Our A-level Mandarin students visited Newcastle University's CIFA (Chinese Independent Film Archive) and attended their Chinese Documentary Film Screening event on Friday. The documentaries were eye opening as it revealed the inequality of education and social disadvantages in different parts of China.
The day was draw to a close with some dumplings and noodles at the Grainger Market, and of course some bubble tea!
Dear Parent/Carer,
Greetings everyone! As the sun finally shines down, it is time to bring you up to date with some of our latest news.
Inclusion Quality Mark
The Local Authority have asked Jesmond Park Academy to apply for the Inclusion Quality Mark Award to highlight the improvements that we have made in supporting students to succeed irrespective of their background and circumstances. If we are successful, we will be the first Secondary School in Newcastle to receive the award. We are very proud of the changes we have made in recent years and all of the wraparound care that we provide for all of our students. An action plan will be put in place to make further improvements and I will write to parents to receive their input in the process.
Jesmond Park Academy Careers Fair
Once more we held our annual Careers Fair on Friday 21st March and this year it was bigger than ever. We were delighted to welcome over 40 exhibitors into our school from a wide range of businesses, training providers and education sectors both locally and nationally. This year, a herbal pet company brought along their company dog which proved incredibly popular! Over 1000 students from Year 6, Years 9, 11, 12 and 13 attended the event and had the opportunity to talk to an incredibly diverse group of people. Our Fair is a key part of our Careers strategy to ensure that we fulfil and exceed our requirements for Gatsby benchmarks 5 & 7 to ensure that we provide 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’, 'do you enjoy it', 'what are your holidays like' and 'which celebrity would you like to employ' to asking about sensible and pragmatic approaches to next steps after Year 11 and Year 13 and onto discussions around ambitious aspirations for higher education and careers beyond university from our older students. As always this was a great showcase for our school and our students were a real credit to JPA. Quotes from our exhibitors this year included ‘We had a fantastic time, meeting loads of talented students and chatting about exciting opportunities', 'It was amazing to speak to so many young students, who had a real passion for entrepreneurship and loved hearing all about our story' and, 'There were lots of interesting questions from students today, definitely feel like my brain has had a workout!'.
There are photos from our Careers Fair on our social media pages including our Jesmond Park Academy LinkedIn profile. Our Careers Fair is one of several key Careers events that we hold through the year and 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) or Lorraine Aspinall (laspinall@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk).
Year 10 Work Experience support
Nigel Holmes and Sarah Beeley held a live TEAMs event on Wednesday 19th March, 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 available on our website.
Jesmond Park Academy Alumni
We are looking to see how we can begin to develop an alumni for ex-students of Jesmond Park Academy and our planning currently is in its infancy. We are going to put a QR code in a news section of our website where former pupils can register an interest in supporting our school. If you are or you know of anyone who is a past pupil of Jesmond Park Academy or any of its previous incarnations, then we would love to hear from you. The QR code will be going live on our website on Monday 7th April. At this stage it will ask for contact details, when you attended the school and give you the opportunity to state how you think you could become involved with the school. We would give several suggestions regarding this. As I have said, our planning is currently in its infancy at this stage. If you would like the opportunity to ask further questions regarding this then please contact one of our Deputy Principals Nigel Holmes (nholmes@jesmondparkacademy.org.uk).
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 examinations in the summer. We realise, this forthcoming period can be a stressful time for both students and parents. There are plenty of strategies that can help.
The recent Mock Examinations ran smoothly and we are pleased with the outcomes. The students have now gone through several mock examinations through their time at Key Stage 4, and from this 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 have also received your child’s Year 11 Report, this gives further information about content they will need to prioritise.
Before the Easter Break, we intend to give your child their Examination Timetable, which will also be emailed to parents/carers. They will also receive a comprehensive booklet that shows all of the lessons and examination interventions that are in place to support them. This will take place before, during, and after school to support the students throughout their exam season. Students will also receive a revision support pack, which includes materials to help them with their revision over the Easter period and beyond.
During the Easter Break, there will be some revision sessions taking place; these are for invited students only. If your child is invited to attend, we strongly recommend that they do so, as we have found them to be hugely beneficial.
After Easter, our ‘Period 7’ sessions continue until the start of the Summer Examinations, please remind your child that attendance to these are compulsory.
Period 7 revision sessions will be a mixture of subject specific support, led by a subject teacher. There will also be some guided independent revision and study, here 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 examination 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.
Lunch Price changes
We all recognise how difficult times are in terms of increasing costs in society. However, we need to inform you about an imminent increase in our prices for school meals.
Newcastle City Council provide school meals to all schools within the Gosforth Group. Newcastle City Council have recently announced that they intend to increase the cost of school meal provision to £3.00 per meal from 1st April 2025. This will mean that school meals within the Gosforth Group will increase from £2.60 to £3.00 after the Easter break on 28th April 2025. This change does not impact free school meal provision.
Finally, If I don’t get time before Easter, I wanted to wish our skiers from Year 10 the best of luck as they head out to France 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
Our U15 Girls’ team capped off a great season with a thrilling victory in the City Cup final against Gosforth Academy. It was a tense and hard-fought match, ending 2-2 in regular time, with goals from Zahra and Georgia. With everything on the line, the game went to extra time and then a dramatic penalty shootout, where Jesmond Park Academy held their nerve to emerge victorious. A huge credit goes to the entire team for their hard work, determination, and teamwork throughout the competition. They fully deserved this well-earned triumph. What a fantastic way to end the season—well done, girls!
We will be running revision sessions over the Easter Holidays for selected students in several subject areas. These extra revision sessions will be taught by Jesmond Park Academy Staff, and are part of our continued drive to support our students’ progress in the run up to the Summer Examinations. If your child has been selected it is because their class teacher believes that they will greatly benefit from the revision session. We strongly encourage students to attend and make the most of this extra revision opportunity. Students that have been selected received a letter in school and an email will be sent to parents/carers.
Following the "How to support your child in the build up to the summer examinations 2025" presentation, please find the download below.
The last Eight of the National Schools Competition
As a very successful season starts to draw to a close the JPA U16 Basketball team found themselves as Newcastle Schools League Winners, Newcastle Schools Finals night winners and Tyne and Wear Champions. The last competition to finish was the National Schools, having travelled to Didsbury in Manchester last week where we claimed our spot in the quarter finals, or as the basketball community like to say – The Elite Eight. The players now had to take on a metaphoric and literal huge challenge (look at the photo!) in the shape of Northampton International Academy.
The team struggled to get going early on as the Northampton coach has scouted the team prior to arriving and had a whole team plan of sitting in a zone as well as a specific plan to stop our point guard being able to get on the ball. This was a new challenge for the team but after falling badly behind, we started to get going finishing the quarter 21-29 down. Nye and Callum were particularly important for us in this quarter, this was great to see as they really gave Northampton something else to focus on and opened the game up for others. Northampton made a quick adjustment and annoyingly got even better offensively and finished the half 62-41 ahead, but importantly Ben B and Harry had started to become more influential attacking their players and getting them into foul trouble as Northampton realised that as coach Heath would regularly shout “Can’t guard you, blow by” and indeed they did.
An impromptu fire evacuation at half time allowed the team to reset and rethink our strategy, we had accepted that we couldn’t match their physicality and so decided to see if they could shoot and switched from a man to man defence to a zone defence ourselves, something we had never done before (talk about learning on the fly), Harry and Ben B got going scoring wise and we won the quarter 26 to 18. Back in the game. The final quarter was some of the best school basketball that you could wish to see with all players on court giving everything and the JPA players never taking a backward step, incredibly some even “putting it on” the bigger more athletic team and really going at them. Sadly we could never quite get over the hump and tied the final quarter 25-25 so all in all a 92-105 loss. It would be no surprise if like last year we have been beaten by the overall national champions. Scorers in this game Harry (42) Ben B (19) Mathew (13) Nye (7) Callum (7) Ben L (2)
As always this was a real team effort with everyone playing their part; that has always been and always will be the JPA way, play to people’s strengths and support each other. I can genuinely say that having been with this team for five years now, I have never ever heard a player have something negative to say about his peers, never a snipe, moan or groan or any questioning of what they are directed to do, players like that simply don’t exist at JPA. For a group as competitive as this, that is a huge achievement and more important than anything they have achieved on the court.
National Schools Squad this year
Harry, Ben B, Mathew, Nye, Callum, Bruno, Yousif, Ayan, Jakoby, Ben L, Nate W
Please find the recording of the Parent/Carer Year 10 Work Experience Teams Meeting held on the 19th of March 2025 below.
Last Friday our U16 boys travelled to Manchester to take on Didsbury High School in the last sixteen of the English Schools Basketball competition. As student athletes they didn’t waste the hours trapped on a mini bus, they took their study notes with them in preparation for the upcoming science assessments (Thank you Mrs Axon for the resources).
We knew that this was going to be tough before arriving but walking into the gym we were met by a team lead by a GB and England international and stacked with Premier and Conference National league players. However one thing we had in our favour was a great team, not lots of individuals, we had discussed this earlier in the week everyone knew their role in the team and they were ready to play it. The second thing that we have as a team is extreme positivity and confidence. As a great coach once said “ Where you see big – I see slow, where they see small – I see speed” that summed this game up as our speed and athleticism soon got their bigger more powerful players into foul trouble in what was a very tight competitive game of contrasting styles. We played fast team basketball, they played to the strength of their individuals.
I could not be more proud of the players, this is their best performance so far, and one of the best I have seen during the twenty plus years of taking basketball teams at the school. Nye was awesome on the boards again, Mathew played through the pain of an injured ankle to give us some valuable points in the paint, and of course a trademark three. Ali Yousif was awesome off the bench picking up an offensive rebound and put back that he really had no right to do, Ayan seeing out the final minutes of the game for us when others were flagging, Bruno, Ben L and Jakoby bringing energy from the bench when we needed it and Callum being his usual athletic self-playing great transition defence as well as finding the time to be an offensive threat going to the basket. The final pieces of the puzzle were our two guards who were simply unplayable, regardless how Didsbury came at them, big defenders, small quick ones or for a lot of the game double teaming them Ben B and Harry were offensively outstanding combining for 69 points (Ben 35, Harry 34). Those two may carry the “glory” but they will be the first to acknowledge that they could not have done what they did without the others and that sums up this TEAM. All that effort resulted in a 87-101 victory - amazing.
That leaves us to play Northampton International Academy at home in the last eight. 3 games to go to our first National Championship.
Dear Parent/Carer,
The Year 11 whole year group photograph is available to order. If you experience any difficulties placing your order please call Kittle Photographers using the following number - 01245 401313 - option 3.
When visiting the Kittle website, https://v6.kittleorders.com/kp/Home, if you do not have an account with them and haven’t ordered before, you can either scan the barcode or input the photo ID and password and this will create/set up an account for you.
If you already have an online account and have ordered before, you will need to select the ‘log in’ box on screen and log in with your email address and chosen password. Once you have logged in, you will then be able to either scan the barcode or input the ID and password to add the photograph to your account.
Once you have added the photograph to your account, it will stay in your online account for up to 5 years meaning you will no longer need the individual photograph details.
March madness has hit at Jesmond Park Academy as the basketball season starts to come to a close with the final fixtures of the various competitions coming thick and fast.
The U19’s finished the season unbeaten winning their Newcastle Schools final against RGS on Friday night. In a relatively comfortable final JPA lead from Tip to buzzer with a composed performance. The boys move the ball well and shot particularly well under the pressure of playing on the show court at the Vertu Motors Arena directly before the Newcastle Eagles home fixture. Particularly impressive performances in this game from Riley and Will.
Our U16’s were made to work somewhat harder against a very competitive Dame Allen side who came back from a four point deficit to take the game into overtime. With only seconds to play a fantastic defensive stand by Ben allowed Harry to go coast to coast for a game winning basket. That final play meant that the U16s also completed their 2024/25 season in the Newcastle School league undefeated. There were great contributions all round in a very balanced team performance, some outstanding rebounding from Nye and excellent shooting from Ben were the highlights.
JPA U16s were selected to represent Newcastle in the Tyne and Wear games. This is a competition that brings together the best sides from Newcastle, Sunderland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Gateshead. Across a busy schedule the boys managed to win all of their group games before dispatching Whitley Bay in the semi-final and then their old adversaries Dame Allen in the final to be crowned Tyne and Wear champions on top of their Newcastle victory. Fantastic leadership from Ben and Harry to see the team through some tight situations throughout the day.
This week the team travels further afield to take on Didsbury High School in the last 32 of the National Schools Competition – best of luck!
We are delighted to announce that Joseph and Denis, two of our outstanding Year 11 GCSE Physics students, have been awarded the prestigious Arkwright Engineering Scholarship.
This highly competitive scholarship is awarded to students who demonstrate exceptional aptitude in engineering, problem-solving, and leadership. Joseph and Dennis have shown outstanding dedication and commitment, successfully navigating the rigorous selection process set by the Arkwright Engineering Scholarships program.
As newly confirmed Arkwright Scholars, they will gain access to invaluable mentoring opportunities, industry links, and enrichment activities designed to nurture their future careers in engineering.
We are incredibly proud of Joseph and Dennis for this remarkable achievement, and we look forward to seeing how they continue to excel in their academic and engineering pursuits.
Well done to both students on this well-deserved recognition!
YEAR 10 WORK EXPERIENCE - MONDAY 14th JULY 2025 TO THURSDAY 17th JULY 2025
Live TEAMS Parent/Carer Year 10 Work Experience Presentation, Wednesday 19th March 2025, 4:30pm- 5pm
We are inviting Parents/Carers to attend a live TEAMs Parent/Carer Year 10 Work Experience presentation on Wednesday 19th March 2025 from 4:30pm to 5pm.During this meeting we will be talking through the plans we have to support students finding placements and offering a live chat to Parents/Carers. This will allow us to offer any advice regarding student placements via your questions. If you are unable to attend this event, we will record it and email a link to the recording.
The Teams Event link will be emailed to all Year 10 Parents/Carers on Tuesday the 18th of March 2025.