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I hope you have had a lovely weekend. You may have seen the news regarding the national strikes by teachers in the NEU over the course of last week. I have written to all parents regarding this and will continue to keep you updated.

It’s an important week at the Academy as a Beacon school for Holocaust education. Our annual Echo Eternal commemoration takes place on Thursday and this week sees activities and events to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, centred around the message of Auschwitz survivor, Zigi Shipper BEM, who passed away last week. Zigi worked with the school to share his testimony and the message ‘Do not hate’ and this message will echo around the classrooms of JQA. We hope you can join us on Thursday at 6.30 at New St Station for our annual commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, with our partners from across Echo Eternal, which sees our students involved in moving dramatic and musical pieces.

It was brilliant last week to see students involved in a competitive athletics fixtures. Congratulations to the boys in Year 7 who secured a ‘silver medal’.

Thank you to parents of Year 9 students who joined us online for the ‘Guided Curriculum Choices’ event last Thursday. If you missed it, or want to hear about any of the courses that your child might like to study in Key Stage 4, you can access the slides and hear from different Curriculum Leaders explaining their course here, using your child’s Teams login. We look forward to seeing Year 9 parents and carers on Thursday 2nd February 2023 for Year 9 Parents’ Evening and I will alert you to when the booking system is live so you can start making appointments.

I’d like to remind parents of the function to borrow laptops so your child can continue to study at home. I review these requests every Wednesday so please complete this if you would like us to lend you equipment.

Similarly, our Coffee Mornings are open from 9-11am every Wednesday. This is an opportunity for parents to seek support in any way we can help.

It’s been brilliant to see so many students picking up so many merits in class recently. Please encourage your child to log these and I look forward to seeing the top merit earners on Friday for Hot Chocolate with the Headteacher.

As always, you can call the Academy on 0121 729 7220, leaving a message if lines are busy and we will get back to you. Our lines are very busy in the daytime so I encourage parents to use the voicemail facility by pressing option 2. If you would like urgent support, you can always reach Mr Bibb (our Designated Safeguarding Lead) on option 4.

You can always contact me directly this week at: [email protected]