Our Camp Wilderness adventure was cut short today due to torrential rain and the continuing deterioration of conditions on site. At the point at which I made the decision to evacuate, rain was forecast for the afternoon, into the evening and into the following morning. Delaying the decision at that stage could have meant that we would have had to evacuate in darkness. The safety of students and staff is of paramount importance.

The logistics of trying to get the coaches to collect, transport bags and walk students to the camp entrance point was further challenged as the exit tracks from our campsite became flooded, turning them into rivers of mud and surface water.

Every child was evacuated safely with luggage. Any unclaimed luggage will be kept at school for parents to collect at your convenience. Tomorrow is now our annual occasional day so school is closed to students. This is a one day school holiday used in many Hertfordshire secondary schools. It was included on our calendar but no day was specified. I understand and fully appreciate the inconvenience this will cause to parents due to the late notice.

I would like to thank the coach company for their response to our request, students for remaining calm throughout and parents for their understanding and not forgetting the sterling response from our catering company who mustered up lunch for the remaining students at KWS as they waited to be collected. I have attached some photos that will perhaps give you some idea of the conditions which led to further challenges that hindered our ability to communicate in a timely manner to all parents as well as additional road closures encountered on the return journey to KWS, making us later than anticipated.

I will discuss with Bushcraft several aspects of the trip including the possibility of financial reimbursement to parents in the coming weeks.

Tony Smith

Headteacher

 

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with this ahead

Our Open Day for our 2020/21 Year 7 intake will be held on Saturday, 5th October from 10 am until 2 pm.

Venue: Conference Centre, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden

Headteacher talks: 10.30, 12 noon and 1.30 pm.

We look forward to welcoming you.

There are some recent pictures from the KWS Site available under Galleries on the website. Click Here to view them.

On Thursday the 11th of July, we welcomed our first Year 7 cohort to Katherine Warington’s transition day. Both staff and students had so much fun taking part in the carousel of activities and we were all keen to finally meet each other! Students arrived from 8am and started gathering in their form groups. There was a lot of hustle and bustle in Park Hall as students got to meet their form tutors and began making new friends. Mr Smith then delivered an assembly to welcome everyone where he expressed how important it was to take this day as an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends.

Once the activities started, the day ran like clockwork as students showed they could be safe and sensible even when taking part in challenging, active and at points noisy activities! Mrs Robinson, our Art teacher, had planned a fantastic challenge where students used milk bottle tops and balloons to create pull and go cars. They then raced the cars at the end to determine winners. Things got rather frantic when Mrs Robinson yelled ‘GO!’ Mrs Coomber our Head of Maths planned a creative puzzle involving marshmallows and spaghetti. Both of these activities challenged our students as young, up and coming engineers! It was at times too tempting not to eat the equipment though…

All students got their chance to let off some steam in Harpenden Sports Hall as Mrs Anderson our Maths and PE teacher led the students in a variety of competitive games. The music was booming and the students thoroughly enjoyed it arriving to their next activities red faced! Other activities included a Spanish session run by Mrs Creamer, Drama run by Mr Church and we managed to get as many students as we could into the University of Hertfordshire’s Planetarium. Students learnt about our solar system and looked up at the night sky, even though it was 24 degrees outside.

To finish the event, students were asked to document this important day by writing a letter to their future selves as part of their English session with Mrs Aikman, our Head of English. Students showed impeccable behaviour as all the students completed the activity in silence, diligently sealing their letters away, ready to be opened in Year 11! This will act as our own little time capsule so we can all remember this significant moment in our school’s history. Mrs Anderson even wrote her own as she thought carefully about her first impressions of Blue form!

It is important we say a huge thank you to the staff that supported us as not only did support staff from KWS come along to help our students as they made their first step into secondary school. We were also lucky enough to have the entire Links outreach team there to help us. We really couldn’t have put on such a fabulous day for the students without this support. It is also important to say thank you to parents for getting all of the right information to us so we could ensure as smooth a transition day as possible.

We hope students were able to come home and tell you they had a positive experience and made some new friends. Hopefully, now students are able to look forward with anticipation to September as they become fully fledged Katherine Warington students.