5 September 2025
Dear Parents, Guardians and Students/Annwyl Rhieni, Gwarchodwyr a Myfyrwyr
Welcome back, one and all! This week we welcomed the return of our staff and students, and we’ve grown again! We are now a community of over 1,750 students and over 200 staff. All year groups are to be commended on an incredibly positive first week back. We would like to give particular mention to our new Year 7 students who have taken their first week in their stride. They have launched their high school life with a great attitude, embracing the sheer scale of the school, meeting new teachers, and making new friends. They have toured the school, encountered the one-way systems, navigated their timetables, and thrown themselves into lessons.
Ask any Year 7 what they were most excited to experience, and the majority will tell you it was LUNCH! So here we are on a very wet Wednesday lunchtime. It’s a bit like Hogwarts but with fancier and healthier lunchboxes.
I’m sure parents and guardians have found some magical delight in the return to school too!
We always welcome the return of some structure and routine. Once again, it is the season of new shoes and replenished pencil cases. This means only one thing….please do put your child’s name in their blazer, in the jumper, on their tie, on their coat and on their water bottle.
Don’t forget that we operate a uniform store and blazer exchange in school. Please get in contact with your son or daughter’s pastoral team if we can support you here.
Despite the inclement weather, the students piled through the gates with big smiles and enthusiasm. We picked on some of the biggest smilers for some photos…
So, we’re back in the building and we’ve got our timetables and planners and we’re finding our way around. September always offers a unique opportunity to press the re-set button.
Ahead of us lies a year that is brimming with opportunity. It could be the greatest year yet for any member of our school community that wants to grab it with both hands and shake it up.
We hope that everyone will return with the commitment to try something new. It might be the opportunity to make new friends, or meet new teachers, or try new subjects. Or it might be the opportunity to try something from our wide range of extra-curricular activities.
Over the next few weeks, everyone will have the opportunity to try out an Enrichment activity and we hope you’ll all push yourself outside of your comfort zone at some point this year to try something new.
Our school mission and school values for 2025-26.
Our school vision and mission remain unchanged. It is to continue to create a supportive, inclusive environment that nurtures individual growth and personal success.
Success is different for each individual student depending on their unique interests, goals, skills, and aspirations. Through our teaching and learning, curriculum, extra-curricular offer, wellbeing services and pastoral care, we will continue to support each individual to make progress towards what we often describe as a ‘happy life.’ Happiness comes from hard work and from forging out your path and your place in our school community. There really is something for everyone.
New staff…
As well as welcoming the students back to school it has been a pleasure to welcome back the staff, old and new. In particular, we welcome some new staff this September. Welcome aboard to our new kids on the block, including;
- Miss Rosemarie Evans as Teacher of Science
- Miss Gabrielle McCulloch as Teacher of Science
- Mr Lucas Dwyer as Teacher of Music
- Mr Alex Evans as Teacher of PE
- Mrs Emma Bunn as School Business Manager
We hope they will flourish during their time in our warm and vibrant school community.
Breaking the ice!
As well as 306 new Year 7 students, we were also delighted to induct nearly 150 Year 12 students into Sixth Form life.
Apparently, the skills you require for Sixth Form include being part of a human pyramid, and jumping very high!
So, we’re back. But where did we leave you at the end of the summer term? We might have been on school holidays but we still have updates to bring you from July and August! Here are a few….
Bonjour from France!
Our students from music and drama had a fantastic time in Disneyland Paris at the end of July. They had a fantastic day at Hollywood Studios and participated with enthusiasm in an exciting workshop with the Disney team!
Lots of rides were ridden, many croissants were consumed, and many fond memories were made. Mrs Brown and Mr Grimstead looped the loop and rode the corkscrew on repeat!!
They were so very proud of our students who represented the school brilliantly. They really were excellent, throwing themselves into the workshop, showing exceptional manners and forging new friendships.
Harmony 2025
I’ll hand over to Ruben Kelman (now Year 13) to update us on
“Some of you may recall reading in Blog #306 at the end of March about our team who participated in the European Youth Parliament’s South Wales Regional forum which we won!
Our prize was attending as a delegation the UK National Session in Liverpool (Harmony 2025) in July (10th-13th).
We were very proud to be the ONLY Welsh school & ONLY COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL at the session which goes to show just how at LHS we have access to so many amazing opportunities!
The 6 of us from LHS all sat on different committees at the session looking at everything from 3D printed houses, as a solution to the housing crisis, to female representation in the European Parliament. We worked in these committees to write resolutions, mimicking those of the EU Parliament, which were debated in a 2-day General Assembly of all delegates.
As part of the session a Jury watched every delegate with the intention of selecting a handful to go to other sessions abroad. I was very lucky to be 1 of 9 selected from over 90 delegates to represent the UK abroad. So, in August off I went to Poland to their EYP’s National Selection Conference (Kraków 2025). There I worked with delegates from over 10 different nations ranging from the Netherlands to Italy, Poland to Azerbaijan.
My committee INTA wrote a resolution on the preventing the use of child labour and other human rights abuses in the extraction of critical raw minerals such as Cobalt & Lithium. This 5-day event, as well as Liverpool, has left me with many friendships, experiences and skills that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our amazing lead on everything politics in the school, Mr O Mann.
He unfortunately wasn’t able to come with us to Liverpool but on behalf of the LHS delegation I would like to thank him for finding this opportunity and doing all of the paperwork. Who knows maybe some of you will get involved with the next regional in March 2026 and you too could be jetting off to another European nation to experience the same?”
Here are some pics of the EYP National final in Liverpool.
The event in Liverpool was amazing. As a result of his participation, Ruben was thenselected by the Jury team at Harmony 2025 to attend Kraków NSC – National Session of EYP Poland! He swiftly packed his bags and headed off to Poland from 19th to 23rd August.
Ruben – we know that your input would be sophisticated and hard hitting and that you would represent Wales with passion. Little did we know that you would be the most stylish too!
So, we are up and running. We hope that the students are ‘happy tired’ by the end of Friday as we all adjust to the early morning alarm again.
We look forward to seeing everyone again on Monday to enjoy our Week B timetable.
Mrs Sarah Parry, Headteacher