Welcome to the 16th and final Issue of the 2023-24 school year of The Wilnecote Warbler.

I write to you as we near the end of a busy term and academic year. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year as headteacher at the Wilnecote School and I am grateful for the support that I have received from students, staff, parents and Governors. Everything I have experienced this year leads to me to believe that the school will continue to go from strength-to-strength next year.

In this busy term in which we have said goodbye to our Year 11 class of 2024, giving them a fitting farewell, we have also enjoyed meeting our new Year 7 students on their transition’s days ahead of their start September. We have taken our first steps in creating an integrated character and cultural curriculum. This year, we have incorporated guest speakers in school, such as aspiration assemblies and activities with Adventure Man, as well as cultural awareness with the visit of Michael Bibring from the Holocaust Educational Trust. Year 9 had a year group trip to the Natural History Museum in London, an excursion that will now be an annual event. All in addition to our ongoing success with students completing both bronze and silver Duke of Edinburgh awards.

As we plan for the start of the new academic year in September, I am delighted to inform you that the school is fully staffed for September 2024, despite national concerns over retention and recruitment of teachers and support staff. We remain a very popular school for staff to work in. This in turn has impacted on student numbers which are at their highest for some years, with most year groups operating a substantial waiting list for places.

Please do take the time to read this terms edition of the Wilnecote Warbler, download our school App if you haven’t already done so and follow our progress via our Facebook page.

I hope you have an enjoyable summer, and we look forward to welcoming Year 7 to our school at 9.15am on Wednesday 4th September 2024 and Year 8, 9, 10 and 11 at 8.25am on Thursday 5th September 2024.

Yours faithfully

Mr Foskett

Headteacher

Here at The Wilnecote School, we are incredibly proud of all our students’ work, including what they do outside of school. Luca, is dedicated to racing motorbikes. He is currently using a motorbike called a Kawasaki Ninja 400, and in the past, he has ridden a KTM 105 which is a 2-stroke styled engine.

Luca started riding motorbikes when he was 7 years old, which seems young, but he knows people who started riding when they were 2 or 3 years old. He rode a small 90CC 4-stroke pitbike which is also known as a bambino when he first started.

The speeds he can ride at with his current bike is incredible! Currently, he can reach speeds up to 115mph and his average speed is around 70-80mph depending on the track he is racing on.

Luca races under the team name “RD racing” and has currently just finished round 4 of the championship he is racing in and is about to go into round 5, leading the championship.

In 2022, Luca had a serious accident. He had a highside crash and came off his bike. He got an incredibly skinny leg and couldn’t bend his knee at all. He had a cast up to the top of his leg for about 6 or 7 weeks. Then, it was taken off and he had an underknee cast for another 4 or 5 weeks. Even after the first cast was taken off, Luca couldn’t bend his knee at all because the muscles in his leg had become so weak as he hadn’t bent his knee in 8 weeks.

Even after his serious accident, Luca wasn’t deterred from his dreams of going pro, even though he knows that there is such a small chance of it happening. He believes that your mindset really helps, and you can’t think that just because you might have done the training you planned for the day, you can just chill out for the rest of the day. You need to keep going and keep training until you can’t anymore and that is the difference between wanting to go pro and trying as hard as you can constantly and just wanting to go pro but not really putting the effort into it.

To practice for his races, Luca does runs and seven-minute workouts, He goes

to the gym and sometimes he runs the track. He also practices biking, in general. Lots of tracks offer track days, where you can practice biking on minibikes, but Luca can’t usually participate as most tracks don’t allow under-16s to do track days, but he can still race there.

One of his favourite tracks is the track in Almeria in Spain because it is a flowing track with wide areas and open corners and long straights. It’s also got lovely weather as it’s in Spain. He told us that all the wide tracks he’s ridden on are his favourite, though, because they’re just much easier and more fun to ride on and gives him much more time to do everything.

We can’t wait for Luca to complete the championship and we are all incredibly proud of all his hard work. Look out for the name Luca as he might have a chance of getting to the big leagues.