Newsletter 22 November 2024

Dear Parents/ Carers

It has been great to meet the sixth form and Year 11 students nominated by their tutors for the Principal’s commendations this week (photos below), and to hear how they have gone above and beyond, and why their tutors truly value them. It’s also been great to show some more staff from a Peterborough school around our academy today so that we can compare and contrast, and share ideas and approaches.

The rest of my section of this week’s newsletter focuses on improvements to the resource centre, a reminder about the move next week to a single lunch time, and some background information about the new internal permission to leave form and attendance.

Resource centre revamp

We’ve had a bit of a revamp of the resource centre this week! All the books are around the sides or on the right hand side, with added seating and tables on the left. The computers are also around the side now. See the pictures below:

Just to confirm: we’ve haven’t removed any books, we’ve just moved them all together. Students and staff who have seen the work in progress have been astounded by the size of the room. I even overheard one student say, “This end looks like a proper library now.” The reorganising of the resource centre also means that there is far more seating and space available for students for wet breaks/ lunches.

Single lunch

Now that mock exams have finished, and the new catering team have had time to embed themselves, we will be moving to a single lunch after reading/ intervention tutorials. Lunch will now start at 12.25pm for all year groups. Sixth form students can continue to come down early from 12.20pm if they are free to beat the queues. Although we believe we have done everything we need to do to prepare for this change, please bear with us in the first few days if we have to slightly extend lunch for the last year group going through.

The reason to moving to a later lunch is threefold: (1) It gives the canteen team more time after break to prepare their lunch menu, (2) It means that staff who volunteer to run clubs at lunch can offer these to all year groups, and (3) It supports the wellbeing of my staff who can now come together as departments or friendship groups over their lunch time – this helps build community and team spirit within the school.

We are conscious of the fact that having all year groups on lunch at the same time could present other challenges. That is why we are advertising internally for anyone who wishes to support with supervision, and why the changes to the resource centre to increase capacity safely are so important. Currently when it rains, the main hall is made available, we run the lunch queue inside the N-block, and we make internal spaces in the N block and craft block available. This will be easier to do now as the single lunch means that their aren’t any Year 11 intervention or reading tutorials happening at the same time that could have been disrupted by students being in the building.

New permission to leave form

Although it is purely an internal system, some parents have been asking about the new Permission to Leave Form that we have introduced for any student (Years 7 – 11) who wish to leave the school site during the school day (before 3.00 pm). Here is a copy of the form for reference: Permission to leave form

I’ve asked our pastoral and attendance staff to implement this new system to make our safeguarding procedures even more rigorous, and to ensure that we have improved communication between different admin areas.

Normally, medical and dentist appointments etc come in early from parents/ carers to the attendance team, but some go to the pastoral teams instead. As there is more than one way to notify the school (and I don’t want to start restricting this for parents/ carers) we need to have an agreed unified method for handling the process, and in effect, one single form to handle all situations makes it simpler for everyone. Some of the form can be entered in advance, eg when a parent/ carer informs us of an appointment, but some parts need to be completed in real-time for illnesses and other reactive situations. For clarity, this is something that we do in school – we do not expect parents/ carers to complete the form.

The form makes it clear how a student is going home, so that reception know who to expect if they are being collected, and ask the student to wait, or know to simply let the student out if walking home or bus travel has been agreed. The “time left” field is completed by reception staff so we know the exact time a student left for health and safety reasons. Now the attendance team are situated directly behind reception, it means reception can pass this back easily and Bromcom can be updated quickly.

There is a space for our safeguarding team to sign their agreement if the student in question is vulnerable and/ or supported by them, to ensure that leaving school early and by the method suggested is inline with any safety plans or agreements with other external agencies.

Completed forms are held by the pastoral team who will give it to the student (for advance appointments) so they can show it to the teacher to leave lesson, or to reception if the pastoral team accompany the student there. In essence, the form acts like a ‘passport’ for the student.

I apologise if in catching up on previously communicated appointments, there has been a slight delay in some students leaving the site. However, now we are up-to-date with previous appointments, there shouldn’t be any future delays.

Leaving site and attendance

Before I continue, I want to preface the following section by saying we completely understand how difficult is can be to get medical or dentist appointments outside the school day. Whilst we would love all appointments to be out of school hours, we know that isn’t realistic for everyone. However, I also know that parents/ carers care about their child’s attendance and want to understand why some appointments affect their child attendance, and some don’t.

A student’s attendance is calculated by looking at whether they were registered in school during the first 30 minutes of the day, and the first 30 minutes after lunch. If a student is missing for either (and not on a trip/ visit/ sporting activity or work experience), it does mean their overall attendance % will reduce (even though the absence is authorised). However, if a student leaves after being registered in the morning, and they are back in school and registered before 1.40pm, or leave after 1.10pm, then their attendance will not be affected at all. I hope this makes the register marks a little clearer.

Thank you for reading, have a great weekend!

Yours faithfully

Tony Meneaugh

Principal

Year 10 Shaping Futures

We are excited to introduce our new Experience of Workplaces project, ‘Shaping Futures’! This project has recently been mentioned as a beacon of good practice within the recently published new Gatsby Framework document.

St Ivo is a school that places strong emphasis on careers and work-related learning and as such, work experience in the traditional block has always taken place. While our preference would be to continue this model, since the pandemic, not every student has been placed or managed to find a placement. This has been due to the number of people working from home, health and safety issues and the fact that placements are being prioritised by employers for post 16 students.

However, we want to continue including experience of the workplace in our Year 10 curriculum and are determined that every student will be able to take part. We would like to give our students the chance to learn about several roles in the workplace. We would like them to have the chance for a ‘mock’ interview and for this to take on additional meaning by linking it to experiences of the workplace. We have also been speaking to employers who are keen for us to really focus on the development of essential skills in our young people. Therefore, rather than ending it, we intend to ‘re-shape’ work experience for our Year 10 students to give it additional meaning.

This outline will provide you with a brief overview of our Shaping Futures project so that you can support your child moving forward.

• Late November 2024 – the launch – we are currently engaging with employers from all sectors who would like to become involved with the project. Year 10 students will give an indication of three job sectors that they would like to focus on. This is collated by the Careers Department. Job roles are advertised by the employers.
• December 2024 – students will undertake a selection process including application and interview from the employer.
• January to July 2025 – students will work in small groups together with an employer that has recruited them. They will be given a task to undertake to develop and benefit the company. Students will have sessions in school on health and safety, professional behaviour in the workplace and managing public transport.
• July 2025 – students will undertake a visit in their group without school staff via public transport to their employer’s workplace.  Students will continue to work on their task.
• July 2025 – students will attend their business ‘showcase’ event at school and alongside their employer, will show industry and education leaders what they have achieved as well as what they have learned about the world of work and themselves.

Students will undertake the Shaping Futures project mainly in school time. They will learn about different job sectors in form and PD lessons. They will have time out of lessons for mentoring, visits and project work but this will be blocked to minimise the impact. There will be an after school club purely to assist students with this project work. We understand that some students may still want to undertake an additional work placement similar to the previous, traditional model. If this is the case, after having completed their GCSE exams in Year 11, we can help to facilitate this for individual students until school closes for the summer holidays.

Every student in Year 10 will be expected to take part in the Shaping Futures project as part of their curriculum learning.  This project will enable students to gain different insight into careers but more importantly, the workplace. It will develop the employability skills of students and give them tangible experience that they can acknowledge on CVs. Work experience projects are not always about undertaking the job that a student wants to do when they are older, and it isn’t a waste of time if it’s not in the job sector that the student wants. Here at St Ivo we are focused on the development of essential skills.

If you have any questions about the Shaping Futures project, especially if you or your company would like to take part in the project, please do not hesitate to contact our Careers Lead, Helen Parks on helen.parks@astearstivo.org .Your involvement would be very much appreciated.

Ski trip 2026

We are pleased to have launched our ski trip for February half term 2026. This visit is currently open to students in Years 8 to 12 (we may open remaining spaces to Year 7). The trip is suitable for all levels of skier, from complete beginner to advanced. We will be visiting the Aletsch Arena in Switzerland. The trip includes flights, transfers, hotel accommodation, all meals, ski equipment, ski pass and 6 days ski instruction. Parents/carers can sign their child up using MCAS. Full details can be found at https://www.astreastivo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Launch-letter.pdf

Diary dates

Please find below a reminder of key evening dates. Other dates, including assessments, trip and other events, will be communicated separately.

• Thursday 12 December: Year 11 parents’/carers’ evening
• Thursday 23 January: Year 10 parents’/carers’ evening
• Thursday 13 February: Year 9 parents’/carers’ evening
• Thursday 13 March: Year 9 curriculum evening
• Thursday 3 April: Year 8 parents’/carers’ evening
• Thursday 1 May: Year 7 parents’/carers’ evening
• Thursday 15 May: Year 12 parents’/carers’ evening

Lost property

If your child has lost something in school, please could you encourage them to come to lost property – just off the foyer near the hall – at breaktime over the next week.

We have a large number of items unclaimed including winter coats, uniform, sports items, shoes, and water bottles. After next week we will be bagging up unclaimed items for disposal.

Duke of Edinburgh