Head's Welcome

Head of College Welcome

Welcome to Dawlish College.

It continues to be an absolute privilege to be the Headteacher at Dawlish College – the staff and students are second to none and take all of life’s challenges in their stride. Despite current uncertainties as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, we continue to hold onto our core purpose in all that we do. Behind all of the decisions taken and measures put in place sits the balance between keeping staff and students safe whilst also providing them with a varied and exciting school experience.

Dawlish College is a vibrant and exciting place to be, where we have the highest expectations of staff and students alike and seek to provide challenge at every available opportunity. As a small school, we have a very proud record of holistic support, care and individual attention: the happiness and well-being of our students is of paramount importance and is a vital foundation for their growth and development. Our college has an atmosphere of creativity and positivity that is generated by the provision of excellent opportunities for every individual thereby maximising the outcomes and improving the life chances of the young people in our care.

As a parent myself, I understand that you want your child to be inspired, supported and challenged to be the best version of themselves within an environment that knows them and values them as an individual. Thank you for entrusting me with the care and education of your child, present or future, and I look forward to unlocking their ambitions as I get to know them and work closely with you.

S Banks

Headteacher

EPraise

Click here to access epraise.

(log in with your school Microsoft account)

At Dawlish College we believe in the ability of our students to meet the very highest expectations in all aspects of school life. When they are successful in doing so, we like to recognise and encourage that with as much positive reinforcement as possible, including direct communications home to parents and carers about what has gone well. Of course, some students need more support than others in achieving this, so we also have a range of interventions we can deploy that are linked to our school sanctions and communicated to parents/carers in real time.

Equally, we recognise that there are some desirable learning behaviours beyond our control that we can only incentivise, not insist upon, even though we know what a crucial role they play in the amount of academic progress students make. We reward these behaviours explicitly with points that students can then put towards prize draws and privileges.

Points

These are visible to parents/carers with the app and are awarded for:

They can be spent on tickets for a half-termly prize draw and used to win privileges in inter-college competitions

Demerits

These are visible to parents/carers with the app and are awarded for one of the following reasons:

Messages

Teachers can send personal messages of praise and recognition directly to individual parents/carers with the app

The messenger function is only ever used for positive recognition

Receiving a message on epraise is a sign that a teacher was particularly proud or impressed

Home Learning

epraise is where teachers set Home Learning – usually a link to the Seneca or Sparx assignment with instructions about how long to spend to achieve the reward point

Timetable

Students can use epraise to check which lessons they have when, where and with whom

Reports

Students’ half-termly reports are downloaded from the ‘Documents’ function on epraise