Dear Parents and Carers,
I am writing to update you on the recent events at Littleover Community School; provide some key messages regarding school life, and to inform you about the upcoming events during this half term.
It has been an incredibly busy time at LCS this half term. Our Year 11s have been busy with their second mock examination series, and it has been really encouraging to hear how many of them have used the information from their December mocks to inform their revision for this second rehearsal. I want to acknowledge the hard work that many of the students have clearly completed and thank the teaching staff as they mark this set of papers. In addition, our Year 11 Drama and Year 11 Music students have performed for their actual practical components for their qualifications, so a well done to those students too.
Our Year 12 students participated in the UKSDC Final in London, designing an operational moon base for resource extraction and had only twenty fours to complete their design from scratch. Students were placed into a fifty-person company, working with students from different organisations. On the second day, they were required to present their ideas in front of seven judges, some of whom represented NASA, UKSA and American Airlines, as well as an audience of two hundred. The students did brilliantly well and a massive thank you to Mr Mottram and Miss Thompson for supporting this opportunity. Year 12 students were also lucky enough to receive an assembly from Baasit Siddiqui (Gogglebox) about the power of positive thinking and taking opportunities in life. We also had six of our 6th Formers take part in a trip to Auschwitz with the Holocaust Education Trust and they found this to be both a moving and valuable experience.
Our debaters have also been in action on Thursday evening, winning the Derby District Law Society. They were an absolute credit to the school and debated on a very difficult topic with maturity and eloquence. I would like to extend our appreciation to Mrs Senior for the preparation and support for this opportunity.
We enjoyed Key Stage Three Reading Week, and students had the opportunity during their period two lessons to experience author spotlights. Each day, students discovered information about different writers and listened to an extract from a range of texts. It was a lovely way to celebrate how important reading is in terms of enjoyment, developing empathy and vocabulary acquisition.
Students in Year 8 have also been spending time preparing for their Spelling Bee competition. They have had mini competitions in class and now the finalists will take on each other over a series of competitions. Best of luck to our finalists as they enter the final round!
Finally, there have been lots of sporting fixtures over the last few weeks. Our badminton students were in action on Monday 2nd March at the East Midlands Regional Final and the girls’ and boys’ teams took bronze and silver places respectively. On Tuesday, our netballers headed up to Matlock for the County Netball Tournament and after a series of intense matches, were crowned as silver medallists and second in county. A brilliant effort from all the students representing the school and another thank you to the staff for supporting the fixtures.
Key Messages
In terms of key messages, I wanted to convey my thanks to parents and carers for their increased vigilance in terms of monitoring the online activity of their children whilst the current TikTok trend has been taking place. As I have communicated through the information on Parent Pay, we have been liaising with the other Derby secondary schools and the Police to ensure that our students are safe and that school life continues as normal. I appreciate that this trend may have caused some anxiety for parents and carers and I would like to encourage parents and carers to continue to actively monitor their child(ren)’s phone(s). You may have noted the increased police presence outside of school at the end of the day and this has been a precautionary measure with the aim of reassuring all members of the community.
We launched the ‘Parent and Carer Survey’ on 27th February, and we would like more of our parents and carers to contribute their views as we have only had 147 responses so far. We would like to ensure that we have captured a broad range of views and think it is important that parental voice informs and shapes school improvement. To complete this, the link for this survey was sent via Parent Pay on 27th February.
Upcoming Events
For families wishing to apply for a one-day leave of absence for religious observance to celebrate Eid, please ensure that you have followed the instructions and link on the letter sent out on 12th March 2026 via Parent Pay.
Year 12 Parents’ Evening on 26th March from 4:15pm to 6:45pm on School Cloud.
The final day of this half term is Friday 27th March.
After the Easter holiday, we return on Monday 13th April.
There is then an INSET day on April 22nd.
Kind Regards
Mrs L Johnson
