On Thursday 20th September, as you are aware, it was Bushey Meads’ Open Evening.  This is probably the important event on the school’s calendar but for all humanities and social sciences teachers it was the first opportunities to showcase their new faculty – known affectionately at The Super Faculty.  From September, the Social Sciences Faculty, (consisting of business studies, economics, government and politics, law, psychology and sociology), merged with the Humanities Faculty, (consisting of geography, history and RS) to form the largest faculty in the school.

In September, the new faculty welcomed several new members of staff.  Ms Dunsby and Mr Mitchell are new to the geography department, Mr Dowty is the new history specialist, Mrs El-holy is the new business studies and economics teacher and Ms Kwok, has been welcomed to the psychology department.  In addition, the faculty welcomed back Ms Kinghorn in business studies. Ms Kinghorn worked for two days a week for most of the summer term last academic year but joins the school on a full time basis.

Roles within the faculty of staff already in the school have also changed, with several members of staff stepping into leadership positions.  Mr Lyley has become Head of History, Ms Lister is leading Sociology, Ms Lindau has been appointed an Advanced Skills Teacher with particular focus on leading psychology.  I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead this faculty and oversee all the different departments and subjects.

So, on Thursday, the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty showcased the many exciting things that students learn in each subject area.  Geography ran a spaghetti building competition to see who could build a structure that would withstand an earthquake; History took visitors on a tour of historical sensory exploration including medieval dishes to try and potions to smell and the RS room looked like an Aladdin’s cave of religious artefacts.  Like last year, Politics had its polling box out and visitors experienced how to vote in a school based referendum. The question was:

Should schools move to a four day week with extra homework given on a Thursday?

The result was a definite No with 57%% preferring to continue coming to school for the five days.