Our Ref: 2021/050/AND/SAF
01 April 2021
Dear Parent/Carer
It has been a fantastic month since our wonderful students returned to the classroom. The focus of these initial weeks has been rebuilding those in-person classroom relationships and for our students to reconnect with their learning. Inevitably, there has been significant loss and hardship for a number of families in our community and we will continue to do our very best to support every one of our students as we begin the summer term.
Thanks once again to our families who contributed to the recent Ofsted inspection. It was a very successful inspection which confirms the Academy’s rapid improvement, with key highlights as follows:
- ‘Leaders and those responsible for governance are taking effective action to provide education in the current circumstances.’
- ‘feedback from both parents and pupils is overwhelmingly positive’
- All staff have ‘high expectations’
- ‘Leaders acted swiftly and decisively … to put in place new curriculum plans for each subject’
- ‘Leaders continue to support Year 11 pupils well
As we all continue to follow the Government guidelines to prevent the spread of Covid-19, I wish to bthank those families who continue to support our students to test twice weekly. This testing is required to continue through the Easter break; with one of those tests being done as close to our return date of Monday 12th April as possible. The Academy is once again responsible for contact tracing through the holiday period and to this end, please report all positive test results through the contact form on our website.
Following our return on March 8th, we understood that some families may not be able to purchase specific items of school uniform. As the Government roadmap continues; parents return to the workplace and restrictions are eased, we must now insist that we return to our full school uniform expectations in the summer term. Please contact your child’s Progress Leader if there are specific uniform concerns.
The summer term presents a number of exciting key events for students. Our Year 11 students, having had the opportunity for further in-school support through the Easter break, will be only a few weeks away from the end of their journey at Amington. Despite the significant nationwide disruption of the past year, all of our Year 11 students have demonstrated an incredible level of maturity and resilience as they work through our carefully constructed roadmap, allowing their teachers to gather the evidence required to award fair and justifiable grades. Our Year 9 students, will shortly be choosing their options, to embark on their Key Stage 4 journey. In addition to our focus on academic progress, we hope to be able to end the year with a number of celebratory events including a Performing Arts showcase, Year 11 graduation and prom, sporting events, house competitions and much more. However, as I am sure you will understand, we remain subject to Covid-19 protocols, so any final dates will be confirmed later in the summer term to ensure our students have the best chance possible to participate in the wider life of the Academy beyond the classroom.
Finally, from all of the staff at Amington, we wish you all a restful Easter break.
Yours sincerely,
Mr A Deen
Principal