City Academy Whitehawk

Mr Church’s Newsletter

9th February 2018

Year 4 had great fun with their Paragon event, making

Roman shields and testing out battle formations!

School has been a very busy place in the last couple of weeks and it has been great to welcome so many parents and carers to our Paragon events. We’ve had some really positive feedback about these afternoons and several parents have commented on how quickly they are developing this year. All of the Aurora schools’ Year 6 children come together in June at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings for a special Paragon event and we are very much looking forward to making our debut this year!

The Paragon topics change each half term and many of you may have noticed the brilliant display Mr Richardson has created in the front entrance opposite the Ambassadors display. Every half term this display is changed to reflect the current topic and this is already in place for the new topics after half term. Please have a look.

I’m sure all families are aware of Ofsted inspections but we had our first Aurora Peer Review on Weds 31st January. This is the Trust’s version of an inspection and throughout the day 10 Aurora Headteachers, Deputy Headteachers and other members of the Trust’s Executive Team conducted a full ‘inspection’ of the school. They looked at every aspect of the school including teaching in lessons, books, behaviour, learning environments, pupil voice (what pupils think of their school), parent voice, policies, premises, finances and many more features of our school. It was a very intense day for the staff but they all did a fantastic job.

Tim McCarthy (Aurora CEO) reported back many strengths, including:

  • Behaviour was good.
  • The school has a good plan for continuing to improve.
  • The children spoke very positively about the school and recognised the improvements in the last few years.
  • Presentation in books and marking has improved greatly this year.
  • The school has a very positive ethos and everyone is aware of our new ‘CAW Qualties’.
  • Learning environments are very good.
  • Welfare and support for families are a real strength.

Of course there were areas for development too and many of them centred around further developing the progress that we have already made this year and becoming consistent in our policies across the school. We have made many changes to the way we teach lessons and structure our days in school this year and, by becoming more consistent, we will have even greater impact on children’s learning.

One of the areas that was highlighted for improvement was attendance, which has dropped significantly in the last few months. While this is partly due to a sickness bug that has gone around, we know as a school we need to be working hard to increase attendance back towards our school target of 95.5%. We are delighted that Mrs Jackie Storey has joined us in the last couple of weeks as our new Attendance/Community Officer and she asked for a slot in the newsletter:

I am now coming to the end of my third week here as the new Attendance and Community Officer at City Academy, and I am really enjoying getting to know everyone – children, parents, carers, colleagues, families and lots of other people in the local community. Thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome.

This term we are having a real focus on improving attendance and punctuality for all children. As is the case with most other schools across the city, unfortunately school attendance overall has dropped since December – this is partly due to the high level of illnesses and bugs found at this time of year. The government’s Health Protection Agency has published some general advice to schools around preventing the spread of illnesses so we are reminding everyone about the importance of regular handwashing and disposing of tissues and handkerchiefs if we have a cold or a cough.

If your child is slightly unwell with a cold or a cough then please do send them into school, as they will usually feel better when they get here.

We have just sent out a batch of “Attendance Tracking” letters to parents and carers whose children have under around 93%, so you may receive a letter which is to let you know that their attendance is being “tracked”. Please phone me directly if you would like to discuss this in more detail.

Our whole school Attendance Target is 95.5%, huge congratulations to Kestrels class who have the best attendance this year so far!

Paragon Events

Y1: Thursday 22nd March

Y2: Wednesday 21st March

Y3: Tuesday 20th March

Y4: Tuesday 27th March

Y5: Monday 26th March

Y6: Wednesday 28th March

Term Dates 2017-2018

INSET day: School will be shut on Friday 15th June.