Category : Front Page News

Welcome Back to All Duke’s Students and Staff

We’ve had a great first full week back to Duke’s this week – students and staff have been welcomed with assemblies and positivity. It’s been wonderful to see all of our students back at the academy ready for a productive and exciting year ahead. We know that 2025-26 will be a year full of opportunity and success. 

Linklaters Success – Social Mobility Awards 

We were delighted this week to learn that Linklaters Law have been nominated for a Social Mobility Award. We are very proud of our partnership with Linklaters and all of our students benefit from the work we complete with them around careers and aspiration. The award nominations are for Social Mobility Network of the Year and Community Programme of the year. The work we have completed over the last few years with Linklaters has led to these prestigious nominations and we’re very much looking forward to hearing the outcome on the 2nd October. 

A very busy week at Duke’s this week. We’ve had lots happening with our careers related learning. Year 10s have been out on work experience and having some fantastic experiences plus our year 7s got to experience their Career Focus day at Linklaters.

Drama Performance – LAET

A group of year 9 students have been working on a drama project with LAET which culminated in a performance this week of ‘Beneath the Badge’. This was a devised performance based on an original published story written by a student at LAET. The students performing put in a fantastic performance and showed poise beyond their years. 

Haringey Intergenerational Project

We’ve also this week launched a new intergenerational project with a group of older residents in Haringey. Scheduled to take off in the autumn term the project aims to link older residents of the borough with young people. Our students asked some incredibly insightful questions and really listened as our visitors were speaking. A great start to a project that will be exciting in 2025/26.

Musical Success with Aurora and LAET

A really lucky group of students got to visit local college, LAET this week and experience first hand some musical virtuosity. Musicians from Aurora orchestra treated our students to a wonderful performance with interactive elements and fascinating insights into the world of music.

Rapper Avelino also led a workshop for Duke’s students at LAET and some budding year 10 artists got to work with him on their musical performances. A brilliantly inspiring and musical week!

Sports Month at Duke’s

We’ve also had our ‘Sports Month’ taking place this week with qualifying rounds in basketball, football and volleyball. Students have been battling it out ahead of our final sports day final on the 15th July.

Aim a Little Higher Workshops

Emmaunel from ‘Aim A Little Higher’ has been in Duke’s again this week to deliver workshops to years 8 and 10. The students have been engaging in a unique programme of mentoring and workshops aimed to help our young people succeed and grow. Feedback from all the workshops so far has been brilliantly positive!

Expressive Arts Celebration Assemblies

We’ve had a fantastic week of assemblies provided by our Expressive Arts team this week. The assemblies highlighted artistic endeavour at its finest with musical performances, a sharing of art and media work, some acting awards and also certificates and prizes. Musical entertainment was provided by the steel pan group who treated us to some wonderful arrangements and we were also lucky enough to be joined by ex-student Michell Siwak. Michell won ‘The Voice’ Poland and was delighted to come back into school to treat the students to a performance.