On Saturday, June 26th Mrs Liles and Mr Hackshaw took several of our students to perform on an outdoor stage on Brigate as part of this year’s Breeze Festival.
We played to a nomadic audience from 12.45-1.45 on a very hot afternoon. Katie Richardson sang 2 sets accompanied by Mr Hackshaw and the Soul Band (Tom Priestley, James Boyes, Levente Macsay and Michael Vickers) played while Molly Mesher and Beth Moxon sang.
They received very positive feedback from their audience and were interviewed for local radio.

Arts Council England has awarded Artsmark Gold to Ralph Thoresby School in recognition of the school’s commitment to, and excellence in, arts education. Ralph Thoresby is part of the 1676 schools in England who received an Artsmark award this year.

You may be aware that we had a monitoring visit from Ofsted earlier this month.  We were very encouraged by the inspectors' findings detailed below.  
 
Dear Mr Hemingway

Ofsted monitoring of Grade 3 schools

Thank you for the help which you, your colleagues and students gave when Paul Lowery HMI and I inspected your school on 9 June 2010, for the time you gave to our telephone and email correspondence, and for the information which you provided before and during my visit.

As a result of the inspection on 2 and3 July 2008, the school was asked to: 

• secure the improvement in achievement across all key stages
• increase the proportion of good teaching
• match the teaching of lower achieving students more closely to their individual needs
• increase the impact of the specialist status within the school.

Having considered all the evidence I am of the opinion that at this time the school has made satisfactory progress in making improvements, and satisfactory progress in demonstrating a better capacity for sustained improvement.