Saturday Detention letter

Ref: TM Dear Parent/Carer, As part of our continued drive to improve ACE Academy and secure better life chances for our students, we are pleased to announce that we have been able to introduce the use of Saturday detentions as an alternative to the use of fixed term exclusions when students have not attended or behaved well in Senior Leadership Team detentions.

As you already know, when poor behaviour or homework issues arise, wherever possible the student will be spoken to by their class teacher and may be asked to attend an informal staff detention during the Academy day. However, in cases of serious breaches of the Academy Code of Conduct, it may be felt appropriate to issue students with an Academy Detention. These last for 30 minutes and take place at the end of every Academy day between 14.50 and 15.20pm.

Either an Academy letter notifying you of the detention the day before and/or a text message will be sent on the day of the detention to the first point of contact on our database. It is, therefore, very important that you ensure we have an up to date mobile number. This can be easily done by contacting us and/or completing a Data Collection Form.

Where poor behaviour leads to a detention being given, the ACE Academy has legal backing in enforcing its arrangements to detain students. Neither parents/carers nor students can refuse to accept them, nor can they require that the detention be at a different time. However in certain circumstances e.g. a medical appointment, the detention may be rescheduled to the following day provided this has been communicated to us by a parent, guardian or carer. The Academy reserves the right to decide what is a reasonable reason for a student not being able to attend a detention – further examples of these can be found in the Behaviour Policy. The need to escort a sibling home is not an acceptable reason for missing a detention. It is also the parent/carer’s responsibility to make arrangements for students to get home after a detention. We are keen to work with parents and carers whilst maintaining very high expectations for behaviour.

Those students who fail to turn up for an Academy Detention without a good reason receive an extended detention with members of the Senior Leadership Team. These will last for one hour and will take place each Monday-Thursday between 14:50 and 15:50pm. (When students have been involved in a particularly serious breach of the Academy Behaviour Policy, they might be placed straight into a Senior Leadership Team detention.) If a student fails to attend a Senior Leadership Team detention without a good reason communicated to us by a parent/carer, this will be regarded as a

very serious breach of the ACE Academy Behaviour Policy and will lead to the student being required to attend our new Saturday School (an extra session of learning run from 9.30am -12.30pm each Saturday). If a student fails to attend and complete a Saturday School session, this will result in them receiving a fixed term exclusion.

If a student fails to behave well in a detention, if this is in an Academy detention the detention will be escalated to an SLT detention. If this is in a Senior Leadership Team detention, the detention will be escalated to the student being required to attend a Saturday School session. If a student fails to behave well in a Saturday School session, this will result in them receiving a fixed term exclusion.

We will begin to run Saturday School Detentions from Saturday 21st March and so this will apply to Senior Leadership Detentions from Thursday 19th March. If your child receives an Academy, Senior Leadership Team or Saturday Detention for homework or behaviour, I would ask that you discuss this with your child and ensure that they attend the detention. Working together in this way we hope that there will be no repeat of the poor behaviour and that these will be vastly improved attitudes to completing homework as this is an integral part of your child’s success.

Yours faithfully

Mr Robin Grover Headteacher