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Message From the Principal 14.03.2025

Dear Parents/Carers,

Welcome to this week's school newsletter, keeping you informed about important events and updates.

It was lovely to meet so many Year 9 parents yesterday for our options evening launch event. We hope that you found this evening helpful in initiating discussions with your child about which courses they would like to take next year for Key Stage 4. Please remember that students have the opportunity to meet employers from a wide range of companies at our careers fair next Thursday. We will be in touch shortly with those parents who were unable to attend the event to ensure you receive the same information to support your child. We will also share the PowerPoint presentation from the evening with you, so you can refer back to any information we shared. Finally, please remember that option forms need to be returned by April 1st, and that options will not be processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Continuing with the focus on careers, Sixth Form students had their careers event this week. The event for Sixth Form students runs as a structured networking event, which ensures all students have the opportunity to ask questions of all our visitors. We received excellent feedback from both students and our visitors, and we look forward to continuing to work with local businesses to support our students. If you feel that you are able to support one of our careers events in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Over the next couple of weeks, all students in Years 7 to 9 will be completing a PASS survey. PASS stands for Pupil’s Attitudes to Self and School, and it will provide us with more information on how students feel about themselves and school, so we can work more closely to break down any barriers and support individuals with the wide range of support we have available in school. The survey is very short and will be facilitated in school. This is a commonly used survey tool, and we hope that this additional information will only strengthen our offer of support for the students and families we serve.

Our assembly this week was led by Mrs Owen and Sixth Form students. The assembly focused on sharing the impact from the recent visit to India and how our collaboration with the Salt of the Earth charity, which is helping young children and families have access to clean supplies of water and access to education. We are already starting to make arrangements for our visit next year.

Finally, I wanted to thank you again for your support and patience with the rollout of the parent app MCAS. As of today, all families and students in Years 7 to 11 will have access to the platform, allowing you to see timetables, behaviour information, and attendance statistics. We are now working on the rollout for our Sixth Form students and families, but we have a number of things we need to do to ensure the data presented is accurate. We will continue to work on this behind the scenes and we will update you when we have more information on this.

We hope you have a lovely weekend, and I look forward to sharing more updates with you next week.

Yours sincerely,

 

Mr J Firth

Principal

Year 9 Options Evening

Thank you to everyone who attended options evening last night, here is a recap of the presentation.

 

Message From the Principal 07.03.2025

Dear Parents/Carers,

We have had a very busy week this week as we move forwards with our new management information system, Bromcom. We have shared the schedule for rolling out the parent app, MCAS (My Child At School), on our social media channels, further details are below. This app will enable you to monitor your child's attendance and behaviour in school. We will look to add other functionality and communication through this app in the future, but for the moment we will look to keep things simple! We thank you all for your patience whilst we roll out this system to all parents and students.

Parents of Year 11 and 10 students now have access to the platform. Please check your emails (including your junk), and remember you only have 24 hours to use the provided link to set up your account.

Year 9 will receive access on Monday, Year 8 on Wednesday, and Year 7 on Friday next week. This allows us time to respond to any issues or concerns in a manageable way.

On Monday this week, all families with children moving to a secondary school in September were informed of their secondary school placement. We would like to give a warm welcome to all of our new families and pupils who will be joining #TeamRushden this year. We will be in touch with information about our transition programme including our welcome evening, where students will meet their new form tutor, and our two transition days in due course. All information for new families will be shared via a platform called Applicaa, again, please check your junk emails too.

On Friday morning, I met with our student council to talk about a consultation on our school values. I would like to extend this consultation to you all to gather your views on how we can amend our values to better reflect where the school is, where we are going. We currently have very strong values that are linked with our Ethos team, and our personal development programme. Students know these values at the Rushden STARR: Serve, Thrive, Aspire, Respect, Resilient. Our proposal is that we adopt these values as our main school values. A summary of the values we are proposing to adopt is below:

  • Serve – We encourage students to contribute to their communities, support one another, and make a positive impact.
  • Thrive – We create an environment where every student can grow academically, socially, and emotionally.
  • Aspire – We inspire ambition, determination, and the pursuit of excellence in all areas of life.
  • Respect – We foster a culture of kindness, inclusion, and integrity, where everyone is valued.
  • Resilient – We empower students to embrace challenges, learn from setbacks, and persist with confidence.

To share your feedback on our values consultation, please click on the link below. We will close this consultation at 4pm on Friday 14th March:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdZxfYk88R7cpYrdU4D6VHLwPwobGTV-ECP0EJAK43YLJMBTw/viewform?usp=sharin

Through adopting these values, we will be better placed to create a school environment where every student is inspired to aspire, encouraged to explore, and empowered to succeed.

Finally, on Tuesday this week, year 9 students had a day of workshops and sessions provided by a team called “Prison, Me, No Way!” We are grateful for the support provided by the Rotary Club with funding this important project for our students. We received very positive feedback from our guests leading the sessions, and students found this project helpful with understanding the consequences of poor choices in the community. 

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and we look forward to sharing further updates next week. 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 Mr J Firth

Principal

 

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Rushden Academy

  • Hayway,
    Rushden,
    Northamptonshire.
    NN10 6AG

  • 01933 350391

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