Thank you to parents and carers of students in Year 10 that came along to our Parents’ Evening on Thursday. It was an opportunity to discuss their child’s progress ahead of starting Year 11. I met with around 10 families too and it was good to discuss how we can do more to enable parents to fully understand what their child needs to do to achieve higher. I’m always looking to improve and refine procedures and feedback is crucial to this. On May 19th, we have a Year 7 Parents’ Evening and you can now book appointments for this event, again held face-to-face at JQA, via our SchoolCloud system. A letter will be sent via email to all Year 7 parents shortly. Next week, I will be asking all parents to complete a questionnaire about whether their child has tutoring and how we can connect with tutors to reinforce knowledge around key curriculum topics.
It’s Mental Health Awareness week nationally and we will be having assemblies and doing activities together around the theme which is ‘building connections.’
There’s lots going on this week too: our Heritage Club in partnership with the JQ Cemeteries Project continues on Friday, we have Brilliant Club back in working with our high potential students on Wednesday and our after school tutoring through CoachBright continues. I have also posted an opportunity for any budding basketball stars to go to trials for COB Rockets on our Instagram. These start on Saturday at Nechells WellBeing Centre and I know we have some talented boys and girls who have such potential. Let me know if your child attends one of these trials which are open to all year groups.
The Spring Term newsletter is now online and features lots of the wonderful things we did for our students last term. I encourage all parents/carers to read it.
Saturday saw our Year 11 Science students attending another extra session and we look forward to seeing some English students on site today during the staff Training Day. The first public exam of the Summer takes place on Tuesday in Travel and Tourism for some of our Year 11 students. A full timetable for the Summer exams can be found here. It is important that parents/carers understand the expectations of strong punctuality and attendance in the national exam series: exams don’t wait if you are late and exams can’t be done the next day if your child doesn’t attend. The expectation is students arrive early, get a breakfast at the Academy and are ready to succeed in the each exam. Organisation and routines are keys to success and we will shortly be posting a video into our ‘Collaboration Collection’ to give practical tips to all families on getting their child into strong habits for learning.
I must remind parents of their responsibilities to make sure their child arrives every day with the correct uniform and the right equipment for learning. Where there are circumstances that prevent this, we will of course support. If it’s a choice from a child to not look smart and deliberately wear items that are not permitted, we will of course sanction.
On Friday, some of the team spent time calling the families of 45 students who have already had two days off this term. I need to remind all parents of their responsibility to ensure their child has strong attendance and punctuality – key habits for life. There are 14 school days left this half term and we expect all students to attend all of these days. If students aren’t here, they can’t learn as much and it damages their life chances.
Last week, all students had an assembly from Mr Condley about the national Thank A Teacher Day on May 26th. An annual tradition at JQA, our students will be writing and passing on ‘gold stars’ to the staff. We don’t just recognise teachers though as all of our staff in Team JQA play their part for our students. This year, we are encouraging parents to pass on their messages too and you can do that here. We look forward to receiving these messages of gratitude.
As always, please call us on 0121 729 7220, leaving a message if lines are busy, and we will support you.
You can always contact me directly at: [email protected]
We look forward to seeing all of our students for 8.30 on Tuesday 10th May.