Students and staff at CTS are excited to be this month’s torchbearer of the ‘Ambition for All’ initiative, making us the first secondary school in the Trust to launch the campaign. We have planned a series of events to get everyone involved and celebrate all the ambitious things we do.

Already we have launched the ‘Believe Big’ competition to our Key Stage 3 students, in which they will be required to generate an idea, which will create a positive impact on the plant and could change the world. Our ‘Catch Me If You Can’ PE challenge has also started and gives students the opportunity to try and challenge themselves to run more.

This month we have organised a variety of guest speakers to come into the school to inspire our students by sharing their stories and provide careers advice about specific industries. Guests will include Directors of Hattie and Flora, an events company who have clients such as Jamie Oliver and Channel 4. They will share with students the career paths they took to becoming a big name in the creative industry.

As a technical school we have a range of technology themed activities taking place such as the Robotics Challenge and Girls Cyber First Security Competition, which introduces and encourage females to consider a career in the field.

Children’s Mental Health Awareness week also falls during our month and this is something we put a huge focus onto as a school. We will be visited by Tessa Parkins, the Joint Programme Manager of the Mental Health Stigma Programme on Friday as part of her ‘Challenge Tessa’ initiative, in which she hopes to encourage more people to speak out about their Mental Health issues. She is visiting as many schools as she can around the county this week to drop off resources including balloons, leaflets and a hand stamp and is asking schools to stamp her jumpsuit with the school logo and share it on social media to show support of Mental Health.

Principal Mrs Angela Reynolds said ‘ We are very pleased to be the first secondary school in the Trust to hold our campaign month. For me this month is all about celebrating and highlighting all the amazing and ambitious things our staff and students already do. We have achieved so much as a school in the last few years including the introduction of our Sixth Form, opening our extension, becoming the first school in the County to receive the Bronze TaMHS (Targeted Mental Health in Schools) award and received our first set of GCSE results.

The Ambition for All campaign is a single focus on improving academic outcomes and opportunities for character development that will run in all our Trust schools throughout this academic year. It applies to all areas of the Trust’s schools’ operations to ensure students receive the highest quality teaching and wider development opportunities within a supportive and encouraging environment, where adults live and breathe ambition for student success in all its forms. Implicit within this approach is a focus on the progress of disadvantaged students and of high ability students, whatever their background.