Dear Landmark Community

As we come to the end of the ninth year of Landmark International School, there is a lot to celebrate! A busy summer term came to a close with an Ofsted inspection. This was our standard inspection and I would like to thank the whole community for their support. An inspection is never an easy time for a school community, but everyone was supportive and the inspectors wanted to give a thank you to our students for being so open and welcoming. Due to the time of year that we received our inspection we will not receive a draft of the report until early September and we will be able to share the findings with you when it is published in late September.

It has been another successful, busy and exciting year and the summer term has, as always, flown by and been packed full of events and achievements.

A culmination of learning

The summer term is always a very busy one in terms of exams; the public IGCSE and GCSE exams were held throughout May and June. We are very proud of our students, who have met the challenges of these exams with purpose and resilience. The secondary students in Years 7 to 10 also sat their end of year exams during this term - the timetable and organisation of the whole exam series went very smoothly and we are grateful for the efficiency of the team for making this happen.

Getting out and about

As always, Landmark students have been extending their learning through a range of trips. This term students have visited Burwell Museum, the Botanic Gardens, Little Barford Power Station, the Gurdwara and Shepreth Wildlife Centre, all great opportunities for our students to contextualise what happens in the classroom.

There have also been opportunities to bond and celebrate the successes of the year. A particular highlight was a group trip to Wimbledon, where some of our students had the incredible experience of watching the world number one men’s tennis player in action. We celebrated with our Year 11 and 10 group at Thorpe Park and with our Eagle class at our annual primary residential in Eaton Vale.

Day one video from our Eagle class trip to Eaton Vale.

Community, action and fundraising

Being a caring community is at the heart of what we do and as always there has been an abundance of activities that demonstrate this. It was wonderful to have so many members of our community come together to celebrate and participate in sports day. Our secondary drama club put on an exceptional performance of ‘Almost Cinderella’, written by our very own Josh. This was enjoyed by parents and students. Students in secondary school have taken action with our primary students, running activities for our annual Nrich Maths Day and our very first Environment Day.

Once again the community has excelled in fundraising for a number of organisations. Our used book sale and library fundraiser made £76. On Sports Day, Betty in Year 7 had a stall selling crafts that raised over £60 for Little People UK. The students contextualised their mathematics learning by budgeting and making tasty treats for our Financial Capabilities Project. Each group of four students were given £25 by the school, everyone managed to pay this back and in total the groups raised £123.81 for charity, then each class chose a different charity to donate their money to the Red Cross, Unicef Gaza appeal for children in crisis and Cancer Research UK. Finally, our Year 7 ASDAN PDP have been fundraising this week for East Anglian Air Ambulance, we look forward to hearing how much they raise.

Our secondary drama group performance of Almost Cinderella

Voices from the wider community

This term we have welcomed in a number of external voices to enrich our students' learning from organisations speaking about solar farms with Toucan Class, to Paul from PoetsIn running workshops, where our Year 9 and 10 students explored gender stereotypes using creative forms of self-expression such as rap, singing, and poetry. Our Eagle class completed their annual level two bikeability course.

Our primary students had a visit from the NSPCC, who gave the students a ‘Speak out Stay safe workshop’, whilst our secondary students enjoyed a range of activities for Careers Day, hearing from a food bank manager, software engineer and surgeon, to enhance their day learning about potential careers.

Internationalism thriving

Landmark exists to be a safe and inclusive international community that empowers learners to grow into self-directed, creative, and compassionate global citizens. This term we have continued to build on these values and we were delighted to announce that we will further enhance how we deliver our values through the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP). At the start of term we were awarded candidacy for the programme and will now be phasing the programme in over the next two years through our Year 7, 8 and 9 groups. There will be parent workshops to learn more in the new term.

This exciting new programme will build on the work we have done in our primary school with the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP). We were delighted to see another graduating primary class complete their PYP exhibition, the culminating project of the programme, with the students demonstrating their approaches to learning and inquiry skills and sharing this with the whole community.

We continued to build our relationship with Kaetsu Ariake School from Tokyo and enjoyed our annual Japanese cultural exchange afternoon with their students, whilst the majority of our Year 8-10 students got to work on their language skills and learnt about the culture and history of the Normandy coast during our secondary residential.

Day two of the Landmark secondary trip to Normandy.

Goodbyes

On Thursday the 19th June we held an assembly to say goodbye to our Year 11 students. Their parents and our students enjoyed seeing photographs of their journey from when they joined Landmark - some joined as early as our primary department - through to the articulate and confident young people they are today. We will miss them but feel sure they will embrace the next stage of their educational journey with positivity and confidence.

Our secondary singing group performing at our leavers assembly

We also say goodbye to Alma, who is returning to Austria, Elena and Sofia, who are returning to Belgium, Timi, who is returning to China, Bobby and Eddie, who are leaving us after finishing their primary education with us and to Wilf and Haoyu, who are moving to other schools in the area. We say goodbye to one of our learning support assistants Kate, and wish her the best as she goes on to university, and to Gaby who will be finishing her time teaching Spanish to our Kingfishers.

We are very sad to say goodbye to Jo Pulford, who has been with us at Landmark since the school’s second year. Jo has touched the lives of so many of us at Landmark, and she has influenced and supported our community to thrive, whether it be through her leadership of the maths curriculum, maths teaching, one to one lessons or support of teachers and their students through data tracking. We will miss you and wish you all the best in the future.

As always, we are grateful to you for entrusting your children to us and for being such loyal and supportive members of the school community. We wish you a wonderful and relaxing break and very much look forward to welcoming your children back to school for the new school year on September 3rd, which will be our community’s landmark 10th year!

With warmest regards

Gareth and the team