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Message From the Principal 18.04.2025

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope that you have all been enjoying your Easter break. I am very sorry to interrupt your holiday, but there is some important information that I urgently need to share with you.

Unfortunately, following a regular structural survey of the school buildings, we have been informed that the building that houses Maths, Humanities, MFL and most of our IT rooms (B Block), has been deemed unsafe. This is due to the structural integrity of the blue external panelling. This is not a fire related hazard. The team has been busy this week working closely with structural engineers to come up with a solution to mitigate all risks, but as you can imagine, a fix for this will take some time.

We are working closely with engineers to erect an indemnified scaffolding structure around the external perimeter of the building. This will ensure that all external panelling is held securely in place. This work will be undertaken in two phases. The first phase is scheduled to start on Tuesday morning, with the process taking several days. Phase two will take place in a few weeks time as we need to wait for an indemnified structure to be designed, approved by qualified engineers, and then erected around the building. At this moment in time, I am not able to give any indicative timeframe of when this will be completed. Once this external structure is in place, we will then be able to reopen the school fully and operate as normal. Work can then begin on how we repair or replace the existing panelling around the building.

As a result of this safety issue, I have made the decision to temporarily close this part of the building and surrounding areas on health and safety grounds. The impact of this is that we will temporarily lose access to 22 teaching spaces. As we work on implementing the solution to make the building safe again, there will be some temporary disruption to different year groups, with some year groups moving to an online learning model, similar to that which we experienced during Covid. I have summarised the impact on each individual year group below, which I hope provides you with clarity on what will happen next week and moving forwards.

Year 7: The school will be closed to year 7 students on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April. All year 7 students will return to school on Thursday 24th April and will follow their normal timetable. Lessons that were timetabled for the B Block will be re-roomed to other parts of the school. Students will have a short assembly at the start of the day in the main hall to provide them with this information, along with the expectations around the school site. Students will be required to wear full uniform when they return. Students will be able to access and exit the school site via either the Spencer Park or Hayway entrance as normal.

Year 8: The school will be closed to year 8 students on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April. Year 8 students will then have online learning provided by their teachers starting on Thursday 24th April. Students will be required to attend all sessions, including AM and PM form times. It is important from a safeguarding perspective that we have regular ‘eyes’ on students whilst they are completing their learning remotely.

Year 9: The school will be closed to year 9 students on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April. Year 9 students will then have online learning provided by their teachers starting on Thursday 24th April. Students will be required to attend all sessions, including AM and PM form times. It is important from a safeguarding perspective that we have regular ‘eyes’ on students whilst they are completing their learning remotely.

Year 10: The school will be closed to year 10 students on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April. Year 10 students will then have online learning provided by their teachers starting on Thursday 24th April. Students will be required to attend all sessions, including AM and PM form times. It is important from a safeguarding perspective that we have regular ‘eyes’ on students whilst they are completing their learning remotely.

Year 11: We are mindful that year 11 students have examinations starting next week, and in order to minimise disruption, the following will apply for students completing their Graphics exam on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April:

Students will need to arrive at school by 8:45am. They will need to report directly to the reception building, and access the school via the Hayway entrance only.
Students will be collected by a member of staff and escorted to the Creative Arts block.
Students will need to bring their own lunch.
Breaks will be provided, and students will be supervised during these times.
Students will not have access to the main school building whilst phase one of the scaffolding is being erected.
Students will have access to the toilets in the creative arts building.
Students will be required to wear full uniform.
Students who do not have an exam on Tuesday 22nd or Wednesday 23rd must remain at home on those days.

All of year 11 will return to school on Thursday 24th April at the normal time, and lessons will continue as normal. Lessons will be delivered face to face, and those subjects that are usually taught in the B Block will be re-roomed. Students will have a short assembly at the start of the day in the lecture theatre to provide them with this information, along with the expectations around the school site. Students will be required to wear full uniform. Students will be able to access and exit the school site via either the Spencer Park or Hayway entrance as normal.

Year 12: We are mindful that year 12 students are starting their end of year examinations next week, therefore the following will apply: Year 12 students who have exams on Tuesday 22nd or Wednesday 23rd will need to arrive at the reception building 15 minutes before their exam is due to start. Students will not have access to the main building on these two days. Once exams are completed, students will be free to leave the school site. From Thursday 24th April, all BTEC lessons will resume as normal in school. Lessons scheduled for B Block classrooms will be re-roomed. Teachers will communicate this with you, along with the Sixth Form team.

Year 13: The school will be closed to students on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd April. All year 13 students will return to school for lessons from Thursday 24th April. Students will be greeted at the top entrance near the English block during the day as buses arrive, and will be let into the school grounds as the student turnstile will be out of action. Buses will operate as normal and there will be no interruption to lessons. Lessons scheduled in the B Block will be re-roomed. Teachers will communicate this with you, along with the Sixth Form team.

Further Info:

There are some further pieces of information that I need to share with you that may require an action from you if they are relevant.

Free School Meals:

We will continue to provide a free school meal for your child if you would like us to prepare this for you. Please complete the google form linked below to indicate that you would like a meal for your child (cold meal only available) on Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd. This will be available for collection from the school car park between 1pm and 2pm. Further communication around free school meals will be shared on Tuesday 22nd.

https://forms.gle/hyKQgpt2824fGnBJ9

School Canteen:

When students in year 7, 11, 12, and 13 return to school from Thursday, food will be served at break and lunch in the main hall. As students are not able to access the canteen, a reduced offer will be made available to students.

Access to Digital Devices:

We understand that not every student will have access to a device suitable to facilitate online learning. To ensure that all students are able to access online learning with a suitable device, we are able to loan a school laptop/chromebook to support your child whilst they complete their learning from home. To receive a loaner laptop/Chromebook, please email with your request. We will then send you a digital device agreement. Once this agreement is completed and returned, we will arrange for you to collect a device and charger.

I appreciate that there is a lot of information in this letter. Please take time to digest all the information carefully. Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the school via our reception team, or emailing . We will aim to respond to all emails within 48 hours, but please be patient with our team whilst we navigate this issue.

I will continue to provide regular updates over the coming weeks so please keep an eye out for these via email, MCAS, social media, and on the school website.

To ensure that all families receive this information, please support us by sharing this with friends so that we can be confident that all families receive this important information.

Take care over the bank holiday weekend, and we look forward to seeing you all very soon.

Yours sincerely

Jonathan Firth

Principal

Message From the Principal 04.04.2025

Dear Parent / Carer

I would like to start off my final newsletter of the Spring term with a huge thank you to all the staff and students who made last night's ‘A Night At The Musicals’ evening a huge success! It was great to see so many of our talented students performing numbers from such a diverse range of musicals. We are so proud of all the students (and staff!) who performed and have worked so hard to produce such a high quality performance! The feedback from the audience has been brilliant:

“Wow wow WOW!!! Truly and utterly blown away by the show tonight! From the little ones to the “grown up” ones, totally awesome! The energy on the stage was electric and every single child looked like they were having the time of their lives!”

“The talent you have created with the students of Rushden Academy is out of this world.

There is no need to travel to London to see a show, you, your team and all the students have shown today that they can match that.”

In addition to the excellent show, we have also had a number of other special events this week. On Thursday we had a visit for year 8 students from BAE Systems, in partnership with The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, who delivered a STEM focused presentation which explored the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Students had the opportunity to meet Lexi, a robotic dog which uses AI to be able to complete tasks and challenges without human input.

On Wednesday we had our end of term attendance prize draw. This is an exciting event for the end of each half term and provides me with the opportunity to celebrate with all students and staff in the school. Well done to the 536 students who have an attendance of 95+ (including medical and religious events) for this half term and gaining entry into the prize draw. As a reminder, we reset our attendance figures each half term for this competition so all students have six opportunities each year to be in the prize draw.

Students in the Sixth Form have been busy over the past week being interviewed for our new student leadership team. We are so excited to announce that the following students have been successful and will make up our student leadership team for the next academic year.

Head Student: Ben

Head Student: Amy

Deputy Head Student: Molly

Deputy Head Student: Loyiso

Charity Lead: Evie

KS3 Lead: Lilywhite

KS4 Lead: Daniel

Charity Team: Gracie, Harley, Cian, Mercy, Isobel, Alyssa, Mustafa

We hope that you all have a wonderful holiday, and you all manage to have some quality time with family and friends. We hope that those families who celebrated Eid last weekend had a wonderful time, and we look forward to seeing all students in school on Tuesday 22nd April at 8:30 ready to collect their first ever Rushden STARR Card!

Yours sincerely,

Mr J Firth

Principal

Message From the Principal 28.03.2025

Dear Parent / Carer

I am excited to be writing a special edition of my weekly newsletter to share with you more details of the changes we are introducing after the Easter break. We are making these changes to strengthen our offer to all students. We are committed to being inclusive in our approach, and we know that our students are going to benefit from clearer routines and structure to the school day. We are also introducing a new initiative, based on our new school values, following our successful consultation with stakeholders over this term. Details of all our changes and new initiatives are below:

Times of the school day:

We will be making some changes to the layout of the school day for all students. Please note that the start and end of the school day remain unchanged. After the holidays, the school day will be as follows:

AM Form 8:30 to 8:50

Period 1 8:50 to 9:50

Period 2 9:50 to 10:50

Break 10:50 to 11:15

Period 3 11:15 to 12:15

Period 4 12:15 to 13:15

Lunch 13:15 to 13:50

Period 5 13:50 to 14:50

PM Form 14:50 to 15:00

As you will see, we have simply shortened the morning form time by 10 minutes to create an opportunity for a short form time at the end of the school day. This will allow form tutors to have meaningful check-ins with students at both the start and end of the school day. Form tutors will also monitor their students’ engagement in their learning by reviewing their #TeamRushden STARR CARD.

#TeamRushden STARR Card

Following our values consultation, we have created a new initiative to support students with their learning and behaviour over the course of the week. The aim of the STARR Card is to consistently demonstrate our school values throughout every school day. Where students do not meet our expectations, their STARR Card will be marked with an applicable code (e.g., L for Lateness, U for Uniform), and the behaviour will be logged on Bromcom, our school's management information system. Students who achieve a clear day will receive Team Rushden Points (TRPs), which are points that can be redeemed via our rewards shop for school rewards. Those having a clear week, will be entered in a weekly prize draw. This means that we are consistently rewarding those students who do the right thing day in, day out. These rewards will be in addition to the rewards we expect teachers to hand out during lessons.

We have thought carefully about how the card operates, and there will be various rules that students will be required to follow. These will be clearly communicated with students in form time next week in preparation for the launch after Easter. Here is an example of the STARR Card:

Attendance

Attendance continues to be a big focus for us at Rushden Academy as we know that students who attend school perform better in the examinations, and as reported by the government recently, can earn up to £10,000 more than their peers with poor attendance. As a result of starting period 1 earlier in the day, we will be making changes to the cut-off time for when students will be expected to hand over their mobile phone if they are late to school. After the Easter holiday, students who arrive after 8:40am will be required to hand in their mobile phone for the day. This will be stored safely in the school office, and will be returned to students at 3:10pm.

In order to promote better attendance to lessons, and to foster students’ responsibility for being punctual to lessons, we will be introducing additional bells throughout the day to signal when a lesson has ended followed by a further bell 5 minutes later to signal the point in which students are then deemed late to lessons. Any lateness will be recorded on the student’s STARR Card and in Bromcom. This step will provide greater structure and clarity to all students throughout the day, and will reduce any conflict between staff and students on whether they are late or not to a lesson.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning is at the heart of what we do. Our new school values will support us on our journey to create a school environment where every student is inspired to aspire, encouraged to explore, and empowered to succeed. We know that every lesson counts for our students and we are making some additional changes to expectations in our classrooms. So that we can be more inclusive and to ensure that teachers are checking the understanding of all students in lessons, we will be adopting a no hands up approach to asking students questions. Teachers will utilise a range of different strategies to check students’ comprehension of key topics. Students have worked through a presentation this week informing them of this change, and how they can respond sensibly to their teacher if they feel unable to answer a question.

We hope that you are as excited by the changes as we are, and we look forward to implementing these changes after the Easter holiday. As I mentioned in my newsletter last week, in order to facilitate staff training on these changes and new initiatives, students will be finishing school next Friday 4th April at 1:15pm. Students will return after the Easter holiday on Tuesday 22nd April.

Next week we will be having lots of end of term celebrations with our termly rewards assemblies, attendance prize draw, and our Easter Eggstravaganza! I look forward to sharing more details on our rewards week next Friday.

We wish you all a wonderful weekend, and we look forward to seeing all students next week!

Yours sincerely,

Mr J Firth

Principal