Newsletter – July 2016
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Dear Parents and Students, As our first academic year as The Bicester School draws to a close I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a good and well deserved summer break and to thank staff, students and parents for the efforts put into making this a successful year. Tony Rushworth Over the course of this penultimate week, in special assemblies, we have celebrated all the Headteacher efforts of our student body in all they have done this year, academically, sporting and personally. INSIDE THIS ISSUE More than 700 certificates have been awarded, with students achieving bronze, silver or gold awards, a tremendous achievement when we consider that students must gain 1000 Changes for September house points for a bronze award. This calls for tremendous consistency in effort over the entirety of the school year. Activate Learning A number of students have won individual prizes for subjects and some have been named The Bicester School uniform as Student of the Year for their year group. There are further details of these awards on the school website. Teaching and Learning Congratulations to Attenborough House who are this year’s House Cup winners, Hanover Garden’s Street Party accumulating a massive 208,000 points. English/Mathematics/Creative Congratulations too go to the Year 9 girls’ Rounder’s team who have recently been crowned Arts News as County Champions for this year. The Charity Fest is back! Our best wishes go to the following staff who will be leaving The Bicester School at the end of the term: Oxford Brookes University visit Hazel Young (Head of Languages) Sixth Form engineering project Anna Woodham (Art) Jonny Tridgell (6th Form and RS – on sabbatical for a year) Viridor Science Go4Set project Lesley Cowey (Maths) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Jenny Haviland (English) Judith O’Rourke (Business Studies) Staff and Student profiles Zoe Barnes (PE) School trip: Our time in Belgium On Tuesday 19th July 2016 our school will close at 12.10pm for the summer holiday with new students entering in Year 7 joining on Friday 2nd September along with students in Bicester Area Year 3/4 Mini Year 11 and 12 who will be beginning their programmes of study for the academic year. Red Tennis Festival Students in Years 8, 9, 10 and 13 will return on Monday 5th September. Rounders match report Although we are moving to a 6 period day, the timings of the school day remain the same as this academic year: School athletics report 8.35am - 3.05pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. 8.35am - 2.05pm on a Wednesday. Bicester Family Year 5/6 Rounders Date: 11/07/2016 Issue: July The Bicester School Newsletter Reminders – With respect to students in Years 7-11, we will be mobile-phone free from September (Students should not be bringing phones to school unless there are special circumstances and in those cases they will leave them at School Reception on arrival to School at the start of day.) If you are replacing parts of the uniform for September, please double check both the uniform requirements and the equipment lists for the 2016-17 academic year. Please make sure you have an enjoyable summer break. Alongside our sponsor, Activate Learning, it is an exciting time to be associated with the school for both students & staff. Thank you for your ongoing support and I wish you a very restful summer break. Yours sincerely Tony Tony Rushworth Rushworth Headteacher Headteacher Changes for September As has been mentioned in our letters home and in assemblies, there are some key changes for September which will have a daily impact upon students. School Planners In September we will be reintroducing compulsory school planners. The planners will provide a daily platform for parent / tutor communication as well as a reminder of when homework has been set and is due for submission. Teachers will be able to record both positive and negative comments which can be viewed at least weekly by parents. The expectation is that students, parents and form tutors sign the planner once per week. We are continuing to use Show my Homework to share the detail and resources needed for homework that is set, however the planner will provide a hands on reminder of what is due and when. It is hoped that the planner will greatly improve the independence and organization of the students as well as increasing the levels of accountability and the Tim Marston awareness on a daily basis for parents of the progress and levels of effort that are in Deputy Head evidence at school. Teacher Mobile Phones for Years 7 – 11 There is no doubt that mobile phones play a prominent place in the modern world however increasingly in school they are becoming a distraction and an overwhelmingly negative influence on the positive running of the school day. There are a great many students find the pressure of staying in touch via messaging or social media too much to ignore during the day and increasingly this is causing disruption in lessons as well as damage to student friendships. We are following the advice of Ofsted and an increasing number of educational establishments in insisting on students either not bringing their phones with them or signing them in at the beginning of the day and signing them out again at the end of school. If a phone is seen during school hours then it will be calmly handed over and returned to a parent at the end of the day. We are not seeking to cause confrontation and this change has been clearly explained to all of our students and has been overwhelmingly supported by parents. We feel this is an essential change to ensure we maintain the highest of academic standards as well as allowing us to promote the personal and social development of the students in our care. Sir Michael Wilshaw: 'Any head worth their salt should stand up and ban mobiles' 29th August 2015 3 Activate Learning We have started a piece of work across the schools to explore the option to bring the two UTCs (UTC Reading and UTC Oxfordshire), into one multi academy trust (with the Bicester School and the Bicester Technology Studio). To a large extent, we are trying to work together in this capacity already, but this would be a more formal step. I believe there are more opportunities to be gained from joint procurement and through better school to school support projects. The timescale for reviewing this option is between now and the autumn and I will keep you informed with the progress of this review. In terms of us operating as a group of schools we have recently made some bulk purchases of access to e-teach staff recruitment and for our Progresso contracts, savings us money in the process. Tony has kept me abreast of the progress you are making with the current Year 11 as we hit exam season. Good progress has been made with this cohort and I wish your students well in Lee Nicholls their exams. I am conscious of the fact that if we achieve our predicted examination outcomes this year, we will have made terrific progress with our learners, would be a great credit to the Activate students, the teachers and parents who have helped us focus students on learning. Best Learning wishes to all as we run into the main period of the exams. I would like to offer my public congratulations to Roland on his recent senior appointment to Deputy Head Teacher and wish him well in this new role. Well done Roland. A run through some news across Activate Learning generally: The Bicester Technology Studio (studio school ) is set to open as planned this September, with student and staff recruitment looking very positive; Our Higher Education students across the colleges are recruiting well. We have over 500 students now on Higher awards, Foundation degrees and honours degrees. Our most significant courses are in Health and Social care (Oxford); Policing (Oxford), Business (Oxford), Sport (Oxford), Engineering and the Built Environment (Reading) and Motor Sports Engineering (Bicester). Our growth here has been strong and it may be that we need to do a piece of work with the school about option in Higher Education, with strong links to employment? We were reviewed in September and our Higher Education was judged to meet UK Higher Education expectations, with good practice in employment-related higher education; We are completing an internal change across our colleges, with all teachers now part of seven faculties. Each faculty will have a presence at each of our college outlets, but the idea of faculties is to get more sharing across our subjects by subject teachers at different campuses. It is also the means by which we expect to firm up our relations with key employers who can take a sponsoring role with the faculty relevant to their business. Things at Activate Learning continue to move ahead and we have recently acquired a specialist apprenticeships provider in Aylesbury. This is ATG Training, a specialist provider of engineering apprenticeships and a national leader in the provision of apprenticeship in bike maintenance. As a keen cyclist myself, I really enjoyed visiting the site and seeing the bike maintenance bays fully equipped with industry standard shimano gear sets! If any of your students are particularly keen in this area and want a trip, let me know. The examination season has come to a close and staff and students alike breathe that huge sigh of relief! I, like you, now look forward to results days and hearing about how the students have performed.