Headteacher’s Welcome
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome those of you visiting the Hillcrest school website for the first time.
What a roller-coaster the past two years have been. We can hopefully look ahead to an academic year free of the concerns and constraints on our practice that Covid has brought during the recent past.
Despite the huge disruption to the children's learning brought about by the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, Hillcrest pupils have managed to buck the national trend of decline across Key Stage 2 SATs examinations. The key figure of pupils working at the expected standard in all three subjects of Reading, Writing and Maths had dropped nationally from 65% in 2019, the last time that SATs had been held pre-pandemic, to 59% following the 2022 tests. However, Hillcrest pupils managed to maintain the school's already pleasing 77% from 2019 by equalling that figure in 2022.
Mr M Try
Across each of the separate subjects, Hillcrest also exceeded the national averages for those achieving the Expected Standard as well as for those pupils achieving a Higher Standard. An incredibly pleasing set of results.
I was incredibly proud of the staff's response to the challenge that remote learning brought during the pandemic and it was this continued commitment to the children's learning at the most troubling and uncertain of times, combined with the way in which parents rose to the challenge of home learning, supporting their children and, of course, the impressive way in which the Hillcrest pupils refused to allow the lockdown to stop them from putting everything into their studies.
Hillcrest is proud of its school community and it is the way in which the community pulled together that not only saw the children through the toughest of times, but enabled them to resume 'normal' learning in-school after the lockdowns had ceased with few difficulties and also helped see the most recent Year 6 cohort achieve such impressive results.
It is that same school community that will now grasp the possibilities and opportunities that lay ahead of them in our exciting new world, ensuring that learning is not only purposeful and challenging but also exciting and enjoyable.
We look forward to resuming all of the normal activities that the Hillcrest family would have undertaken pre-pandemic. We will be once again welcoming parents into school, providing opportunities for the children to benefit from mixing across year groups, sharing valuable resources and visiting places off-site that further enhance their learning.
Thank you to all who contribute positively to our school community and we look forward to working with you on 2022 and beyond.
Best wishes
Mr M Try
Headteacher