October 2014 half term letter to parents

25 October 2014 Dear Parent/Guardian, Thank you for the support you have shown your child and your Academy over this first half term. It has been a long, but very successful one.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind you of a number of our expectations and inform you of some forthcoming developments at the Academy. This will mean that you remain up to date with the day-to-day running of the Academy and may hopefully avoid situations where choices you make in good faith over the holiday period, result in having a negative effect for your child when they return on 3 rd November.

Uniform: As the winter takes a firm hold of our weather there are a number of expectations that students and parents should be reminded of. These expectations can be found on our website but I would like to draw your attention to the following: •

Skirts – should be worn at the knee. If this is not the case, please purchase your daughter a new one for the start of next half term.

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Socks – Plain black or grey (boys). Black (girls) ankle or knee length. Tights must not be worn underneath socks.

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Tights - Plain black tights only please. Patterned tights are not permitted.

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Shoes - Plain traditional, or black with a maximum heel height of 5cm and a maximum sole thickness of 2cm (the heel height is measured from the ground to the welt up the back of the heel).

Kitten heels, stiletto heels, sling-back shoes, canvas shoes and trainers are not permitted. Please refer to the enclosed guidance regarding footwear for all seasons.

Paying specific regard to wet weather, we would ask for your co-operation and support in achieving the following: Footwear •

Whilst we appreciate that students who walk to and from school may wish to wear waterproof footwear in periods of poor weather eg. snow, we must insist

on them changing into footwear that is in line with the Academy uniform policy when they are on the Academy site.

Coats, hats, scarves and gloves •

Coats should be plain, sensible and weatherproof to protect your child from the elements, with no stripes, designs, patterns, slogans or noticeable branding.

• •

No hoodies, cardigans or sweatshirts should be worn.

Winter hats (only worn in extreme weather), scarves and gloves should be plain black or navy and not worn in the Academy buildings.

We would strongly suggest that all coats purchased for school should be as per the requirements above, as we do not want you to purchase clothing that we will not allow your child to wear in the Academy.

Included with this letter is a ‘Dressing for Success’ document that reinforces the above. It can also be found on the website under the ‘Parent’ section. Can I please also draw your attention to the information on trousers, make-up and hair. Just to clarify, there should be no evidence of dye or tints applied to the hair, and it should be an appropriate style and length. Make up, jewellery or piercings should not be worn. Pupils will be requested to remove piercings and we ask you support the Academy by not allowing your children to have them done during term time.

After eight weeks of the year having already passed, student uniform should now be of the highest standard, and in most cases it is. We look forward to working with you further to maintain and improve the expected high standards of uniform at The ACE Academy.

Punctuality and consequences: Unfortunately, students can be both brilliant and not so brilliant at times, and as much as we would like to avoid issuing consequences for poor choices, we still have to.

These are usually in the form of detentions and more serious consequences if these do not work. Therefore, all detentions will now take place after school in the main hall. Students will be notified in good time as will parents. Students will not be collected from lessons at the end of the day if they are due to be in detention. One of our values is ‘self-discipline’ and students will be expected to turn up and on time to detention. If they miss a detention it will be escalated to an hour with Senior staff, including myself. If this is then missed, the student will be excluded for a fixed period for persistently failing to meet academy expectations.

Punctuality and attendance is really improving at the Academy and we would like to thank you for all your efforts in supporting us. There are still a minority of students who are finding punctuality a challenge, even after intervention and support. As a result we will now be applying the following elevated steps in order to further improve. If a student is late on two occasions in a week, including arrival to lessons, they will receive a 30 minute detention after school. They will receive 30 minutes for every two lates. Therefore, if they are late on six occasions they will need to serve

one and a half hours of detention in that week. We hope that this will be enough of a deterrent to ensure students arrive to lessons and the Academy on time, so that valuable learning time is not lost.

Our visit from the Department for Education: The visit from the DfE went very well on 22 nd October. It wasn’t an inspection and therefore we should still be expecting a call from Ofsted at some point this year. The main conclusion they had to draw from their visit was if we had sufficient measures in place, robust and rigorous plans for the future and the Leadership capacity as an Academy, Governing Body and Trust to move our Academy forward at pace and secure significant improvement to our students’ education.

I am pleased to say that their feedback confirmed this. In fact, they could not suggest anything different to what we have done or have planned for implementation, and they confirmed that they couldn’t tell us anything about the Academy and our performance that we did not already know. Therefore they felt that at this point, they did not need to intervene, which was a fantastic comment to receive. They did however, reiterate that Ministers will expect to see significant and rapid improvement in performance this year and in coming years and we would be monitored on a half termly basis via our achievement data, giving even more of an emphasis on us ensuring that our half termly data is accurate, validated and reliable. There was a real urgency in their comments which we noted and goes to justify just how quickly we are moving to improve our students’ education. They also commented on how well behaved our students were and how calm the environment was.

So, a successful day for our Academy and justification and recognition of the work we are doing to improve. This will be one of many checks along the way and we could have not asked for a better first check point result. We must now maintain and continue to build on our progress, with pace, accuracy, energy and your continued support and help.

I would like to wish you all a safe and enjoyable half term holiday and once again thank you for your continued support Yours sincerely

Mr Robin Grover Head teacher