Principal's Update 2 February 2024

Dear families

Welcome to week 4 of this term. We have had a brilliant week this week, thank you for your support. I have a number of reminders and updates for you this week.

End of Term

We will be finishing at 12.20pm on Thursday 8 February for our half-term break. Please arrange any travel arrangements around this time. Students will be able to collect a grab bag before they leave should they wish to do so. On Friday 9 February staff will be taking part in a trust training day and therefore the academy is closed to students.

Attendance

Attendance has improved this week by over 2%; please continue to encourage your child to attend school. A reminder that the attendance recognition strategy is in place and so next week all students who achieved 100% this week will receive a prize and anyone above 95% or 100% with authorised absences (but no suspensions) will be in the prize draw. You should also be receiving attendance texts each Friday, but please note that these are 0.1-0.2 out of sync with the MCAS app currently. We are working with Bromcom on this issue but believe it is due to the precise moment the data is run vs when the app updated.

School Day

We are proposing some changes to the academy day to begin at the start of the 2024 academic year. The proposal is to change the start of the day to 8.25am and keep the end time at 3.10pm. The reason for these changes is to support students who are travelling increasingly further distances to be on time, support recruitment and retention of staff and bolster our intervention and enrichment offers. Lessons will be reduced to 50 minutes from 55 minutes and some subjects will be taught in doubles to mitigate this. The total learning time is still above that of many other local academies. I welcome the thoughts of the community and as such please send any comments to info@dixonsua.com with the subject ‘Academy Day Proposal’ by 29 February 2023. Following the feedback, I will communicate a decision on the school day before the end of the Easter term.

Pastoral Team Changes

Finally, I would like to communicate some changes to the pastoral team following the half-term break. Ms Honiwell made the decision to step down from her role after the winter break and will not be returning to the academy – we thank her for her work. I am delighted to confirm the promotions of Mr. Ryan, Ms. Crabtree and Ms. Rankin to the post of Head of Phase and the promotion of Ms. Green to the promotion of Deputy Head of Phase. As a result, some staff have altered which year groups they are working with, this is illustrated below. All contact details will be updated on the website in due course. Please note, this will be communicated to students next week.

Many thanks for your continued support. See you next week.

Mr A Jacobs

Principal