanted and politely paid for their food and drink. Tomorrow, the students will be writing a review of the café. I am sure that the review will reflect a more positive viewpoint than their previous 'café' experience. 

Dynamo Maths Christmas Challenge

Over the Christmas holidays we set a group of pupils the challenge to go onto the Dynamo Maths programme as many times as they could to complete activities. The runners up, going on 5 times were Ciara and Milly. In first place was Chris, who went on an amazing 8 times.


Well done to all. Here's to the next holiday challenge!

An Egg-citing Discovery!

KS2 had a very surprising start to the term! On Tuesday afternoon, Allan, our school groundskeeper, rushed to Primary House to tell Corfe, Balmoral and Skipton classes that he had found a strange looking egg on the field. We were just about to begin our first lesson on dinosaurs, but soon realised our plans needed to change…

We spent the afternoon investigating the unusual egg. Some pupils were a little worried at first, others were extremely curious and desperate to become dinosaur detectives! As the pupils became egg-cited, lots of observations were made in the form of drawings and notes. Some pupils thought they saw the egg move slightly, others reported a scratching sound coming from the inside, one pupil even witnessed a mysterious brown creature sprinting across the field!

Watch this space! We hope to find out more soon! 

The KS2 Team

The School Debates!

Towards the end of last term we put on the third of our school debates. These events give all pupils the opportunity to get involved in debating issues that affect us. This follows two successful debates last year; one on bullfighting and one on the European Union. Not ones to shy away from controversial subjects as you can see!

This time KS4 and Post-16 students debated as part of our English curriculum: Should schools do a Nativity at Christmas?

Pupils researched what a Nativity is and how Christmas started. The arguments were flowing! Points awarded to each team by our impartial Colchester Class audience.

Great collaboration between the classes. Thought provoking responses all round!

Welcome back and Happy New Year to everyone

I would like to wish all our pupils, staff, parents, carers, governors and friends a very Happy New Year. I do hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday.

As with every new year, I am very excited to see all the wonderful learning that is going to take place this term. It gives me great pleasure to see all our pupils already engaged so brilliantly in their learning even on the first day back.

I am very proud to be Headteacher of such a committed and talented group of staff and pupils and look forward to sharing with you all their amazing achievements and continued outstanding progress.


I wish everyone a truly successful term.


Many thanks,


Jon Hewitt
Headteacher