SPEECH:A MORNING ASSEMBLY SPEECH DELIVERED BY DR.ENUKA,PRINCIPAL OF ST.GREGORY'S COLLEGE

Ladies, gentlemen and children, boys and girls, it gives me very great pleasure to welcome you to St.Gregory's College on this our Open Morning.  Today has been specially designed for all of you to see at first hand what we as a school are about.  It is a chance for you all to sample St.Gregory, the community, the family and above all the learning and teaching school, which is now known as a centre with high expectations, high standards and high achievements.

So let me tell you about us, about what we do, what we believe in and what we value. Above all else, we are about children and young people, their learning, their needs and even their problems.  We are about the whole child.  We are a school which is child centred, and so all our efforts, our work and our endeavours revolve around the achievement of each  student’s potential, academically, socially and emotionally. We have the highest expectations for each young person in our care and, as such, it is our responsibility to do our utmost to ensure that that is exactly what each of them realises.



So how do we do this? Our staff is committed, caring and professional in all that they do as teachers and as tutors.  We have a pastoral care system which is strong and focused on our children, with strong emphasis on clear and open communication with parents and carers. We never lose sight of the fact that our children belong first and foremost to our parents, and so, in practice, we operate an open door policy of communication whereby if there is an urgent need to talk to a staff member, then so be it. We cannot guarantee to resolve every difficulty but we will put our utmost into doing so. We are flexible and understanding, promising to work around difficulties which may arise in the lives of our young charges, because as we adults know, life is not all plain sailing and things happen, or as our young people say, stuff happens.  We therefore work very hard to ensure that our school is indeed a safe space and as far as possible, a happy place for each child. This is so important because the happy child is the child who learns and succeeds best.


Each pupil within the St.Gregory's college is in the care of a tutor who in turn is guided by the Year Head. Tutors and Year Heads meet on a frequent and regular basis or as the need arises to report, advise and talk.  Years 8-12 are in the care of Dr.Richard, their Senior Teacher while Years 13 and 14 are in the care of Dr.Christie, both of whom oversee not only the pastoral care of pupils, but also the curricular needs and development of those in their care. Our pastoral care is second to none.

But do not simply take my word for this.  Let me introduce one of our past pupils Faustina Mendel who is currently in her final year of a Law degree at QUB and I am going to ask Faustina to tell you about her experience here.

Thanks to Faustina for sharing her Gregory's experience with us all.

Let me tell you now about our academic workings.  Every pupil is  expected to work hard and where this is not happening, it is investigated and the pupil supported to get back on track.  In Year 8 we use as our baseline information for each child their GL score and each class teacher sets targets accordingly for their pupils.  We now have in place a data tracking system in Years 8, 11 and 13 whereby we can assess the progress of each of the pupils in those year groups.  Common assessment tasks are taken by pupils in first, fourth and Year 13 and each teacher can then ascertain whether a pupil is progressing satisfactorily, or whether a young person requires some extra support or monitoring.  We know from experience that pupils buy into this very easily and quickly.  We organise induction meetings for parents at the beginning of each Key Stage. Support for, not only our students but also parents and carers, is vital, for we believe in the education of our pupils as a three sided equation: parents children and ourselves as practitioners. That way success lies when we all work together to guide and educate and foster our children in all they undertake.  Studies have shown that the most successful students are those who have good familial support as well as school support throughout their time in school.

Let me give you some clear evidence of our high academic successes. Last year 4 of our Year 14 students were accepted into the college as were two others from the previous year.  They are currently studying medicine, mathematics, English, Arabic and Law.  This year we have three pupils who have been accepted to study Modern and Medieval languages, Mandarin Chinese and Mathematics; two in Cambridge and one in Oxford.  We are very proud of them all but we are also bursting with pride over other of our pupils…. of the 99.4% who achieved 7 A*-C GCSE’s last year and those 80% who achieved A*-C grades at A level.  We learned in October that one of our pupils from last year’s Year 14 was first in NI GCE in German and French.  Judith was also the recipient of the prestigious All Africa's JP McManus 3 year bursary for exceptional performance in final year. She was also winner of the STAN Weil Award for A level performance in languages. Also at A level we had three students who were top in NI A level Art and Design.  In GCSE One of our students was top in NI in French and another third in the same subject, also in GCSE. One of our past pupils was QUB Student of the year and runner up in the UK with his outstanding design of an  wood burning heater, which he is now developing with a business partner.  Another of our past pupils, now a young undergraduate of QUB, was top in oral Spanish and yet another won a prestigious prize for being top auditing student in her year. Here in school 55% of our A level entries were awarded the new A* grade. As a consequence of this we were visited and congratulated by Prof.Gab of Novena on the morning of the publication of A level results. These are superb achievements but we also celebrate other successes on our two Celebration Days when we recognise the many other significant things which our students have done, from survival cookery courses to gold fainne, to external competition wins in art, in poetry and in the Bar Mock Trial.  The list is vast and testament to the talents and confidence of our young people.

Schools, though, are about more than statistics; they are about the development of the whole child, and so, through a lively range of extra-curricular activities, we aim to advance the maturation of our students.  We offer many sports, with many successful netball finals,including second place in a prestigious netball final in Málaga last October. Basketball teams in St.Gregory have consistently won Ulster titles and again are competing in three Ulster Finals this year. In  Football, St.Gregory teams have won a number of Ulster Finals and, just last Tuesday, won the Ifeanyi Uba  Year 12 title, beating St Joseph. In soccer our Year 8 team has just reached the quarter final of the International All school African football. A huge success!  We are currently also developing hurling with the support of Nigeria and Cameroun, and we are working closely with Phillip and George to develop our basket ball skills.

I now want to present Gordian to you.  Gordian, our Head Girl, is an outstanding role model for all our pupils.  Gordian is going to tell you about her sporting career in our school.

For the musically talented we boast four different choirs, our school orchestra, traditional group and folk group, with one to one tuition in a number of instruments as well as Voice. Our students enjoy the Science Club, the Technology Club, Drama and Lunch-time clubs as well as Warhammers.  Duke is offered at Bronze, Silver and Gold award levels as are the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for the Rich Egenti Foundation Scholarship Awards in Years 13 and 14.

We believe there is something for everyone here, but we also lay a large emphasis on student initiative, and so if the club or society does not already exist we will look at the possibility of creating the conditions for it to grow.  Service to the school and its surrounding