Dear Parents/Carers
As we reach the Christmas period and the end of another calendar year, I would like to thank all parents and students for their continued support and hard work. I would also like to thank everyone for continuing to contribute and deliver the school ethos of Everyone Matters, Everyone Helps and Everyone Succeeds. Our school is a happy and positive place because all members of our community are polite and respectful, make good choices and work hard and Christmas is the time of year where being part of a positive community is even more special and significant.
There have been notable successes this term with the school winning the Educate Award for Special Educational Need Provision and coming Runners Up in the Outstanding Commitment to Sport category, making it seven years on the run that the school has either won the award or been the runner up. Our Y10 Girls Tennis Team reached the National Finals and were the only state school in the final four which is a huge achievement for the team; although they did not become National Champions this was a significant achievement for all the girls who were all at least one year under the maximum age limit for their category of the tournament. Hopefully, they can perform as well next year – maybe do even better!
The school has been an incredibly busy place over the last 15 weeks with a number of activities, trips, guest speakers and residential events taking place. These include the Barcelona trip, the skiing trip, the GCSE Rock Climbing residential and numerous sporting fixtures, a Year 9 Be Brilliant Careers Day, as well as a Philosophy and Ethics visit to Cadbury’s and the Y8 Science visit to Chester Zoo. There have also been numerous charity events including Children in Need, The Christmas Fayre and our final day Christmas Jumper own clothes day. The school has also collaborated with North West Learning Partnership to offer a schools direct initial teacher training programme for Maths and Modern Foreign Languages teaching. If this might be of interest to you please contact the school for further information regarding the programme and available bursaries.
Students and families have been incredibly generous in their support and we would like to thank everyone for their contributions – we are delighted that our community, which in many ways is very fortunate, is happy to try to give a little back to those who are in need of additional support.
I would like to ask parents to support our requests for students not to bring chewing gum on site. Students unfortunately fail to dispose of chewing gum responsibly and this has cost the school several thousands of pounds to remove, money that I would rather have spent on investing in high quality experiences or resources for the young people. The respect for the school site and building on the whole is very good but a small number of students show a lack of respect that does bring with it a financial cost to the school that prevents us being able to invest to the extent we would all like to.
I would like to thank parents for continuing to be considerate at the beginning and end of the school day in how they use the school car park and the front of school. Disabled bays and no parking road signs are clearly visible and a number of parents continue to ignore these as a matter of course. This reflects negatively on our whole community even though it is a small minority of people who continue to disregard other people’s welfare and safety. We do appreciate the challenges of picking students up from school but on occasion, the lack of consideration is creating significant risk to the young people who are leaving the school site.
During this term, we have worked hard to continue to raise our standards and expectations around all aspects of school life. We have focused on the basics of equipment and from January, we are going to ask parents to provide a glue stick and a red pen in all students’ classroom equipment they bring from home. This will support improved efficiency of working in lessons and improving the use of feedback and progress strategies that will impact on all students’ learning.
I would also ask that parents continue to support us with our push in reading homework at Key Stage 3, ensuring students read the articles and complete the tests that have been set on Show My Homework. Please make sure that your child has access to this online tool otherwise, they will be missing homework and key learning opportunities.
Alongside the schools drive to ensure students achieve excellent attendance we have introduced a supportive mechanism to ensure students whose attendance is below our community expectation. Catch Up Club will run in the library and students who have an attendance rate of below 92% will automatically attend so that they have a clear picture of what learning has been taking place in the lessons they have missed.
I would make a final request that all Y11 and Y13 students revise in full over the Christmas holiday to ensure that performance in the pre pubic examinations gives a true reflection of their ability and potential. Additionally, this will prepare for the summer examinations making them less daunting. To support student’s we will be emailing weekly revision strategies to Year 11 parents and carers to help you support your child with their revision. Please check your inbox!
If parents or guardians have any questions regarding anything in the end of term letter, please contact the academy directly.
The festive period is clearly a time for family and friends and we wish all our students, parents, carers and families a Merry Christmas and a Happy and prosperous New Year.
Yours sincerely
Mr I Young
Principal