I write this latest update just a week or so shy of our first lockdown 12 months ago and here we are preparing (fingers crossed) to come out of what we all hope to be the last. I need to thank every one of you for the efforts that you have put into continuing to work for and support all of our children and young people. Whether that has been in school keeping everything going, supporting key worker and vulnerable children; or from home juggling the demands of remote learning alongside everything else, your time, energy and commitment have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

From Monday our corridors, classrooms and playground will once again be filled with children and young people. Exciting as this is, I am mindful that some of you may also be feeling anxious about the change. Please do talk to your line manager or members of the senior team if this is you. Hopefully as the weeks go on, more and more of us will be vaccinated and we can all start to relax and look forward to a summer with considerably more freedom and a lot more fun than the last 12 months have brought.

This week almost 600 children in Year 6 received offers of a secondary place in one of our schools. Even better, 65 of those attend our primaries and will transition from one UAT school to another. It fills me with enormous pride to think that parents trust us to educate their children all the way through their school life – up to and including preparation for university and beyond. It is both a privilege and responsibility to do what we do and, once again, I have to say thank you to all of you for the part you play in nurturing and educating our children and young people.

News from the Schools

Axe Valley Academy

We, like all schools I'm certain, are so excited to have all of the students back next week and as such this last fortnight has been largely focused on planning their return. I cannot thank all of the AVA staff enough for all the work they have done in preparation and in particular the LFD testing team who have worked relentlessly and moved mountains over recent weeks and continue to do so. It will be exciting to be able to get back to what we all do best face to face. I think we are all in agreement remote teaching is exhausting!

Our site team have made incredible headway on improving the site inside and out and the freshy redecorated Performing Arts block looks beautiful. Uffculme Academy Trust 2

A huge thank you to Shane and the team for the superb work done - and it still has the staff portraits adorning its entrance.

At the end of last term Richard Watts was successfully appointed as Second in Department for Science and we are delighted to welcome him to the middle leadership team. In staff news we'd like to congratulate our lovely PASCo Sandie Tregale on becoming a nanny again. Mum and baby are doing well and Sandie is understandably over the moon.

We currently have a vacancy for an English Intervention Teacher with a start date of 19th April 2021. It is a full-time post and fixed term contract for the rest of this academic year. If you know of anyone who may be interested in this please do contact me via email ljenkins@axevalley.devon.sch.uk

Laura Jenkins

Holyrood Academy

Another half term, another set of Government announcements! However, this time, we get to welcome all students back which is really exciting. I am so grateful for the continued hard work, pragmatism and resilience shown day-in, day-out by our members of staff who continually go the extra mile to make sure our students get the best service from us. I know this is the same in all our Trust schools.

We are delighted for Luke Iles and his wife who welcomed baby Alexander at the end of last week, born at 11:17pm on Friday 26th February, weighing 8lb. Congratulations, Luke! We all hope you are getting some sleep and are pleased to hear that everybody is well.

Over the half term holiday, Kayleigh Armstrong led a fantastic activity for staff and students to run, walk, cycle or otherwise exercise their way around the distances between the Six Nations stadia. It was a great event to be involved in, thank you Kayleigh! Particularly impressive was the contribution of Megan Vaughn in Year 9 who cycled 175km over the week.

Rob Crocker and I were proud to lead the first UAT Secondary Senior Leadership Network meeting input over the past two weeks, on the theme of 'Instructional Leadership'. We were able to share our learning from the DfE's Exemplary Leadership Programme and were able to discuss and learn from the other Senior Leaders from other Trust schools. This was really enjoyable for us and hopefully useful for others involved.

Finally, we have another exciting vacancy at Holyrood which I am pleased to advertise across our Trust. We are looking for a Head of Sixth Form 3 (maternity leave cover) to work with us for up to a year from May Half Term. This is a critical role for us, and we are looking for a candidate to be based at Holyrood for the year to lead our post-16 provision. Anyone who is interested should contact me at dmaccormick@educ.somerset.gov.uk for a conversation and details of how to apply.

Dave MacCormick

Neroche School

Plans for the wider reopening at Neroche have been the focus of the last 2 weeks. We are looking forward to welcoming all the children back on Monday 8th March. Risk assessments have been updated and shared with staff and everyone is keen to get a step closer to normality.

Children who have been attending our onsite provision are excited to have their whole classes back and children who have been patiently learning at home are keen to return to see their friends. A wellbeing experience is currently being planned for the children for the end of term where we are planning to utilise some of our Sports Premium grant. This will give an enhanced opportunity to try out some new sports and to engage in some teamwork activities. The extra day in school on 1st April has enabled this to have a bigger and much needed focus for the children.

The lockdown didn't stop us celebrating World Book Day with a 'Masked Reader' competition enjoyed by the children and live story times for the classes. Children are looking forward to being able to visit bookshops to spend their Government World Book day vouchers. Pupil Premium children have all received £10 book vouchers to develop their own book collections at home and support their love of reading and book ownership.

We have successfully appointed a temporary teacher for our Year 3 class while Mrs Oliver goes on Maternity Leave. We have had some highquality applications for our Pre School positions and are currently in the process of recruiting a new clerk to Governors. As a team, we would like to welcome our new appointments to the staff family.

The school grounds are starting to show signs of Spring and Mrs Dellow our Forest School leader is looking forward to the Summer term when we can re-establish our class Forest School sessions

Ali Collins

Uffculme Primary School

It has been another busy couple of weeks at Uffculme Primary School. The staff have been working tirelessly in preparation for the full return of children on Monday 8th March. However, that has not stopped the exciting activities that have been taking place within school and at home.

Year 6 children have been allocated their secondary school places and are becoming increasingly excited for their new journey.

On Friday 26th February, we held our Science Day. This consisted of children enjoying and learning about Science in different contexts. It was a successful day and the range of work, discussion and science knowledge that the children displayed was excellent.

Year 4 even managed to arrange a tour and a Q&A session with a scientist working on the Covid-19 vaccination at Oxford AstraZeneca.

Our thanks go to Bekah Wright for contacting the British Council and connecting with M.D Nursery and Primary School in Nigeria. This forms part of our International School Award work and will be a fantastic opportunity to work closely with children from a completely different culture. Year 6 will begin the process by contacting the Year 6 children in M.D Primary School and forming some brilliant connections. This will then be rolled out across the school to allow all children within our school to benefit.

Finally, we also celebrated World Book Day yesterday. Our whole school theme was the life and works of Roald Dahl. Children took part in a range of activities, linked to his stories. Children within school, and at home, took part in a costume competition, The Masked Reader and a toilet roll competition! The adults enjoyed it almost as much as the children! The day was a great success and a reminder of how special reading is and the joy it gives us all, especially during times such as these. Fraser Wallace

Fraser Wallace

Uffculme School

The major project to improve site security has now been completed and will be fully operational in readiness for all the students returning next week.

Lockdown has given many of us the time to read more and many of our Year 7 and 8 students have thrown themselves into this year’s Reading Challenges. In Year 8 students document their responses to a wide variety of reading tasks in beautifully presented and often illustrated reading journals and the 8B48 Challenge requires Year 7 students to read and review at least 8 books from a reading list which includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry – some have already achieved their Gold awards meaning they have read and reviewed at least 16 books.

A number of our students took part in an art competition run by Sustainable Tiverton which asked young people to imagine life in ten years’ time, thinking about transport shopping, food, environment. A number of our students were successful, including Emily Packam who was the winner of the 11-13 age group and the overall winner of the entire competition. In total 15 students will have their work exhibited by Sustainable Tiverton, as and when it is possible to do so.

Also, congratulations to CJ Allen in Year 11 who is already working towards a future career and has receiving a diploma in Interior Design. She has been working towards this over the past few months alongside her schoolwork.

Alan Blackburn

West County Teaching School Alliance

The teaching school has been a hive of activity and we have had a flurry of applications for the School Direct Course next year. Many thanks to the PSTs who have given up their time to interview for next year's cohort. We are currently assigning trainees to placement schools, and these allocations will be released very soon. We have expanded our offer this year, and it's great to now be able to facilitate places in Chemistry, RE and Physics, the latter two of which have proved popular course choices.

Our current cohort of PGCE trainees are coming to the end of their placements and are busy writing 5 their formative reports. They have played an invaluable role in supporting our keyworker children in face-to-face sessions and contributing to the online provision for their departments. We wish them luck in their new placements which commence on March 22nd.

Details are being finalised for the new/aspiring Middle Leader course which will commence in the Summer term. We have ten fully funded places available, and the application forms for this course will be released next week. Participants will attend five twilight sessions across the Summer and Autumn terms led by a number of leaders from across the alliance. They will also have access to four 1-1 coaching sessions. Places on this course are always popular so do look out for this arriving in your inbox if you are interested in this opportunity.

Finally, we are delighted that Marie-Therese Warren one of our School Direct Distance trainees has secured a Geography teaching role at Wadham School for September - Congratulations MT! Good luck to all those on interview over the next few weeks.

Jen Knowles

Health & Wellness

We have now launched the fab new booking system for the Wellbeing Service. You can now selfrefer and choose a day / time / location to suit you!

http://www.uffculmetrust.org/wellbeing

The Wellbeing service continues to offer our free Zoom fitness classes which you can take part in from the comfort of your own home.

Monday – 6.00pm Pump
Tuesday – 6.00pm Core & More
Wednesday – 6.00pm Pump
Thursday – 6.00pm Core & More
Saturday – 9.30am Dance Fitness*
Sunday – 9.30am HiiT

Zoom Code: 476 607 8001 Passcode: fitness * see
Facebook.com/uffculmesportsandfitness for weekly dance code

Amanda Woodward.

Trust Wide Vacancies

We currently have the following vacancies within the Trust.
Further details can be found on each school’s website or via the links below

• Axe Valley Academy
English Intervention Teacher
https://axevalley.devon.sch.uk/information/vacancies/
Closing Date: 10th March 2021

• Holyrood Academy
Head of Sixth Form (Maternity Leave Cover)
Closing Date: 19th March 2021

Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages
https://www.eteach.com/job/teacher-ofmodern-foreign-languages-1136140?lang=enGB&frmsrh=Y
Closing Date: 19th March 2021

• Uffculme Primary School
Part Time, SENDCo
https://www.eteach.com/job/part-time-sencoteacher-1131793
Closing Date: 5th March 2021

• Uffculme School
Science Technician
Closing Date: 12th March 2021

Catering Assistant
Closing Date: 11th March 2021

Links to both vacancies can be found at Careers at Uffculme School - Cullompton, United Kingdom, EX15 3AG | eteach

Future Newsletters

If you have any feedback or suggestions of items that you would like covered in future newsletters, please email gibsonp@uffculmetrust.org

Newsletter 4 – 5 March 2021