Dear Parent / Carer

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Rushden Academy this week! Christmas trees have been put up around the school site and it is exciting to see staff and students feeling festive in preparation for the holidays. We are extremely grateful to Lancaster Farm Shop for donating Christmas trees this year to support the school. Next week we will be supporting Save the Children with their annual Christmas Jumper day. Information has been shared on our social media platforms about this event. To provide further clarification on our expectations, I would like to inform you that students who make donations and are wearing their Christmas Jumpers will not be expected to wear their school blazer. All other uniform requirements stay the same. However, we understand that students may choose to wear their blazer as an additional layer of clothing due to the cold weather. 

Continuing with our festive theme, we are excited to announce that tickets for our annual Panto are now on sale. These can be purchased online. Please see our social media posts for the link to purchase your tickets. Having seen snippets of the rehearsals, I know you are all in for a very special treat this year!

Our attendance advent calendar started this week, with prizes available for students who are in school on the day of the draw. On Monday, our prize winners won skip the queue passes, allowing them to go straight to the front of the lunch queue. Today, students are in the draw for Hot Chocolate Bombes. Other prizes this month include £5 Amazon gift vouchers, selection boxes, and a luxury Christmas hamper for the family!

Year 11 students will be receiving their mock exam results next week on Thursday. We will be delivering a short assembly to students to explain their results and what these mean, along with providing support for students on how to prepare for the next round of exams that will take place in February. Students will then receive their exam results as they would in August for the final exams. This provides them an opportunity to experience how it will feel, and provides them with an opportunity to reflect on their current progress. All reports and data for all students will be released on Thursday afternoon. This data is available immediately after release via the Go4School app. 

With regards to reports, we have worked hard this term to introduce a new system of how we communicate progress for students in years 7 to 10. We hope that these reports will be easier to understand, and will provide you with clear information on how well your child is doing. On your child's report you will now see the following information:

- An ‘Attitude to Learning’ grade. This explains how your child is conducting themselves in each subject. Descriptions are available on the report.

- A ‘Current Performance’ statement. This explains how well your child is doing in each subject. Descriptions are available on the report.

- An Assessment Percentage. This will provide you with the percentage of correct answers on your child’s assessment. This is only available for subjects whose assessment is able to be quantified in this way.

- An average percentage for the cohort. This will provide you with information on how well the students performed on the assessment as a year group. This will enable you to see if your child is performing at, above, or below average when compared to the year group. Again, this is only available for subjects whose assessment is able to be quantified in this way.

We hope that this format for reports provides you with more clarity, and makes it easier to understand how well your child is doing in school. I would be grateful to hear your feedback on this new approach to reporting, both positive and negative, so we can continue to strengthen our partnership. Please get in touch by emailing to share your thoughts on this.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Yours sincerely,

Mr J Firth

Principal