Out of more than 1,000 applicants, Year 12 student Theo has made it to the final of Future Apprentice of The Year 2026.

He successfully completed three rounds of assessments in which judges evaluated key qualities such as ambition and motivation, curiosity and problem-solving ability, as well as teamwork and leadership potential.

At the end of March, Theo has been invited to London to attend an exclusive lunch with senior leaders from Howden Group Holdings, including the Chief People Officer, Chief Investment Officer, and Group Chief Risk Officer and will attend the final awards ceremony later in the year.

The Purbeck School Science Fair 2026

Year 11 Product Design students had an incredible opportunity on 3rd December 2025 when the KIER construction team visited for an action-packed STEAM challenge!

The session kicked off with an inspiring presentation about the wide range of careers in construction—opening students’ eyes to the possibilities of shaping the world around us.

Then came the real test:, a hands-on building project that pushed their skills in project management, budgeting, engineering, and surveying to the limit. Working from a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) blueprint, teams had to memorise the structure, purchase blocks at set prices, and manage their time and money wisely to create the closest match to the original design.

The competition was fierce! Every decision mattered—every second counted. In the end, the winning team proved themselves masters of strategy and precision, delivering a build that was both cost-effective and impressively accurate.

What a fantastic way to combine creativity, problem-solving, and real-world skills!

Mrs Sarah Shepherd

Head of Product Design

Hope For Food  https://www.hopeforfood.org.uk/

who add them to the Christmas hampers that they provide for their clients who have children. The charity has been absolutely impressed by the hundreds and hundreds of these boxes that Purbeck has provided (we have donated more than four thousand) 

The sixth form charity team will soon be publicising this with posters in and around the school, but please don’t wait! If you would like to support this yourself, please add boxes to the collections in reception and my office, Mr Holmes

The overriding message came in the agreement that having love and compassion for our fellow humans is key. It was recognised too, as David noted when discussing Humanism, that the core values of our sixth form and school promote care, compassion and also ambition for oneself through our commitment to kindness, aspiration and perseverance.

Our visitors, students and staff benefited from a very positive coming together, one that was particularly fitting on Remembrance Day. We look forward to working with Many Faiths again.

The energy, teamwork, and commitment from all students has been nothing short of inspiring. In total, 119 students have taken part in this year’s pine pulling activity, and every single one has given it their all. Please congratulate and praise everyone involved.

Huge thanks to the amazing staff who’ve supported throughout the week, but today special shout-out to Matt, Tony, Adie, and Will for rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck in today.

https://bournemouthbay-partnership.com/

The team have been busy selling refreshments at both ‘Singin in the Rain JNR’ and the school sports day. They have managed to raise £240 for the Dorset Children’s Foundation – really well done.

Alongside money raised by the head shave for the Brain Tumour Charity and the sponsored walk for Dorset Mind, the sixth form students have raised just over £700 pounds in the last three weeks. Amazing work for great causes.

The week has been really good fun and we look forward to doing something similar with next year’s students.

As buzzards soared in a cloudless sky, we agreed that we live in a beautiful part of the world and are pleased to have raised around £300 for a charity close to our hearts. Many students stayed on to enjoy an informal barbeque and picnic on the rear lawns. Well done to all those involved!

Purbeck Sixth Formers are engaged in a range of activities this week, including volunteering, completing a sponsored walk which raises money for the charity Dorset MIND, environmental work and visits to both local and national theme parks.

They assisted in preparing questionnaires which they presented to their tutor groups, one being qualitative in form and the other quantitative.

They worked extremely hard in collating the results at speed and presenting them in a visual display, ready for a visit from a group of representatives from local conservation and wildlife charities.

They presented their findings to the visitors, both in an informal chat around their displays, and a more formal Q&A panel style discussion.

Through this project they have learnt a variety of skills, including data collection and presentation, and been taken way out of their comfort zone in developing their public speaking skills.

This project was a huge challenge and the pupils rose to it admirably. Many thanks to our visitors for coming along to enable our pupils to share their findings with you.

As you are probably aware we had a visit from Ofsted this week. Three inspectors visited across the two days and they looked at all aspects of the school. They completed an ‘ungraded’ inspection (which is what they often do with schools that are rated ‘Good’) this means that they can not officially change the grading of the school at the end of the inspection but they can make recommendations.

We are not allowed to share the official outcome of the inspection just at the moment as the report has to be moderated. However, what I can tell you is that the inspectors were exceptionally impressed with what they saw and that the overall outcome could not have been better!

The YPPG have a grant to set these up and have worked with Schools, the Youth Organisation and Nature/Arts & Craft Organisations

1. Queue-jump for themselves and one friend for all break times and lunch times throughout the week.
2. An invitation for a Friday hot chocolate with the Headteacher and House Leaders.

Here at The Purbeck School, it’s World Book Day every day with an active library and every tutor group reading for at least 15 minutes each day. But in addition, this week there is a variety of activities and competitions in the library, including a book title emoji treasure hunt, and ‘Batman vs the Bard’, a tricky quiz identifying which quotes are from Batman and which from Shakespeare.

Due to roadworks in Swanage, the PB2 bus is unable to stop on Swanage High Street outside The Swanage School (red around stop on attached map). The bus company has stated that students will be picked up/dropped off at either Herston Cross or Holmes Road bus stops (green circles around stop on attached map).

As a new cohort of students joins our sixth form each autumn, we introduce them to our ‘grow ethos’: that is, each of us as individuals should recognise the importance of taking every opportunity to develop both our academic knowledge and our experiential skills. 

This week, as in past years, the new students were delighted to receive a plant each for them to individually nourish – and grow! We would like to once again thank our partners in this project, Holme for Gardens, for so kindly donating the wonderful plants to our Year 12 students – it is really generous and helps to tangibly forward our core values. Let’s hope that the students now demonstrate their green-fingered abilities!