Dear Parent/Carer,

Today we have been supporting Macmillan Cancer Support’s Coffee Morning. Staff and students have donated some outstanding cakes to help raise money for this incredible charity. I had an immensely difficult (but rewarding!) job judging the cakes and I am pleased to announce that for the second year in a row, Libby in Year 8 has won the competition for her amazing cake. I would like to thank all staff and students for their support this year, and for raising several hundreds of pounds for charity.

As I mentioned last week, I promised to provide an update on the Year 11 prom date due to a clash with our Sixth Form induction week. We have altered the dates for the event so that all students can attend. The new date for the Year 11 prom is Friday 27th June. You will also find confirmation of this date change in the presentation slides from the Year 11 launch evening that have now been shared.

It was lovely to see so many of you at our Year 7 ‘Meet the Tutor Evening’ last night. We hope that you found this a useful opportunity to discuss with your child’s form tutor about how your child is settling into Rushden Academy. We appreciate that some families were unable to attend due to work commitments, but do feel free to make contact with your child’s form tutor if you have any questions or concerns. The tutor is always the first point of contact for any query you may have.

We have an exciting week lined up for our Social Action Squad. Students will be supporting a number of projects within school and in the community, and I look forward to being able to share some photos of the incredible work they will be doing via social media and the newsletter next week. Mr Noblett was on the radio this week talking about our Social Action Squad and the amazing work they are doing to support the school and the wider community.

We had a number of visitors on Wednesday this week from Tove Learning Trust who supported our middle and senior leaders with monitoring the quality of teaching and learning in lessons. It is important that we all continue to develop to ensure that the team is providing the very best for every student in every lesson. 

We are looking forward to celebrating our students next week as we host our annual Rewards Evening. It is incredible to see so many students being nominated for awards and we look forward to celebrating the many successes and achievements next Thursday. 

Mr Noblett ran our assemblies this week, talking about our Rushden STARR initiative. This initiative brings together the #TeamRushden values and our Ethos Team values, and it aims to recognise our students who Aspire, Explore and Succeed whilst rewarding excellent personal development both in and out of school. Students can find the criteria for each of the Rushden STARR badges in their knowledge organisers on pages 10 to 17.

Finally, I would like to congratulate two more of our sixth form students who have submitted their applications to university this week. Good luck to Matilda who is applying to study Photography at Brighton University, and Lucy who has applied to study Accounting and Finance at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

I wish you all a lovely weekend!

Yours sincerely

Jonathan Firth

Principal