Principal’s Letter (7th November 2022)

Dear Parents/Carers,

It was an absolute delight to meet so many of you at our Principal’s and SEND Team’s coffee mornings in Module 1. Thank you for your support and feedback.

It is our desire to build a sustained and strong relationship with our parents, in light of this we have sent out a parent questionnaire and look forward to receiving feedback from you. Please let us know where we are doing well and what areas we need to improve on. I hope to address some of the feedback in the next module letter.

We have had an active start to the year, with a Year 7 team-building residential trip to PGL in Surrey to 50 Year 11 students qualifying for their Duke of Edinburgh’s Silver Award. The DofE expedition involved our students working together to navigate their way over 40km of the South Downs, setting off from ‘The Seven Sisters’ and trekking along the Cuckmere River to ‘The Long Man’ before completing their expedition at Glynde Station. A fantastic achievement!

There have been a few changes that I would like to bring to your attention, which we hope will strengthen the academy and make things even better.

We are delighted to welcome Mr Hayder Khan as Assistant Principal for Sherwood who will start his new role in January. We are also adding an extra layer of pastoral support to each small school by introducing the roles of Small School Managers (SSM) and Small School Administrators (SSA) as seen in the table below. These new roles will add extra capacity to our pastoral teams to support our students and families. They will replace the Small School Officer roles.

As stated at our coffee mornings we would like to strengthen our parental communication as we strongly believe that by working together, we can achieve the best outcomes and experiences for our students. We are, therefore, introducing three new small school email addresses and this should be your first point of contact along with your child’s form tutor:

A Small School Administrator will attend to your email to help you as well as notify the relevant member of staff for support.

There is also a new email address for parents to contact the SEND Team:

Please note we aim to respond to all emails within 72 working hours, you can also make calls to each small school through our main switchboard.

Also, pupil passports for our SEND E and K students have been updated and a key link worker will be in touch soon to book a review meeting with parents soon.

Lastly, I would like to wish all our Year 11 and 13 students the very best for their up and coming mock exams. These commence from 14 November 2022. Please support and encourage your child to keep up with the revision sessions and intervention classes in the academy.

I set out below as a reminder of a few key dates, for instance we have a much requested face to face Year 7 Parents Evening on Thursday 10 November @ 4-7pm. A more detailed letter has been sent to our Year 7 parents.

I look forward to writing to you again at the end of Module 2.

Yours faithfully,

Ms S Kazmi
Principal

Parent Information
KEY DATES 2022-23

Parent Evenings, Open Events and Mock Examinations

• 10 November – Year 7 Parent/Carer Evening 4-7pm
• 14 November – Year 11 and 13 Mock Examinations begin
• 12 January – Year 11 Parent/Carer Evening 4-7 pm
• 19 January – Year 13 Parents Evening 4- 7pm
• 26 January – Year 9 Parent/Carer Evening 4-7pm
• 30 January – Year 10 and 12 Mock Examinations begin
• 23 February – Year 9 Options Evening 4-7pm
• 23 March – Year 12 Parent/Carer Evening 4-7pm
• 4 May – Year 10 Parent/Carer Evening 4-7pm