Freddie's Focus
For Parents & Carers
- Issue 139
- October 24, 2025
Freddie's Focus
For Parents & Carers
- Issue 139
- October 24, 2025
Message from the Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
At the end of this half term, I would like to thank all of our community for what has been an exceptionally positive start to this academic year. We have seen improvements in attendance rates for the whole school which we need to ensure continues into the winter months. Positive attendance translates into positive engagement and effective learning, which we have seen in abundance this half term. Year 7 have made a truly excellent start to Freddie’s and both Year 8 and Year 9 have settled well into the new school year. Year 10 have made a strong start to Key Stage 4 with a noticeable improvement in their maturity and their attitude towards school. Year 11 are really stepping up now and making great progress towards their GCSEs. This was evident at their Careers Conference which took place on Wednesday this week, and which I hope will have given them some clear direction for their next step.
As mentioned in my message last week, assemblies this week have focused on the Season of Remembrance. If your child would like to attend the Remembrance Parade in Tyldesley on Sunday 9th November, the details can be found here.
We will return to school on Monday 3rd November, which is a Week A. The next phase of the YONDR roll out will begin that week with Year 11. Other year groups will follow during the next half term. As a reminder to Year 7 parents, please ensure that your child has their YONDR Pouch on Monday 3rd November.
Thank-you for your continued support.
Mr Davies
Message from the Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
At the end of this half term, I would like to thank all of our community for what has been an exceptionally positive start to this academic year. We have seen improvements in attendance rates for the whole school which we need to ensure continues into the winter months. Positive attendance translates into positive engagement and effective learning, which we have seen in abundance this half term. Year 7 have made a truly excellent start to Freddie’s and both Year 8 and Year 9 have settled well into the new school year. Year 10 have made a strong start to Key Stage 4 with a noticeable improvement in their maturity and their attitude towards school. Year 11 are really stepping up now and making great progress towards their GCSEs. This was evident at their Careers Conference which took place on Wednesday this week, and which I hope will have given them some clear direction for their next step.
As mentioned in my message last week, assemblies this week have focused on the Season of Remembrance. If your child would like to attend the Remembrance Parade in Tyldesley on Sunday 9th November, the details can be found here.
We will return to school on Monday 3rd November, which is a Week A. The next phase of the YONDR roll out will begin that week with Year 11. Other year groups will follow during the next half term. As a reminder to Year 7 parents, please ensure that your child has their YONDR Pouch on Monday 3rd November.
Thank-you for your continued support.
Mr Davies
Things to celebrate
- Our Primary Dance Festival took place at school on Tuesday afternoon. This was an incredible event in which many of our students worked alongside the primary schools in a leadership capacity.
- On Wednesday we held our Personal Development drop down day for years 7 to 10 in school. Year 11 students were involved in an outstanding careers event which took place at The Edge in Wigan. An excellent day was had by all.
- A group of our Drama students, involved in our next school show, travelled to London on Wednesday to watch the West End version of ‘Oliver’. They took part in a workshop led by one of our ex-students, Adam Boardman, who is now also in the cast of ‘Oliver’ in the West End. This was an incredible experience for our students.
- On Thursday evening we welcomed our Year 7 parents and carers into school for the Raising Achievement Event. We were delighted to see so many of you there.
- Today we have celebrated our BEST Awards. This involves Form Tutors selecting four students who they feel have demonstrated one or more of our BEST character values. We are very proud of all of the students who received awards this time.
- Sporting Success this week
It is always an honour to represent the school sports teams, and everyone has played their part this week and during a busy first term of fixtures. Well done to everyone involved.
We are always excited to learn of any sporting successes outside of school so we can celebrate the student’s achievements. Please email Mr Gregory with any information so we can share with everyone on Freddie’s Focus – gregoryi@flhs.wigan.sch.uk
Sporting Success this week
It is always an honour to represent the school sports teams, and everyone has played their part this week and during a busy first term of fixtures. Well done to everyone involved.
We are always excited to learn of any sporting successes outside of school so we can celebrate the student’s achievements. Please email Mr Gregory with any information so we can share with everyone on Freddie’s Focus – gregoryi@flhs.wigan.sch.uk
Key Events
We will be holding the following events for parents and carers during this term:
We encourage all parents and carers to attend these events if they have a child in any of these year groups. Further information to follow.
What we do at Freddie's and why we do it
Our Personal Development curriculum:
The Department for Education specify that it is your child’s entitlement to a Personal Development education. The aim is to “promote discussion, challenge misconceptions and allow students to reflect on matters that are usually outside a typical lesson.” We therefore build our PD curriculum into our timetable once per fortnight starting this half term.
The same lesson is not missed each week as we carefully map out the lessons over a rolling programme. During these lessons, your child is taught their PD curriculum by their form tutor or a member of staff attached to their year group.
Our expectation is that these lessons are treated in the same way as all other lessons, and we hope students find them informative and interesting.
We hold one full ‘Drop down’ PD day per year, which has taken place this week.
Year 7 to Year 10
100 HoY Mug/Earphones/Water Bottle/Skip the queue pass
175 MTA Power Bank/Skip the queue pass/Calculator/£5 Amazon voucher
250 MTA £10 Amazon voucher/Skip the queue pass
350 PDA £15 Amazon voucher/Skip the queue pass
Year 11
100 HoY £5 Amazon voucher/£5 off Prom
150 MTA £10 Amazon voucher/£10 off Prom
200 PDA £15 Amazon voucher/£15 off Prom
How to support your child to become an independent learner
O.S.C.A.R
Organisation, Selection, Creativity, Association, Repetition
The ‘OSCAR’ model is something that we are promoting at Freddie’s in order to support your child with independent/self-directed study at home.
The ‘S’ stands for select. To support your child with this, the following questions and prompts may be useful:
- Have you checked ‘Satchel One’ to see what you have been set and what your priority is?
- Which subject/piece of homework are you going to focus on tonight?
- Which key pieces of knowledge will you focus on?
- If this is self-directed study, why don’t you focus on subjects or topics that you have forgotten or are likely to forget?
Applications that we use for learning
The following applications are used by our students during their time at FLHS to aid their learning. You can learn more about them below.
Microsoft Office
Did you know that your child can access Microsoft Office at home for free? As a student at Fred Longworth High School, your child is allowed to download a fully working free copy of Microsoft Office 365 to use on their computer, smartphone and tablet whilst they are a student at our school. Click on the button below to learn more.
Satchel:One
Satchel:One is the school online learning platform for students and is the parental portal for all information related to your child’s overall progress within school. You can keep track of your child’s homework using Satchel:One. It is advisable to remind your child to get into the habit of checking their homework on Satchel:One regularly. Relying upon notifications is not the right approach and we advise students to turn off notifications so that they are not disturbed by them.
GCSEPod
GCSEPod is an online study platform and is the perfect resource to help your child learn, retain and recall all the information they need to achieve their GCSE goals. GCSEPod provides 3-5 minute bursts of audio-visual, teacher written learning which can help to reinforce and consolidate key GCSE topics covered in lessons. Experts read and explain everything clearly including all the right facts, quotes, keywords, dates and diagrams on screen. GCSEPod is only available to students in Year 10 and Year 11.
Homework Club
Please remind your child that homework club is available to all students Monday to Thursday where they can complete work in a quiet environment with staff on hand to support them, and computers for online quizzes and research.
Homework Intervention
If your child is not meeting deadlines or completing homework to the best of their ability, their teachers and/or Head of Year will refer them to our homework intervention group. Parents/ carers will receive a letter notifying you and to explain the night that your child will be required and for how long. This is a supportive intervention which is used to get students back on track with homework if they are struggling in this area.
Attendance
We want to do all we can to support your child to be in school every day and ask that you support this important message from home, encouraging your child to avoid missing curriculum content through absence. Here is a breakdown of the absences for the following attendance percentages:
Thank you for your continued support with attendance.
Please encourage your child to be in school every day.
Can we please remind all our parents and carers to use the correct channels of communication should they wish to raise a concern or question. Your continued support is invaluable to us.
Belonging, Engaging, Succeeding Together.
Can we please remind all our parents and carers to use the correct channels of communication should they wish to raise a concern or question. Your continued support is invaluable to us.