Dear Families,
There have been so many highlights this week, but it has been wonderful to welcome our newest members of #TeamRushden. It was lovely to see the new Year 7 students meeting teachers, exploring the school, and getting to know their way around. We hope that all students enjoyed their two days of transition, and we look forward to welcoming them back in September. We encourage all families to monitor their emails and our social media channels, as there will be lots of updates over the summer regarding the building work and changes to the site layout. We want to ensure all families are kept up to date and prepared as best as possible for the new academic year.
Year 10 Mock Results
Year 10 students have now completed their mock exams and whilst they are busy next week on work experience, staff will be marking and collating all the data from these exams. When Year 10 returns for the final week of the year, we will be delivering a mock exam results day. This will give students the opportunity to celebrate their results with their peers, talk to staff about their first experience of mock exams, and receive information and feedback that will help them fill in any gaps in learning over the summer break.
Culture Day
On Tuesday this week, Mrs Ogungbadero delivered an excellent Culture Day for the whole school. Students had a range of cultural activities to take part in, and some had prepared cultural foods for others to sample. It was lovely to see students wearing their cultural dress and to hear them talking so passionately about their heritage. We look forward to celebrating this key date in our school calendar next year!
Weather Update
We continue to monitor the weather closely and as temperatures are getting warmer again for next week, students will be allowed to come into school wearing their PE kit. This will apply for the whole of next week. To clarify, students will not be permitted to wear items that deviate from the school uniform policy.
Mobile Phones
This week, we have updated our school mobile phone policy in line with the latest government guidance. Mobile phones are not permitted to be used during the school day. We operate a "bell to bell" policy, whereby students must put their phones away before the first bell of the school day, and they can use them again following the final bell.
We understand that many of you try to contact your child during the school day to pass on messages, but under this guidance, we ask that you contact the school office instead. Our student runners will gladly ensure all messages are delivered quickly and safely to students.
Where we have previously asked parents or carers to call their child to support in the event of an incident or concern, we will now ask students to go to the nearest school phone, where a conversation can still take place.
Where students need to contact home to speak to someone, we will happily support this using our school phones. Please make sure your child is aware that if they are caught using their phone in school, even to contact a parent, they will be asked to hand it over.
We know this transition may be difficult for some families, but we must follow the national guidance set out for schools. We greatly appreciate your support with this change in policy.
Young Green Briton Event
To round off the newsletter this week, a number of students from our Eco and Sustainability group visited London to present their concept for an Eco-App. Students presented their ideas in a Dragons' Den style environment. They had the opportunity to meet lots of politicians and public figures, including Chris Packham, and it was a great opportunity to showcase the talented individuals we have in school. We look forward to sharing more information about this incredible opportunity with you soon.
We hope you all have a lovely weekend, and we look forward to seeing all students ready for line-up at 8:25am on Monday.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. J. Firth
Principal
