Newsletter 7 - 30th April 2021
Welcome back to all of our colleagues after what I hope was a proper Easter break. Some good weather and a bit of down time has, I hope, recharged batteries and allowed for a decent rest. Even better if you finally managed to catch up with friends and family in a garden, tent or pub beer garden.
I am fully aware of the enormous pressure on our secondary colleagues to produce CAGs and generate the evidence to back them up. I have read every school’s policy and I am sad that all I can offer is empathy and moral support for the huge task that has befallen you. I hope very much that ASCL’s campaign against the random submission of evidence for selected pupils required by Ofqual within 48 hours of asking is successful. The only positive is that the current methodology should, at least prevent last year’s grading disasters and disappointments.
The “Everybody’s Invited” campaign has caused a great deal of concern at the DfE, and rightly so. Schools are being asked to examine antidiscrimination and harassment policies and to honestly reflect on the experiences of females, BME students and staff, students and staff with disabilities, and those who are LGBTQ. It is likely that there will be tightening up of policy and implementation and we all need to ask ourselves some difficult questions about the culture of inclusion and safety in our schools. It is fantastic therefore, that the school based reports in this newsletter reflect some of these themes, illuminating some of they key issues.
This is not an unwelcome piece of work. It feeds into our curriculum reviews and our regular behaviour and safeguarding audits. There are exciting opportunities for tackling sexism, decolonising the curriculum, reflecting on the contribution made to society by marginalised groups and for working across all of our schools to ensure that everyone is indeed invited and included. I am very much looking forward to contributing to these conversations over the coming weeks and months.
Finally from me, we have decided to issue these Trust newsletters monthly after this one in order to reduce the administrative burden on colleagues who are producing the content. I will therefore next write towards the end of May. I am, however always contactable via my email: heathl@uffculmetrust.org and would be delighted to hear from you. Have a great long weekend!
Lorraine Heath
News from the Schools
Axe Valley Academy
We have had a really happy return of staff and students to Axe Valley post easter and the beautifully sunny days have definitely lifted everyone's mood. Being able to open the field at lunch time and have so much going on is wonderful to see.
We'd like to thank the site team at Holyrood for all of the support they have given to the AVA site team. Since taking this photo we now have a beautifully marked field and athletics has begun in earnest and we are very grateful. Watching the sport and enrichment really take off again is bringing lots of happiness!
We'd like to extend a warm welcome to our newest addition to the team, Catherine Cooper-Germscheid. She has joined us to do specific English intervention work with Year 10 across the summer term and already the small group intervention has been received incredibly well by the year 10 students.
I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all of the wonderful staff at AVA for their hard work and support across this period, especially surrounding the preparation for the Summer 2021 examination grades. I really hope that people get to make the most of the lovely long bank holiday weekend! Some might say Line of Duty followed by Bank Holiday Monday is the ultimate dream.
We have some vacancies advertised at the moment including:
• Full time Pastoral Support Co-ordinator
• Full time teacher of Technology
• Teaching Assistant.
I'd also just like to remind people that a wonderful Year 11 student, Martha Shuell, is current raising money for Marie Curie. She is doing a skydive on 1st May. We are holding a non-uniform day to add to her already successful fundraising (currently over £700) and we hoped that some people reading this would be willing to donate to a wonderful cause. Marie Curie Nurses provide highly skilled care in hospices and in people’s homes across the UK, day and night and their trained volunteers and advisers offer practical information and support when families don’t know what to do next or just need to talk. We think this is a wonderful cause and a very brave act!
You can read more about Martha and her charity sky dive, from 15,000ft in our newsletter
Axe Valley Academy | Newsletters
GoFundMe link. https://www.gofundme.com/f/marthas-fundraiserskydive
Laura Jenkins
Holyrood Academy
This week is 'Be Kind Week' at Holyrood! During the course of this week, students have been spending time during tutor time considering issues of kindness, discrimination, racism, homophobia and bullying. This was introduced in assemblies for each year group. We spoke with the students about issues of discrimination that exist in the world and within our local community. We also spoke of the importance of acts of good manners and kindness and how these have a ripple effect, making our school a happier and more pleasant place. Importantly, we know that the opposite is also true: acts of unkindness and unfriendliness have a similar but negative effect.
Issues of racism, bullying, sexism and homophobia exist everywhere (including at Holyrood) and we were clear with the students that as a whole community, we have a duty to call them out and report them where we see or hear of them. We encouraged the students to move from knowing a little about discrimination to being better informed (the purpose of this week) and more willing to take a stand against words and actions that discriminate against others. We also reassured the students of the actions we take if discrimination occurs. It was such a heartening and powerful experience to speak with our students throughout this week about the actions they intend to take to keep our community safe and to speak up when they witness these.
We are interviewing for D&T and English teachers over the coming week and so I hope to be able to make some strong appointments to enhance our D&T team and to replace the amazing Sarah Elder who has achieved promotion to Second in English at Robert Blake School in Bridgwater. We were very fortunate to be able to appoint Bethany Howley, who will be known to some colleagues after her placement at Uffculme School, as a Teacher of Science in September. This is following Caz King's well-deserved promotion to Second in Science at Sidmouth College.
It has been such a pleasure to welcome our students back from the Easter break and I do hope that colleagues in other schools have had a positive and productive start back. Enjoy the long weekend!
Dave MacCormick
Neroche School
Great to be back after the Easter Break.
The staff are enjoying their newly refurbished staffroom courtesy of the Holyrood site team and their hard work over the break. Staff now have a fresh relaxing space to use at lunchtime thanks to the hard work of Barney, Chris and Richard who now also support Neroche as part of our extended site team. A new kitchen area has been installed, a breakfast bar has added additional seating capacity and fresh paint and flooring all add to the attractive staff space now on offer at Neroche to support staff well-being, rest and recuperation in the day. A great example of Trust level working and support.
New dedicated SENCO storage and intervention space has been developed to ease the SEN provision at the school and increase the 4 effectiveness of intervention time. This has seen an increase in interventions on offer and the newly organised spaces have reorganised the accessibility of SEN resources.
Our wrap around care has returned to the pre school building enabling the children easier access to the outside spaces to enjoy and increase the use of our environment now the weather has improved.
Donated water butts have now been installed around the school site thanks to the kind support of the local builders, Grinters and local business’ thanks to the Eco Council’s campaign.
As a school, we are taking part in the Sunflowers for Somerset initiative and took delivery of individual packets of sunflower seeds ready for the children to take home. They are looking forward to taking part in the scheme, growing their sunflowers and contributing to the County wide initiative.
Children at Neroche have been invited to take part in the Ilminster Rotary annual poetry recital as part of the Ilminster Literacy Festival. Neroche have taken part in this festival for a number of years achieving success over time. We are looking forward to hosting our internal school competition to select our school representatives for the literacy festival. It would be great to have some judges from across the Trust for this event, even though we will have to modify how we hold this due to the COVID situation.
Children have enjoyed lunchtime sports activities now the weather has improved with the use of Sports Premium funding to encourage lunchtime sport participation. The use of our new Moki interactive sports bands has also raised a heightened interest in being active throughout the day with children trying to achieve the greatest number of steps. Our Year 6 children have loved working with Sarah Rose, the Holyrood Transition Worker this week. We have been lucky to have Sarah at Neroche for 2 and a half days at the start of this term.
Our Year 6 children have had the chance to get to know Sarah and learn how she will be able to support them in September when they transfer to Holyrood for the next phase of their educational journey. Sarah has enjoyed her time with us and has been able to support the children in class and answer their questions, dealing with any transition concerns. A great initiative developed by Sam Davison at Holyrood and it is great to again work at Trust level with Holyrood in this way. Plans are under way to develop a Year 6 leaving experience and series of events to mark the end of their Primary years in place of what would have been a residential opportunity for them this term.
Plans to recruit a new Clerk to the Local Governing Board are moving ahead in collaboration with Uffculme Primary as a joint school role. This again reinforces Trust wide working, something that Neroche has really benefited from just one term after joining the Trust family.
We have welcomed Frances Coleridge, Emma Lawrence and Rosie Taylor to the staff team this term and are looking forward to the return of Dawn Glibbery after her Maternity Leave.
A happy and healthy start at Neroche to the new term.
Ali Collins
Uffculme Primary School
The children have had such a wonderful and settled first week back, and there has been such a buzz about the learning over the past two weeks. It really has been a pleasure seeing all our wonderful children and staff working incredibly hard; they are all such a credit to the school.
The atmosphere at school has been such a positive and hopeful one, and as things in society are gradually beginning to return to ‘normal’, we too are planning a full Summer timetable of whole school events and we are hopeful that plans will go ahead, one way or another. We are planning on holding a sports day, KS2 production, presentation evening, Year 6 leavers’ activities, information evenings for new parents, Art Day, Music Day and many more events.
Our No Outsiders scheme has now been launched and we are enjoying our weekly assemblies around certain No Outsiders within society. This week, the theme centred around a video that went viral of five-year-old Paige Tobin on a skateboard. In the video, she drops in to a 12ft skate bowl, whilst wearing a princess dress with rainbow socks and a leopard print helmet. We then discussed perceptions, individuality, and gender equality.
It is that time of year again when swifts begin to return to the UK and a few swifts have been seen in Uffculme over the past few days. Usually, by the middle of May, the established breeding pairs are settled at their nest sites and as the summer progresses, these breeding birds will be joined by immature birds prospecting to join the colony. It is these immature birds that we hope to see adopting the school’s new nest boxes.
We would like to say a huge congratulations to Kerry Heathcock who has been appointed as a TA at St Andrews Primary School in Cullompton. We are incredibly sad to see Kerry leave Uffculme Primary School as she has been such a dynamic, valuable, and hard-working member of staff who will be sorely missed by children and staff a-like, but we would like to wish you all the very best for your new role.
Our new Literary Worlds signpost in the library…we apologise if we lose any of the children in Narnia or Mr McGregor’s Garden
Fraser Wallace
Uffculme School
The start of term has been busy for Personal Development at Uffculme. Last week we marked the 27th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence: all students held a session as a reminder to every one of the important parts we all play in creating a society in which everyone can flourish and where everyone is treated with fairness, kindness, and respect.
This week we launched Period Equality (otherwise known as Period Poverty but we opted for more positive language). All students have access to free sanitary products and can also request more sustainable products from the Head of Personal Development. AFaB (assigned female at birth) students have had an assembly about the initiative letting them know how and where to access the products as well as some important Health and Safety information.
Our AMaB (assigned male at birth) students have also had a tailor-made session to help them understand all things periods; our aim is to create a kind and more compassionate society by not just limiting our education to things we need to know for our own benefit. The Senior Council have the job of monitoring stocks and sensible use of the scheme - we're sure it's going to be a success.
The winners of our House Winter Photography Competition have been announced – many congratulations to all who took part, the year group (and staff) winners and particularly to Esme Batchelor of Craddock House whose entry was judged to be the overall winner.
Alan Blackburn
West County Teaching School Alliance
We are delighted that we can finally release information about the new Teaching School Hubs and our involvement. The 750 Teaching Schools across England such as WCTSA will cease to exist at the end of August. These have been replaced by 87 centres of excellence for teacher training and development called Teaching School Hubs (TSHs). Teaching School Hubs will provide high-quality professional development to teachers at all stages of their careers.
The two TSHs for this region (Colyton Grammar School and Kingsbridge Community College) have joined up to form the South West Institute for Teaching (SWIFT). We are delighted to be working with SWIFT as one of their strategic partners. Through this, we will play an integral role in the new Early Career Framework (ECF) roll out for Early Career Teachers (ECTs) and continue our Appropriate Body role for ECTs across the region.
I know we already have a number of ECTs joining UAT next September, and I am delighted that Beth Howley our School Direct Biology trainee will be joining the team at Holyrood. Congratulations also go to our School Direct Physics trainee Mark Padfield, who has secured a role at Cullompton Community College.
Every ECT across England will from September be entitled to a fully-funded two-year package of structured training and support linked to the best available research and evidence. The package of reforms will ensure new teachers have dedicated time set aside to focus on their development. After a very successful pilot year trialling the face to face and online training programme, SWIFT has chosen to work with Teach First as its Early Career Framework National Provider.
Please do check out our new website for more information about SWIFT and give us a follow on Twitter AB@SouthWestIFT
https://www.sw-ift.org.uk/
Middle Leader Course
We were absolutely inundated with high quality applications for our upcoming New/Aspiring Middle Leader programme. We are delighted that 7 amongst the successful applicants, we have one participant from each of the UAT secondary schools on the programme. Thank you so much to everyone that put in an application. If unsuccessful this time, we hope to place you in the next cohort.
School Direct Trainees
Our School Direct Trainees have this week returned to their main placement schools and are now moving into the Developing Independence stage of their training - taking on responsibility for the planning and delivery of whole lessons and sequences of lessons. It has been great to have them back in school and we wish them the best of luck with the last two months of their programme. Despite expanding for next academic year, our School Direct programme is almost full. If you or someone you know is interested in training to teach, please do contact us to find out more
https://www.wctsa.org/get-teaching
Jen Knowles
Health & Wellness
We are now offering Physical Wellbeing Check-ups, including blood pressure checks, muscular and core fitness, cardio vascular fitness levels and healthy weight distribution.
Your personalised check-up comes with help and advice on how to improve your physical health
Book an appointment at www.uffculmetrust.org/wellbeing
Please add a note to your booking letting me know that it’s a health check-up
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
• Teacher of Spanish & French
• Teacher of Design & Technology
• Teaching Assistant
• Pastoral Support Coordinator
https://axevalley.devon.sch.uk/information/vacancies/
• Uffculme School
Assistant Headteacher / SENDCo (Inclusion and SEND) https://www.eteach.com/job/assistantheadteacher-sendco-responsible-for-inclusionand-send-1146254
• Cover Supervisor – Internal UAT Candidates only
