25 September 2023
Dear Parents & Carers,
We have now completed our first weeks of the new school year and have enjoyed welcoming all students back to school. We have been delighted with the positive attitude to learning presented by our learners, their appreciation of our ‘Ready, Respect, Safe’ approach in all that we do and their high standards of uniform. Senior leaders have been contacting parents and carers of those students nominated by staff for exemplary demonstrations of such and will continue to do so each week.
It is a year of great change for The Kingsway School not least with our Key Stage campus sites. Students have adapted positively to the significant changes we have introduced so far in school and I’m proud of the enthusiasm and resilience shown from all students meeting our expectations and contributing to a positive culture in school. We faced some teething issues with IT whilst students are transferred onto our systems, this alongside a new cohort learning how to find their way around a new school and adaptations to our lunchtime processes we have seen some delays in our food servery. Please rest assured that we have been working hard to address this and all students are accessing a lunch service with a selection of options with social time remaining. We will continue to refine our systems to ensure a rotation of year groups accessing the lunch service first.
It’s been a busy few weeks on our new Broadway Key Stage 3 site as our three year groups settle into their new campus. Our school is still undergoing building works to further improve our environment and we are pleased with the attention to safety our students have shown whilst this building work is undertaken. Alongside improving our school building we are also building a positive culture, rooted in reward, celebration and community. Our new year 7s have gotten off to a flying start with all points awarded being positive for the first week. Even more impressive is that 97% of all points awarded since we started in September have been positive. A whopping 19,899 positive points have been awarded, which is a lot of brilliant recognition for our Key Stage 3 students. We are very proud of them. Our ‘Ready, Respect, Safe’ curriculum is in full swing and our weekly themes in school have been ‘kindness and tolerance’. Students have been asked to reflect on the meaning of kindness and what small actions they can take to practise ‘active kindness’. It might be the simple act of opening a door for somebody, asking somebody about their day or helping somebody that is lost; these small actions are aimed at making our school a welcoming community.
All students have also begun our new wellbeing curriculum, focusing on further messages about building positive relationships with their peers. We are proud of how mature our students have been receiving and embodying these messages and endeavour to continue developing young people that are not just academically successful but are also compassionate in all that they do.
Year 10 and Year 11 students have returned to school with a sense of purpose and ready to learn. The Foxland Campus is the base for Key Stage 4 and our goal is to prepare students for GCSE and life beyond year 11; supporting them to develop into active citizens who make a positive contribution to society.
Year 10 have started their GCSE journey. This week the importance of forming new habits and practising routines regarding revision and retrieval has been shared. This will be a common theme throughout this term to support students to manage their workload and prepare for assessments.
Year 11 students have started to prepare for college applications. Over the last 3 weeks’ , assemblies, colleges have been sharing with students what courses are available at their establishments. Students are advised to visit as many college open evenings as they can to get a sense of what it would be like to be a student there and to ask a lot of questions. The Student Leadership Programme has also launched with interviews taking place in the week ahead for our most senior positions in school. Students have been given the opportunity to apply for positions that will not only be the voice of students across the school but be instrumental in the decision making process; improving the experiences for all our students. I look forward to introducing the successful leaders with you on their appointment. As the term progresses our Student Leadership offer will extend to our Key Stage 3 site where students will have the opportunity to contribute and demonstrate their skills and passion for the school and wider community.
As part of our changes for the year ahead we will be publishing our key messages for each campus each Monday for all parents to help us reinforce the values, rewards and reminders we will be sharing with students throughout the week. We also intend to ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for parents and families to come into school, meet senior leaders and play an active role in our vision and community starting with information evenings for each year group.
The dates for these are as follows:
| 10th October | 11th October | 12th October |
|
Information Evenings: Year 11 @ 5pm, Foxland Campus Year 8 @ 6pm, Broadway Campus |
Information & Social Evening: Year 7 @ 6pm, Broadway Campus
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Information Evenings: Year 9 @ 5pm, Broadway Campus Year 10 @ 6pm, Foxland Campus |
I look forward to seeing you in school at these events.
Anna Fowler
Headteacher
25th September 2023