August 28th 2024

Arrangements for September and Beyond

Dear Parents

We are very much looking forward to welcoming the students back to school next week and settling them back in to what I hope will be an excellent school year.

We will send out student timetables via Intouch email to parents of incoming Years 8 – 11 and Year 13 students on Friday. Students should report to school as follows and report to the room number shown for period 1 on their timetable.

Tuesday 3rd September 2024	Years 7 & 12 on site
Wednesday 4th September 2024	All Year Groups on site from today

We will send out timetables to the parents of incoming Year 7 students after the weekend. Year 7 students will be met, greeted and guided on Tuesday, when they arrive. Year 12 should adhere to the times shown in Letter of August 22nd

Our Academy Year Group based Tutor Groups, which will run from 8.30 – 8.55am on Mondays and Fridays. On Mondays, students will undertake literacy based activities in their Academy Tutor Groups, and on Fridays students will undertake well-being focused activities in their Academy Tutor Groups. Target setting and getting activities following termly assessments will also be undertaken in Academy Tutor Groups.

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, students’ subject teacher for period 1 will act as their Daily Tutor for the day. In the Daily Tutor period from 8.30 – 8.55am, students will ‘attend’ a whole school online assembly on Tuesdays, receive a taught Numeracy lesson on Wednesdays and a taught PSHE lesson on Thursdays.

Academy and Year Group based assemblies will also be held regularly on Mondays and Friday. The Academy Directors and Guidance Managers have oversight of all the students in their Academies and will work in close cooperation with your child’s Academy Tutor.

As well as our strong focus on students submitting their personal best class and homework assignments, enrichment activities at and away from school are so vital for young people’s development, and these will resume quickly this term.

Please do encourage your daughter or son to join a lunchtime or after school club, as these give the opportunity to try something new, explore an interest with friends and even make new friends beyond their social group.

 

General Reminders

Attendance

All students are expected to attend school. If a student is unwell, parents please contact the school by 8.30am on every day of absence. Please do not be offended if the office staff ask for details of symptoms.

Equipment

Please ensure that your daughter or son brings their own personal stationery: Pens & pencils (including highlighters), glue stick, eraser, pencil sharpener, ruler, protractor, calculator

Lesson Arrangements

We continue our use of identical seating plans across as many subjects as possible, and where this is not possible, for the seating plans to be as similar as possible.

Movement between lessons and around the site

To avoid congestion in corridors and keep everyone safe, we operate a strict one way system in buildings and around the campus between lessons. This one way system helps the ‘flow of traffic’ as we all move around.

We also operate synchronised departures from and arrivals to lessons and teachers at doors releasing classes on pips and then receiving them in close cooperation with each other.

Your daughter or son’s Academy Tutor or Guidance Manager will remain your primary points of contact and students will retain their Academy identity.

Buildings and washing facilities

Students make regular and frequent use of the extra outdoor hand washing facilities around the site. Works to improve ventilation in buildings remain ongoing and will form part of a bid for funds to the DFE. We continue to open windows in all classrooms for maximum ventilation.

Sixth Form arrangements

Sixth Form students will not be permitted to leave the school site during the school day, until we agree Off Site Study arrangements via signed agreement. Sixth Form students will be expected to register in the Sixth Form Area for any non-taught study lessons and then undertake private study in the Sixth Form Area.

Travel to School and the Starts and Ends of school days

At the end of the day, Year 7 students will be loaded on to buses first during the first weeks of term.

Please avoid dropping your child off or picking them up at school if this is at all possible. Neither the school site, nor the surrounding roads can support current traffic levels at drop off and pick up times, so please expect to be delayed and remain patient, both with our site staff and other drivers, as well as pedestrians.

On two occasions last school year, our staff and the children witnessed or even were subject to very poor behaviour on the part of 1 adult, who simply became impatient at the amount of traffic. We always report such incidents - and whenever our site staff instructions are disregarded - , provide CCTV footage and, where possible, identify perpetrators to the Police. We hope very much this will not be necessary during the 2024– 25 school year.

Catering

We will maintain our increased Break Time food offer, so it more closely resembles the Lunchtime offer, to limit congestion in the Terrace Restaurant and Saga Café.

We have 3 serving point in the Terrace Restaurant to speed up service.

We may limit the number of students sat in the Terrace Restaurant or Saga Café as necessary.

Please top-up your son/daughter’s keyfob account from home to reduce queuing at payment points.

All of these measures will ensure that break and lunch times are as pleasant as possible.

We will continue to provide a free breakfast to any student from 8am – 8.20am.

Cleaning

We have all day cleaning arrangements in place. This ensures a very pleasant environment for all.

After school activities and clubs

We will run a full programme of year group-based and possibly remote extra-curricular activities from the early part of the autumn term.

We will offer after school revision sessions to Year 11 and Year 13 in all their examination subjects from early in the autumn term. Most sessions will be on site but some remote as we have found this method of delivery highly successful, and it has overcome the barrier to participation of very many students posed by transport. Please do encourage your daughter or son to attend these sessions regularly.

Meetings in school and school events

Meetings will be conducted by telephone or face-to-face online, or in person on site. Please do not attend school without prior appointment.

Meet the Tutor and Introduction to the Year events will take place on site. Parents’ Subject Consultations will take place remotely via School Cloud. Please attend these important calendared events.

Student Welfare

We will continue to work hard to identify and respond to emerging student need as we reach forward to the next phase of each child’s education. Please enable us to do this most effectively by ensuring your child’s 100% attendance to school.

Curriculum 24 - 25

Our Subject Leaders and teachers will work hard to support every student in every subject, so all students access the widest possible coverage of their full curriculum. Every Year Group and every child will be our priority.

Students will receive plenty of whole-class feedback and personalised electronic feedback through Google classroom, in addition to marking of exercise books and written assignments.

Most Homework tasks will be set via the Google Classroom, and we will also strongly encourage students to read for 20 minutes daily!

School Trips

We will continue to seek to provide students with ‘A Window to the World’ through our University Collaborative Project, which provides a wide range of opportunities for students to participate in projects and events brokered by the universities.

We will continue with a range of School Trips not only in our beautiful local area but further afield in and beyond the UK.

Remote Learning Contingency Plan

In the event of any full or partial school closure we will activate Remote Learning overnight, set work through Google Classroom and then move to 100% live face-to-face lessons with teachers via Teams or Google Meet.

Thank you so much for all your support – we know it is vital!

Please see our Parent Handbook 2024 - 25 and Term Dates 2024 - 25

 

Yours sincerely

Charles Joseph

Principal