Dear Parent / Carer

I hope you have all had a lovely weekend, despite the cooler temperatures compared to the baking heat we had last week! I am pleased to be able to provide some further updates on where we are with the school building, and to share some further details on our phased approach for getting students back into school. We are extremely grateful for your understanding and patience during this time.

Firstly, parents and carers of those in year 11 will have received a message via MCAS outlining the next steps we are taking to support students after the May half term holiday. After the half term, students will be in school for bespoke revision sessions to help them prepare for their GCSE and BTEC exams. We hope the details in this message will help you plan effectively for each exam, and to help you understand when your child should be in school. Where sessions are not applicable, students will not be required to stay in school. However, we will be offering a study space for those students who wish to remain in school to support their revision. Attendance at each revision session is compulsory.

Over the past week and a half, the team have been working incredibly hard to prepare and plan for the return of year 10 students. We are pleased to confirm that year 10 students will return to school full time from Monday 12th May. Students will need to be in full uniform. Students will have an assembly in the Lecture Theatre at 8:30am to go through the site expectations and to provide them details of where lessons will be taking place. Students will also be introduced to the STARR Card which has been a huge success with year 7 students. After the half term, we are mindful that year 10 students have several busy weeks of mock exams and work experience, and we will explore ways to ensure how we can best use this time to enable other year groups to return to school. More details will follow on this in due course.

With year 10 students returning to school next week, I know that parents of students in years 8 and 9 will be wanting to know when their child can return to face to face learning. Having completed the plans for year 10 to return, we can now move to the planning stage for year 8 and 9 students. Our intention is to have students in school for several sessions prior to the half term where we can deliver face to face lessons to students. Inbewteen these days, students will continue with remote learning. Following the half term, we will be able to increase the amount of time year 8 and 9 students are in school as both year 11 and 13 students will be finishing their courses and more space will become available in school. I will continue to provide updates on this over the coming weeks. 

With regards to the condition of B Block, there have been several developments with our plans to make the building safe. Work on the indemnified scaffolding plans to secure the panelling has been completed and we will be able to proceed with the installation of this structure as soon as possible. When we have further information about timescales, and what this means for the reopening of the building, we will of course keep you posted.

Please continue to check your MCAS account, school website, and our social media channels for further developments.

We hope that you have a lovely weekend, and we look forward to seeing year 10 on Monday, and years 8 and 9 very soon!

Yours sincerely,

Mr J Firth

Principal

Dear Parents/Carer,

It has been amazing to see how well students and staff have adapted so quickly to our temporary new normal. Attendance to virtual lessons has been positive, and in addition to these lessons we have been working really hard to ensure that students in year 10 who are mid way through their examined coursework units have had the opportunity to come into school to work on this.

In addition to this, Miss Kinsman has worked with form tutors this week, for students in all years, on our first Rushden TREAT (Team Rushden: Everyone Achieving Together) initiative. The aim is to provide opportunities for all students to be playful, and have some fun in their form groups. The theme for this week was for each form to create a band made up of #TeamRushden staff, including details of why they have been chosen. Students have excelled themselves with the final two bands going to the vote. The finalists are ‘The Four Leaf Glovers’ and ‘The Garden of Ede’. Details of the winners, along with some brilliant AI modified photos, will be shared on our social media channels.

It was brilliant to see year 8 students and their parents at their progress evening on Thursday afternoon. Our anti-bullying team shared a display to showcase the excellent work they are doing on anti-bullying in school and it was lovely to hear such wonderful feedback on how well they all conducted themselves and showed the very best of Team Rushden. Following on from this, we are actively looking at other ways to get students into school as much as possible to support their learning and social engagement. In addition to opening up all after school enrichment activities, next week the library is going to be running a book swap event for each form after school. This will be an opportunity to come into school, exchange your reading book, and talk to your friends, form tutor, and other staff in school. 

In preparation for the new academic year, we would like to inform you that we will be making a small alteration to the school uniform policy. Where students choose to wear an optional jumper, they will now need to purchase a Rushden Academy branded jumper from our uniform suppliers; this will be the only acceptable jumper to meet the expectations of the uniform policy. This will ensure that expectations are consistent for all parts of the uniform. Further details of our uniform policy can be found on the school website. These changes will come into effect from 1st September 2025. On the theme of uniform, we are conscious that students who wear skirts are starting to roll these up to make them incredibly short. From next week tutors will be challenging this and reminding students of our expectations.

Finally, as part of my promise to keep you updated with regards to the situation with our B Block. I can inform you that I met with staff from the Department for Education this week to discuss the building, and the impact this is having on our community. The full and comprehensive structural survey report is due next week giving details of any further actions that can be taken. However, in the background we are continuing to liaise with engineers on the scaffolding design, though they cannot progress until the final report has been shared and once this occurs, there will be a further wait time of at least 2 weeks for this to be designed and constructed. We are also liaising with providers of modular buildings as a temporary measure to resume face to face lessons. However, with this plan, there is around a 12 week lead time to get this solution in place and operational. Local alternative venues are also being explored.  Once we have the final report, we will meet with the Department for Education again. In the meantime, I will be working closely with the senior leadership to see what other solutions we can put in place to open up the school to more students.

We hope you all have a wonderful and restful bank holiday weekend, and I look forward to sharing more news with you next week.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Firth 

Principal