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

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