News Posts

Dear Families,

We hope students all had a lovely half term break, and you all managed to find some time to recharge and catch up with family and friends.

We've had a positive and productive first week back, with lots of great things happening across the school.

Assemblies

Assemblies this week were delivered to students by the Royal British Legion. We welcomed Paul and Lynne to Rushden Academy who talked about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and the topic of Risk and Reward. Students demonstrated our value of respect, asking important questions to our visitors about the work, and life experiences. 

Trips and Visits

We have had several trips out this week where we have been incredibly proud of our students demonstrating our #TeamRushden values. On Tuesday, four students attended the Royal Society in London to present their work on eco and sustainability projects at Rushden Academy. The students did incredibly well and our school has been invited to further meetings to showcase the work we are doing and to help shape future policy and practice in schools.

Several students also visited Waterstones at Rushden Lakes this week as part of our rewards programme to celebrate those students who are doing incredibly well with their reading journey and literacy work. Students had a group lunch in the library before spending time at Waterstones to choose a book of their choice. 

On Wednesday, two students supported the Service of Remembrance for Schools in Rushden Town. Our students contributed to the service by reading a poem and it was lovely to receive some wonderful feedback from the Royal British Legion who arranged the event. 

Thank you so much for allowing your two pupils to attend the Service of Remembrance for Schools today, which was so successful. They read the poem beautifully and with such feeling, they did your school proud.

Assessments

This half term students will be completing their Progress 1 Assessments. For students in year 11, these will be mock exams sat in the hall. Some year 11s have completed some final exams as part of their BTEC courses, and will continue to work on submissions for parts of their course. Students in all other years will be completing assessments in lessons. You may notice that your child is a little anxious about these assessments, or that they are worried about how they perform. We want to reassure you that these assessments allow us to check your child’s understanding, and it enables teachers to plan future lessons to address any gaps in learning, or signpost students to further interventions or support from other school staff. 

To support your child at home, it is important to ensure that they have a quiet space to complete any revision or homework, and it is important to ensure that they take regular breaks and have downtime between revision sessions or home.

Parent Engagement

Following up on our last newsletter, we would like to run sessions for parents to meet myself and other leaders over the course of the year. It is important that these sessions focus on the areas that you want to hear more about so I would like to invite feedback via a very short survey so we can address the most pressing issues first.

Please click on the link below to select your top three topics that you would like to hear more about, and question leaders on. We will then arrange these sessions over the remainder of the academic year.

Parent Engagement Survey Link

I will share the details from this survey with you next week.

We hope you have a great weekend, and we look forward to seeing all students on Monday!

Mr J Firth

Principal

Dear Families,

It has been a wonderful week to end what has been a long half term. I had the pleasure of visiting all of the rewards assemblies this week, and hearing about all the fantastic work students are doing. It was lovely to hear all of our form tutors talking about who had been selected for their tutor awards, and to hear each Head of Year talk about the students they had chosen for their personal development awards. We are so proud of all of our winners this half term, but we are also so proud of all students who consistently work hard in lessons and live and breathe our #TeamRushden values. It is amazing to see that we have awarded a whopping 260,151 Team Rushden Points so far this academic year. This is a huge achievement for all our students, and we look forward to seeing how students choose to spend their TRPs in our rewards shop from next half term. 

Building Update

I wanted to provide families with a brief update regarding the issues with B Block. We have now secured the services of a project management firm to oversee the repairs and developments to B Block. Meetings are scheduled for next half term where we will be able to start the process of planning the repairs. Once we get started with this process, we are confident that plans will move quickly and I look forward to keeping you updated with more information as the project progresses.

ParentKind Partnership

I am pleased to announce that we have partnered with ParentKind, a national charity that works closely with parents and schools to improve the life chances of children, students, and their communities. As part of this partnership, we are working on their accreditation scheme to become a parent-friendly school. We have worked hard over the past 12 months to improve our communication and relationship with parents, and with this partnership we are excited to be able to take our engagement even further. 

Next half term, I will be introducing a session where parents and the community can come into the school to talk to myself and other senior leaders about key development areas. You will have a chance to hear our plans to develop each focus area and ask any questions you may have. To ensure maximum accessibility, we will run the same session twice: once during the daytime and once in the early evening. I will share more details, along with the focus areas for each session, after the half term break.

Toilets

Over the half term, we are adjusting our access policy for the main toilet areas to better ensure student safety and reduce disruption to learning. This decision has been made in direct response to student voice, which commented that toilet areas can sometimes feel unsafe at peak times.

The main toilet areas will not be accessible during the following restricted times, they will remain open at all other times.

• 8:25am to 9:00am (Morning Closure): Closed from the 8:25am bell through to the start of Period 1. Students should use the toilets before school (open for breakfast attendees) or ask permission from their Period 1 teacher after 9:00am.
• 2:35pm to 3:00pm (Afternoon Closure): Closed 10 minutes before the end of Period 5 and through PM Form Time. They will re-open at 3:00pm for students before they leave.

Medical Exemptions: We have made specific provisions for students with medical requirements. Staff have briefed students on these changes this week, and updated toilet passes will be issued upon return after the half term.

Access during the day: Toilets will continue to remain open throughout lessons. Teachers will continue to use the yellow toilet card pass system to manage lesson-time access and encourage students to use the facilities during supervised break and lunch times.

PE Excellence!

We are excited to share that our PE faculty have been shortlisted for the Secondary School Sports Award from the North Northamptonshire Active Communities Award. The team is delighted to receive this recognition for their continued hard work, commitment and dedication. 

Ethos Update

Mr. Noblett would like all families to know that his time with Rushden Academy is coming to an end, and he will be leaving us at Christmas. Mr. Noblett has been instrumental in supporting the school’s personal development programme, coordinating and leading programmes that target key issues and provide support for individuals when they need it most. We thank him for his dedication and wish him all the best for the future.

Have a wonderful half term and we look forward to welcoming back all our students on Monday 3rd November.

 Mr J Firth

Principal