Presdales School has always considered charity to be an important concept for our students to understand. Annually Presdales raises money for a nominated charity proposed and voted for by students and staff. Other national activities such as MacMillan Coffee Morning and The Poppy Appeal are also supported. Presdales believes that it is important to encourage our students to focus their good work outwards and we have witnessed fantastic independent examples of generosity from our students and their families this year, supporting those in need.

Presdales is supported by an excellent volunteer PA team, which provides invaluable help at key events. These include the annual: Dance Evening, Presdales Rocks and the Drama Production and the Christmas Bazaar. Funds from these events help us to purchase those things that budgets don’t stretch to and these funds will be sorely missed this year.

As a school we find areas where budgets do not extend to cover the cost of new or replacement equipment to be increasing and like everyone have been impacted through Covid 19 with annual activities unable to happen and new ways of working requiring new or different equipment. Seeking external funding from official grants is more important than ever and this receives active focus.

It is in this regard that we would like to mention and offer our sincere thanks to local charity EdufundUK Ltd for their recent support for our grant applications. The team at Edufund launched their charitable work with Hertfordshire schools in 2018. Presdales has received grant support from the very beginning in the areas of STEM, PE and Effective Learning with the purchase of diverse equipment for a 3-D Printer to an egg hatching kit.

Following three recent applications Edufund have supported us once again with grants for four new sewing machines and a class set of dressmaking dummies. This is of great significance to Presdales with student numbers in Textiles Tech increasing and ours being the only school in the local area to offer the subject at A-Level.

Additionally due to letting restrictions due to Covid 19 our PE department recently lost access to equipment it shared with one of our letting customers. Once again Edufund understood our plight and responded to a grant application to support the purchase of two new gymnastic floor rolls with the balance coming from the Dance Evening fund.

We would also like to offer one last note of thanks to Edufund. Presdales School was granted the major STEM grant in 2019, which included funds for the purchase of 25 visualisers. Who knew just how important they would be – they are making such a positive impact on remote teaching.

A recent SMSC activity set by the English Department was to “Create a poem representing your form’s vision of a future without COVID”. Here is 8JC’s poem, special recognition goes to Madison Scully who managed to write all their ideas into this lovely poem.

Vision for the future By 8JC

I see a future that is full of life Free of masks when we can get back to doing normal tasks And without anxiety and fear Full of happiness and cheer And friends and family for the rest of our years

I see a future that is full of light Free of darkness, where everything seems bright And without us staying a metre away Full of freedom and normal days And to think we were all locked up back in May

I see a future that is crystal clear Free of cases for over a year And without worrying to be clean all the time Full of joy that makes us shine And love that lasts for a lifetime

I see a future that is ever closer now Free of worry when we don’t know how And without COVID to spoil the fun Full of laughter And all of this is over and done

Year 12

The Year 12 Product Design students were extremely busy last term working on their Lamp Projects. We are extremely proud of all of the students work, and the effort and time that went into them. They were set a brief back in June, when they commenced their Year 11 into 12 bridging work, to design and make a table lamp. We feel the variety of materials, manufacturing processes and styles are quite inspired and their design sheets support their thinking and development of their designs. We now move onto theory which should build on their knowledge from GCSE and apply this in January when we begin the Architectural Model project. Well done Year 12!!