Dear Parent/Carer,
I hope you are well, have had an enjoyable summer period, and that your child has enjoyed his/ her start to the term today. As a team of staff, we look forward to working with you once again and will keep you updated on all areas of academy life at regular intervals.
Firstly, I am delighted to welcome a number of new appointments to the academy this term. Adam Smith (Vice Principal) and Claire Fairburn (Assistant Principal) have now started with us, both bring considerable senior leadership experience and will be in touch with you in due course regarding their areas of work. A reminder too that I am now supported by an expanded senior team featuring a balance of new appointments and highly committed staff who have worked at the school for some time- Jackie Bailey (Vice Principal), Charlotte Poynton (Assistant Principal), Helen McClane (SENCO) and Janet Gray (Lead Teacher of Textiles) are the other members of the team.
In addition, we welcome Inderjit Ram (Teacher of Science) and Sue Griffiths (Additional Support for the Senior Leadership Team) to our staff. Donna Blythe (English), Steve Wiggan (Music) and Beth Lancashire (Humanities) all departed at the end of the Summer Term and we wish them well in their new appointments.
As part of our continuing work on teaching and learning, we have made several improvements to our curriculum for 2018/9. These do not affect the start and end times of the day but do mean that the internal timings of our school day have now been amended as follows:
Mon-Thurs
9.15-9.35 Tutor Time
9.35-10.35 Period 1
10.35-11.35 Period 2
11.35-11.45 Break
11.45-12.45 Period 3
12.45-1.15 Lunch
1.15-2.15 Period 4
2.15-3.15 Period 5
Friday
9.15-9.35 Tutor Time
9.35-10.35 Period 1
10.35-11.35 Period 2
11.35-12.00 Brunch
12.00-2.00 Enrichment
We have high expectations of all students’ behaviour at all times, any students who are kept behind at the end of the day will complete detentions between 3.15 and 3.30 (if they receive one negative incident log) or between 3.15 and 3.45 (if they receive more than one negative incident log). No detentions take place on Friday afternoons, any sanctions for poor behaviour on Fridays are “rolled over” to the following Monday.
Finally, I am writing to inform you that it is now our policy to keep all students in all year groups on-site during lunchtimes. We will continue to provide free lunches for all students, will continue to run a “games room” during lunchtimes, and will be consulting with students shortly about further improvements they feel could be made to this part of the day.
Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions regarding this letter, my direct e-mail is [email protected]
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Wakefield
Principal