Dear Parent/Carer,
Happy Friday everyone – although it has been a short term, it has been an extremely busy one, both inside of school but also in the wider community.
Newcastle Youth Council & Parliament Elections
I was absolutely delighted with our students' response to the recent Newcastle City Youth Council Elections. It really captured the imaginations of our students and on polling day, things reached fever pitch! Our three JPA candidates manifesto’s were publicised around school and there were very long queues at break and lunchtime at the polling box! I have said this before, this is exactly the type of active citizenship and leadership that I want our students to become really active in. We had a total of 922 votes cast in total with no spoiled papers! Our JPA candidates were Sarah and Samer in Year 8 and Jeevan in Year 9. The results were announced at a special ceremony at the Civic Centre the following night. I am delighted to announce that Jeevan came third in the entire city and is now a Deputy Member of Youth Parliament and a member of the Youth Council. His Youth Parliament role will see him travel down to the Houses of Parliament in London in the future. Samer was also fortunate to be voted in as a member of the Youth Council too. Unfortunately, although Sarah came very close, she was not successful this time round. Sarah had a brilliant campaign and her manifesto was brilliant. We certainly expect and will support Sarah standing again in two years’ time. There were only four Youth Parliament places and twelve Youth Council places out of over 60 candidates to be voted for so our students did very well indeed. I want to thank, in particular, Sarah Beeley our Careers Leader for organising our three students to nominate themselves and Lorraine Aspinall one of our admin staff for her brilliant administration support with publicity and promotion of the election in the lead up to and on the day.
The link below takes you to the Newcastle City Council X/Twitter post about the Newcastle Youth Council elections. Sarah, Samer and Jeevan are a real credit to us!
https://x.com/newcastlecc/status/1768578935665647783?s=48&t=7YkVoZJdO4XdDiO1oJfp_Q
We hope to build on the success of the fabulous Youth Elections and mirror something similar with students able to nominate themselves and then have a vote for Year Group and Whole School Councils. We will be speaking to our students about this after the Easter break.
Jesmond Park Academy Careers Fair
We held our annual Careers Fair on Friday 22nd March. We were delighted to welcome 35 exhibitors into our school from a wide range of businesses, training providers and education sectors both locally and nationally. 1000 students from Year 6, Years 9, 11, 12 and 13 attended the event. Our Fair is a key part of our Careers strategy and provides a great opportunity for our students to meet and talk with adults from a wide variety of sectors. Once more, conversations ranged from the simple, 'what is your job', ‘how much do you get paid’ and 'do you enjoy it' to asking about sensible approaches to next steps after Year 11 and Year 13 and onto discussions around ambitious aspirations for higher education and careers beyond university. Once more, this was a great showcase for JPA as our students were a real credit to our school. Quotes from our exhibitors included ‘The quality of student questions was outstanding', 'Student behaviour was exemplary throughout' and 'they were very switched on, asked pertinent questions and were a credit to your school'. There will be further photos from our Careers Fair in the next edition of 'Parklife'. Our Careers Fair is one of a number of key Careers events that we hold through the year. In the summer term we have Work Experience for our Year 10 students and mock interviews for our Year 12 students. If you think that you could support us with Work Experience, mock interviews or indeed would like to be an exhibitor at our Careers Fair next year please contact our Careers Leader Sarah Beeley (sbeeley@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk).
Year 10 Work Experience support
Nigel Holmes and Sarah Beeley held a live Teams event last night offering advice and support for Year 10 Parent/Carers helping their children secure a placement. A video recording of the TEAMS meeting and associated PowerPoint is being emailed out to all Year 10 Parent/Carers before the Easter break.
Year 11 Updates
A number of Year 11 parents attended the live Teams event last Thursday which gave practical advice about how to support your child in the run up to their final GCSE exams in the summer. We realise that this forthcoming period can be a stressful time for both students and parents, but there are plenty of strategies that can help.
The recent mock examinations ran smoothly and we are pleased with the results. The students have now gone through several mock examinations through their time at Key Stage 4 and they know how they have to prepare if they want to be successful. Feedback from students was generally along the lines of, ‘for the subjects that I revised well for, the exam went well’.
You will also have received your child’s Year 11 report recently along with their exam timetable and this gives further information about areas they will need to prioritise.
After Easter, there will be three Period 7 sessions per week, taking place on a Monday, Wednesday and Thursday beginning on Monday 15th April until Wednesday 8th May. The 4-week programme of compulsory Period 7 revision sessions will be a mixture of subject specific support, led by a subject teacher and some guided independent revision and study, where students are expected to bring in their own study materials. Students are expected to attend all Period 7s allocated and on these days, school will not finish until 3:30pm. The Period 7 sessions take place in a range of classrooms and spaces across the school depending upon the type of Period 7. Our Period 7 sessions have proved very successful in the past, particularly in terms of ethos, attitude to learning, and preparation for examinations and we feel that it is the ideal preparation for the exam season.
We will continue to write to you in the lead up to our GCSE examinations to keep you fully informed of all of the intervention and support planned for our Year 11 students. Please be reassured that academic support and health and wellbeing support for your child are as equally important to us.
If you would like any further information regarding how to support your child, then please contact one of our Year 11 team in school:
• Mr C Mason – Head of Key Stage 4 (CMason@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk)
• Mr Cleland/Mrs Clark – Heads of Year 11 ACleland@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk
/NClark@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk)
• Mrs A Winship - Year Manager (AWinship@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk)
• Mr G Henderson - Year Manager (GHenderson@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk)
Admissions for September 2024
Some good news in terms of our Year 7 offers for next year. We had a record number of applications with 1018 parents naming Jesmond Park Academy on their application forms. 415 parents put our school down as 1st preference. We have offered 360 places and have a huge waiting list of 280 students for Year 7. Although it is good to be in demand, it does highlight the issue with school places in Newcastle at this moment. Our official Pupil Admission Number is only 310, but we have again offered more places to help Newcastle Council out with a shortage of school places.
What is important to me is that more than 325 of those places offered are from our seven local feeder schools. This has gone up from only 64% of our total places in 2021 to 90% of our places in 2024. This is superb news in terms of winning back the hearts and minds of our local catchment. Thank you to all those parents who have supported the school and helped restore its reputation.
Wellbeing support in school
JPA has had a strong wellbeing focus for over 12 years with a School Counsellor (Mr Hardaker), CBT worker (Miss Hutchinson) and Wellbeing Manager (Mrs Earle), who individually deliver bespoke programmes to students. Young people can now access further social, emotional and wellbeing support at school, thanks to JPA’s partnerships with Streetwise and NUFC. We have appointed an additional School Counsellor, (Mrs Hearons) who will start in the Wellbeing department after the Easter holidays. Mrs Hearons will provide a Key Stage 5 provision to support our older students.
The Teenage Mental Health section of our school website providing parents with key information has been updated. Please follow this link to read through the mental health offer at JPA: Teenage Mental Health (jesmondparkacademy.org.uk) -https://www.jesmondparkacademy.org.uk/about-the-academy/school-information/parents-information/teenage-mental-health
Furthermore, there is also a flow diagram to help parents decide when they need to talk to a medical practitioner about their child.
Streetwise has been working with JPA for over two years. The services provided by Streetwise are mainly delivered from the dedicated Streetwise Hub on the school site. The students at JPA are supported in various ways by Streetwise.
The Youth Workers deliver impactful and tailored interventions to students within school. These interventions range from healthy relationship large group interventions, to small group community or drugs based interventions, to 1:1 interventions around friendship or sexual health. The Streetwise Youth Workers have formed excellent relationships with vulnerable students in school and helped to advise them and support them through some incredibly difficult times. The Youth Workers are highly visible and have delivered whole year group interventions. They are truly integrated within the school community.
Students at JPA are also supported by the mental health professionals employed by Streetwise. Counselling and CBT sessions are delivered from the Streetwise HUB for students ranging from Years 7-11. Wellbeing workers deliver mentoring sessions within the school building to younger students as a proactive intervention to equip students with strategies to allow them to be more resilient to mental health issues in later years. Liaison with CYPS as well as the School’s own Counsellor is strong, providing an enhanced delivery of mental health support in school.
Furthermore, alongside the Streetwise interventions, the school is supported with bespoke interventions delivered by NUFC. Inspiring and educational classroom sessions on topics such as team and confidence building skills and enhanced social interaction, has allowed numerous students to benefit from the interventions. In addition, JPA also benefits from a NUFC liaison officer who proactively engages students in the wider school setting.
It is hoped that early support will reduce student mental health deteriorating to levels where significant interventions are needed. The students who receive the majority of the programmes are selected using a range of pastoral information, however, students can access the Streetwise Hub via a drop-in at 2.40 pm on a Tuesday. From the drop-in, appointments can be made with Streetwise staff the following week.
Sporting Success
The PE department and associated staff continue to ensure that a comprehensive programme of inclusive and competitive sport continues to take place beyond the school day. On the competitive side of sport, the school has entered competition at local, regional and national level, having particular success in football, indoor athletics, netball, cross country, basketball and girls’ cricket. We even had our first competitive rugby fixtures that we have had in the school for over 6 years.
As usual, our basketball teams are in dominant form. Last Friday saw the U16s and U19s win their ‘finals night’ at the Newcastle Schools Finals, played at the home of the Newcastle Eagles. Well done! Our U16s Basketball team has also reached the quarter finals of the National Cup, the furthest it has made in this competition in our history and this match will be played after the Easter break. On the basketball front, we are delighted to announce that Jesmond Park Academy has been awarded Basketball England’s “North East Education Institute of the Year’ award for the second successive year. A big thank you to all of the staff, coaches and students involved in the programme.
In general terms, as we move into the summer term, please ensure that your child is aware of the different enrichment opportunities that are available for the summer sports.
Finally, I wanted to wish our skiers from Year 10 the best of luck as they head out to Italy over Easter. I hope everyone has a superb time and come home safe and intact! For the remainder of the students, I hope they have a restful break over the next two weeks.
Thanks to everyone for making it a great term!
Yours faithfully,
STEVE CAMPBELL
PRINCIPAL