News and events
Our latest news and events give you an insight into life at school.
Our latest news and events give you an insight into life at school.
Year 11 Weekly Newsletter | Please find the Year 11 Weekly Newsletter from the Year 11 Team here.
Sixth Form Weekly Newsletter | Please find the Sixth Form Weekly Newsletter from the Sixth Form Team here.
Fixtures for the Week | The following fixtures are taking place this week:
If you have any question about the fixtures, please contact Mr Sheehan, Faculty Director for Sports (tsheehan@liftbexleyheath.org).
Interventions & Extra-Curricular Clubs | All clubs and interventions will resume on the week commencing Monday, 12 January 2026. Please see the extra-curricular offer for this term here.
Charity Focus for the Term | This half term, our charity focus will be the British Heart Foundation (BHF), a leading UK charity dedicated to fighting heart and circulatory diseases. The BHF funds pioneering research into the causes, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart conditions, strokes, and vascular dementia. It also provides vital support and information to patients and families, campaigns to improve heart health across the UK, and works to raise awareness about how lifestyle choices can reduce the risk of heart disease.Throughout the term, students will take part in a range of small but meaningful fundraising activities, including wear red days and other simple, planned events built into the school day to ensure everyone can get involved.
Alongside this, we will continue our commitment to supporting our wider community by visiting our local residential home and primary schools. These visits give students the opportunity to show kindness and respect, build positive relationships across generations, and understand the importance of giving back. Together, these activities help students develop empathy, social responsibility, and a strong sense of community beyond the classroom.
Masterclass | Expanding Minds Beyond the Classroom | We are delighted to be continuing our Masterclasses this term, giving students the opportunity to explore subjects in greater depth and discover new interests beyond the classroom. These sessions are designed to inspire curiosity, challenge thinking, and expose students to a wide range of ideas and expertise from our staff. This term’s Masterclasses include an exploration of the links between video games and art with Mr Ridout, an engaging journey through History with Mr Mack-Poole, and one of Mr Uwachei’s thought-provoking deep dives into his specialist area. We are especially excited to begin this week with Mr Kirby’s Masterclass, “How do we learn languages?”, where students will explore how the brain acquires new languages and why learning them can open doors to communication, culture, and opportunity. The Masterclass will be taking place on Wednesday at 08:00 in the main hall.
What's been happening in Spanish this week? | Across Key Stage 4, we are seeing consistent and significant improvements in students’ confidence, accuracy, and overall control of language. This progress reflects the focused work of our teachers, who have been refining retrieval routines, strengthening grammatical understanding, and expanding topic-specific vocabulary. These strategies are helping students to build solid foundations that support both translation tasks and extended written responses, enabling them to communicate more precisely and creatively in the language they are studying.
It is particularly encouraging to see Year 11 students actively engaging with feedback from their mock exams, using it to identify areas for improvement and taking real ownership of their learning. This growing independence and commitment to progress is helping students produce more sophisticated spoken and written work, giving them the confidence and skills they need to succeed in their GCSE assessments.
There’s a real buzz in Modern Foreign Languages as Year 11 students dive into their final GCSE unit: House, Home and Local Area / Environment. They are rising to the challenge, consolidating prior learning, and picking up new vocabulary while describing homes, expressing opinions, and using higher-level structures with confidence.
A current focus is improving translation skills, following insights from recent mock exams. Students are responding positively, approaching tasks with care, resilience, and increasing accuracy. Alongside lessons, Year 11 Writing Intervention sessions run every Wednesday lunchtime in SWN’s classroom, offering extra support to refine writing and boost marks. Well done to Year 11 for a hardworking, positive start to the final unit, the MFL team is proud of your commitment and progress!
Annual Culture & Climate Survey | The Culture and Climate Survey is an important tool that helps us understand what daily life is like for students, parents, and staff at our school. It focuses on students’ experiences of school, including how safe, supported, and included they feel, as well as the quality of their relationships with teachers and peers. This insight allows us to better understand the environment in which our pupils learn and grow. This week, on Thursday, 08 January, students took part in completing the Culture and Climate Survey. Research consistently shows that when students feel a strong sense of belonging and trust within their school community, they are more likely to attend regularly, engage positively in learning, demonstrate positive behaviour, and achieve strong academic outcomes. The survey enables us to look beyond test results and gain a clearer picture of the everyday experiences that influence students’ wellbeing, confidence, and success.
The survey is not used to judge individual students, staff, or parents. All responses are completely anonymous and are used to help the school reflect honestly, celebrate what we do well, and identify areas where we can continue to improve.
Some highlights from last year’s survey include:
We also use the survey to identify areas for development. For example, feedback showed that some students wanted more hands-on learning opportunities in science, which led us to review lessons and increase practical tasks to make learning more engaging.
Personal Development | This term, Personal Development lessons focus on careers, well-being and preparation for future pathways. Students will explore post-16 and post-18 options, including apprenticeships, college and university routes, while developing key employability skills such as goal setting, resilience and informed decision-making. Lessons also continue to strengthen students’ health and well-being, with a focus on mental health, managing stress, online safety and maintaining positive routines.
Assemblies will reinforce this learning through a carefully planned programme aligned with national awareness events. Themes include goal setting and aspirations, mental health and stress management, online safety during Safer Internet Day, and tolerance, equality and global citizenship through Holocaust Memorial Day and International Women & Girls in Science Day. As part of our safeguarding responsibilities, assemblies will also revisit key Prevent messages, ensuring students understand the risks of radicalisation and extremism, know how to stay safe, and are clear about where to seek support.
Together, PD lessons and assemblies in Term 03 ensure students are safe, informed and aspirational, while celebrating positive character and preparing them confidently for the next stage of their education and future lives.
Term Dates 2026/2027 | The release of the term dates for 2026/27 has been delayed. This will now be released next weekend. These will be provisional dates and are likely to change. INSET days will be decided and added at the end of the academic year.
Safeguarding | Increased screen time over the holidays | During school holidays, it is natural for children and young people to spend more time on their phones and other devices. As the new term begins, we are encouraging families to reduce screen use and re-establish healthy routines. Prolonged phone use outside of school, particularly in the evenings, can have a direct impact once students return to lessons, including disrupted sleep, reduced concentration, lower resilience, and increased difficulty regulating emotions. These effects can make it harder for students to engage positively in learning, manage behaviour, and maintain strong relationships in school.
Families can support this transition by setting clear, age-appropriate boundaries around phone use, avoiding devices in bedrooms overnight where possible, and keeping open conversations about online activity. Encouraging offline activities, consistent bedtime routines, and balanced use of technology can make a significant difference to pupils’ readiness for school. Safeguarding is most effective when school and home work together, so if you have any concerns about your child’s phone use or well-being, please contact the school, we are here to support. If you have any questions or would like any support regarding the contents of our safeguarding feature this week, please contact our safeguarding team (safeguarding@liftbexleyheath.org).
Admissions Arrangement Consultation | As with all schools, there is currently a consultation period for admissions arrangements for 2027/2028. However, as a school we have no changes to our admissions arrangements. All information about our admissions arrangements can be found on our website.
What's been happening in Humanities this week? | In this week’s Year 11 spotlight, Mr Reavell treated students to a lively re-introduction to Early Elizabethan England (1558–1588). With a clever interleaving starter, he got them revisiting the key biographical and contextual details they’d learned before, making history feel both fresh and familiar.
By the end, students weren’t just interleaving; they were thoroughly re-immersed in the Elizabethan world, ready to tackle the complexities of the period with confidence.
Year 10 have been getting to grips with one of the most dramatic parts of Edexcel GCSE History: Medicine Through Time, as Mr Mack-Poole led a gripping lesson on surgery in the trenches of the First World War. Students explored the brutal realities faced by surgeons on the Western Front, from shell wounds and infection to the urgent need for rapid decision-making under extreme pressure.
The lesson brought together conditions, treatments and change over time, helping pupils see why the war became a turning point for modern surgery. By linking classroom knowledge to real trench experiences, Mr Mack-Poole ensured students developed both strong historical understanding and clear exam focus with history that was challenging, memorable, and highly relevant.
Year 07 have begun their study of the Crusades with Ms Johnson, focusing on the wider context behind why the Crusades began. In their first lesson, students learned about the weakened Christian Byzantine Empire and the pressure it faced from the advancing Seljuk Turks, helping them understand the situation in the eastern Mediterranean before the Crusades were launched.
Through clear explanation and careful use of key terms, Ms Johnson supported students in building a secure foundation of knowledge about the medieval world. The lesson encourages pupils to think about cause and context, setting them up well for deeper study of the Crusades in the weeks ahead.
Revision Links for Term 03 | To support you in making sure learning continues at home and to inform you about what your child is learning each term, we have provided you to links to resources for each curriculum. Whilst these resources can be found in the Curriculum section of the website, we have added the links below for ease for our core subject only. If you have any questions, please contact the relevant Faculty Director:
Lift Bexleyheath
Woolwich Road
Bexleyheath
Kent
DA6 7DA
