Autumn Term

Mon 5th September* – Fri 16th December 2011

Half Term: Mon 24th – Fri 28th October 2011

Christmas: Mon 19th December – Tues 3rd January 2012

Spring Term

Wed 4th January** – Fri 30th March 2012

**Please note revised start date to the Spring Term.

Half Term: Mon 13^th – Fri 17th February 2012

Easter: Mon 2nd April – Fri 13th April 2012

Summer Term

Mon 16th April – Thurs 19th July 2012

Half Term: Mon 4^th – Fri 8th June 2012

Summer holiday: Fri 20th July—Fri 31st August 2012

*Monday 5th September is an Inset Day and the school will be closed. There will be a phased start for Years 7, 12 and 13 only on Tuesday 6th September. All years will be in school on Wednesday 7th September 2011.

In addition, the school will be closed on the following days: Friday 30th September, Friday 25th November 2011 and Friday 20th July 2012.

For some time the school has considered the option to become an Academy. Earlier this term the governors were delighted to receive a letter from Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, confirming that the application for Oaklands Catholic School to become a school with Academy Status had been successful. This letter issued the Academy Order for Oaklands

The Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth has worked very hard with their legal team to develop the legal framework for conversion , the school is very grateful for their work. This framework or cluster model will allow other Catholic schools to become  an Academy alongside Oaklands under the same Academy company. More importantly, the framework and legal documentation will preserve the Catholic ethos of the school. At present there are no other Catholic secondary or primary schools wishing to become an Academy alongside Oaklands, nor has the school been approached or entered into a conversation with any other school, about joining or being absorbed into the newly created Academy Trust company.

At the full Governing  body  meeting in July the governors examined the Academy s proposal for Oaklands and voted to proceed to conversion. There are still a minor number matters to be resolved . Once these are finalised and the funding agreement is  signed with these DfE, conversion can go ahead from the 1^st September 2011.

Academy status is a genuine opportunity to keep Oaklands school at the forefront of educational developments and to mitigate against the impact of cuts in public spending.  The school  will continue to work closely with the  Local Authority,  feeder schools and the Havant Federation of Local Schools. The school will continue to purchase some services from the Local Authority, it is committed to obtaining best value for money.

The school  has received fantastic support from  parents and members of the local Catholic community and will use the opportunity that Academy Status provides to secure the outstanding provision.

Further information will be made available in September.

For information on the opportunity to purchase an Oaklands Fairtrade polo shirt click here.

Click here for an electronic copy of the 6th form taster booklet

Over 90 students at Oaklands Catholic School in Waterlooville took the opportunity on their special International Day to urge the Secretary of State for International Development to use the existing UK aid budget to support small businesses overseas.

Pupils from Year 8, 9 and 10 looked at some of the benefits small businesses can bring to people living in poverty and some of the challenges they face – focusing in particular on the story of Luz Mila and her family in Colombia.

For full information on this story visit the Cafod Portsmouth blog here .

As I am sure many parents are aware, this year there have been a number of errors on examination scripts issued by OCR and AQA examination bodies. Similar to all examination centres, we were not notified of these errors until after the scripts were sat by  candidates.

The school has made representation to the examination boards to gain a guarantee that students will not be disadvantaged, we await their reply.

The Joint Council for Qualifications have responded to this situation. Their response can be downloaded here.

1 million “buttons” please!

Year 9 students are building a memorial to victims of genocide around the world. Please send us any buttons that you have so that we can reach our target complete building our Memorial.

We have started our own webpage abou this project too – http://buttonsforgenocide.co.uk/ 

The students even appeared on BBC Radio Solent – click here and go to 20 minutes 20 seconds to see what they had to say.

The story has also been covered in the Portsmouth news – click here

Today marks the 5^th BBC News School Report, and members of 7 Catherine marked the occasion by gathering news affecting them this week.

 Top issues were Mission Week, the new Young Carers group attended by students, the sponsored silence for Comic Relief and worries about Whitney Dean’s storyline in EastEnders. 

Gregory is in the process of interviewing members of the Sion community, Maria is honing her interview skills and Mollie practiced being a weather person. 

Below is Sabrina and Emily’s bulletin:

S: Hello, we’re year 7 students at Oaklands Catholic School in Hampshire

E: And we are reporting for BBC News School Report.

S: This is a special week for us because it’s school mission week.

E: During mission week, we do lots of assemblies and workshops which help us understand more about God and our relationship with him

S: The mission week team from the Sion community are here in school to guide us.

E: We tried to interview them, but there were involved in a boys only session, so they were surprised to see us!

 Chad, Jack, Michael and Alfie are gathering news about their experiences in mission week and the recent school show, Arabica…check back for their full interview and video work soon…

On Monday 21^st March Mrs Masson, Mr Wade and 15 students from year 7-year 12 went off to Waterlooville at the beginning of lunchtime, clipboards in hand to complete the first stage of their research into the local area.  The students are involved in the History Pin Project, a global project which aims to unite generations in the search for old photographs.

Once found and researched these photographs are to be uploaded to the Google backed site with some modern photos for comparison.  The groups of students involved in the project are focusing in on Oaklands School, shopping in Waterlooville, Fort Widley and local roads and churches.

The group set up a table to use as a base and then spread out organised by their Sixth form group leaders.  They focused on shops, interviewing the public and research in the library.  They found out a huge amount of interesting facts…did you know Mcdonalds in Waterlooville used to be a cemetery?!  Or that underneath lots of homes on Stakes Hill road there are deep wells build to provide gas to General Napier when he lived in the school building?!  We also had a visit from Steve Pethybridge, a local Historian who has been investigating Waterlooville for the past 30 years.  He had us enthralled with his tales of local History. 

All in all, the visit was very successful and the History Pin Group meets again next Monday in S12 to continue its research into putting Waterlooville on the map!