Dear Parent/Carer,
As we reach the end of this half term, I wanted to write to you all to say a big thank you to our school community. The students have been working extremely hard since the reopening and the behaviour has been impressive around the school. This would not happen without the support of students, staff and parents all working together.
I have talked in depth in previous bulletins about the ongoing recovery programme so I will not repeat myself here. However, the extended Period 7 programme for exam classes will start again after half term and we are pleased with how this is going. On a connected note, Year 11 received their Mock Examination results yesterday and generally, there was a positive feel, with many students getting what their hard work has deserved. For some, it was a timely reminder that they still need to put in the hours if they are to reach their full potential.
Summer 2024 League Tables
The final, validated GCSE and A Level results were published last week. We are pleased that for GCSE, we had a positive value added score overall again, despite the challenges posed by a number of our students needing additional intensive support in the year group. The Newcastle City ‘league table’ can be found here: https://www.jesmondparkacademy.org.uk/media.ashx?id=10666 showing that JPA came fourth out of the twelve qualifying schools.
For A Level, there is no official value added measure due to the fact that the pandemic meant no exams were sat for this year group when they were studying for their GCSEs. We are pleased with our results. Although it looks like our attainment is only average compared to national figures, this is largely because we are an inclusive Sixth Form with lower entry requirements than some Sixth Forms. We have always achieved positive value added in previous years, when you take into account starting points, and we are confident that we will continue to do so when this measure is reinstated this year.
Enrichment opportunities for our students at Jesmond Park Academy
We update the overview of our weekly enrichment programme fairly regularly. The link on the following page takes you directly to the list of current clubs and activities taking place throughout the week that we advertise on our website. These clubs will continue throughout the academic year. The majority of the PE clubs will update after the Easter break when we move on to summer sports. As always, please encourage your children to partake wherever possible in our range of enrichment activities. As I have said before we firmly believe our busiest students are our most successful students.
https://www.jesmondparkacademy.org.uk/_filecache/f30/03d/10537-clubs-at-jpa-1st-half-spring-term-2024_.pdf
In other enrichment news you may already be aware that Newcastle City Council are holding Youth Council elections in March 2024. I feel very passionate about further developing the leadership skills of our students and engaging them in citywide young people initiatives such as this. We already have a number of our students competing for candidacy and they are in the middle of writing their manifestos to be published in the lead up to the election. We are proud of our students for registering and we wish them the very best of luck. We are registered to be a Voting Centre for the Election on Thursday 14th March 2024. All of our students will receive a ballot paper and will have the opportunity to listen to different manifestos from young people across the city prior to voting day. Obviously we hope they pay very close attention to the manifestos of our students. I will update you in my next newsletter as to how our students progress.
On Thursday 28th March, we will be having our now annual ‘Day of Culture’. This has been excellent on the last couple of occasions that we have organised this. We will write to you with more details of this after the half term break.
World Book Day
We will be celebrating world book day again on Thursday 7th March. This will include activities such as each Tutor Group decorating their form room door with their favourite book. We have a number of other activities planned throughout the week and you may have been informed of these already via the regular English newsletter sent from the English department. We will inform you of other activities after the half term break. Celebrating World Book Day is obviously part of our wider initiative to create a school-wide reading-friendly environment that empowers our students to become lifelong readers and learners. To support this, like last year, we will be giving away reading books to our year 7 students at our Year 7 Parent/Carer Evening on Wednesday 28th February. We also now have a book ‘giveaway’ stand in our reception area for parent/carers who may wish to borrow or take a book away to read. We are always grateful to receive donations of books into school that we can put to good use with our students. These can simply be dropped off at our main reception. If any of our parent/carers have any ideas of how to further support our culture of reading, you may have contacts with organisations that we do not have for example please contact Nigel Holmes (Deputy Principal, Curriculum) nholmes@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk who will be more than happy to discuss your ideas with you.
National Careers Week
We are celebrating National Careers Week again this year. It takes place all week from Monday 4th March until Saturday 9th March. National Careers Week (NCW) is a one-week celebration of careers guidance across the UK and the aim is to provide a focus for careers guidance activity at an important stage in the academic calendar to help support young people develop awareness and excitement about their future pathways. Activities during the week will include building resources into form time and lesson time where possible, requests for external employer speakers, completion of NCW resources (such as pledges and career pathway door signs).
I have talked before about careers support continuing to be a focus for our school. We have just undergone reaccreditation of the IIAG (Inspiring Information, Advice and Guidance) Quality in Careers Standard Award. Although we have not received official confirmation of the outcome, the process was very positive so we hope to report successful news when the reaccreditation is ratified just before the Easter break. In terms of student contribution to careers, we now have over 20 student Careers Champions. Jesmond Park Academy were part of the pilot Student Careers Champions programme. This has now being scaled nationally. We are very proud of our Student Careers Champions.
On Tuesday 30th January, we took our entire Year 10 student body (340 students) to the, ‘My Future My Choice’ Newcastle City Council Careers Fair. We are holding our own Careers Fair on Friday 22nd March for all of our Years 9, 11 and 13 students. There will be a variety of business and university sectors represented. All of our Year 10 students and a number of our Year 12 students will be undertaking work experience during the yellow week of the summer term.
We pride ourselves at JPA at having a substantial Careers package, which involves quality Careers Education and a wide range of Careers based events.
We have asked before but if you think that you can further enrich our student experience and offer support with any of our Careers related events coming up such as being an exhibitor at our Careers Fair, contribute to Careers’ talks to students during National Careers Week, offer work experience placements for our Year 10 or Year 12 students please email our Careers Leader, Sarah Beeley (sbeeley@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk) with your details.
Upcoming Events
In the next half term, we have a number of important events which are coming up.
- Wednesday 28th February. Year 7 Parents’ Evening. We have already written to you with details of how to make appointments for the evening. The deadline to make appointments is Tuesday 27th February
- Thursday 14th March. Year 12 Parents’ Evening. Our Sixth Form Team will communicate with you after the half term break with details of how to make appointments. It will be organised via SchoolCloud
- Thursday 21st March. Year 11 ‘How to support your child in the lead up to the final GCSEs’. It is likely that this will be a live TEAMs event. We will write to you with more details after the half term break
- Monday 25th March. Our Second Year 13 Parents’ Evening. Our Sixth Form Team will communicate with you after the half term break with details of how to make appointments. It will be organised via SchoolCloud.
- Thursday 28th March. Last day of the spring term. The school day finishes at 12:15pm
Finally, it only remains for me to wish you all a restful half term break and the opportunity to spend quality time with your friends and family.
Warm regards.
Yours faithfully,
STEVE CAMPBELL
PRINCIPAL