Dear Parent & Carer
I would like to welcome our students back and hope they had a lovely restful break. We have started this half term off by discussing our collective responsibility to make our school a better place to learn and feel safe.
We have explored ways in which we can co-operate together, pioneer in our approach and develop our sense of belonging in order to do this. We have also started a detailed conversation about eradicating the use of derogatory language, in particular linked to racism, through developing our culture and understanding in this area.
Although our start has been mostly a positive one, there have been a couple of areas of misconception and misinformation that I would like to address.
You may be aware of a national Tik Tok trend that has emerged where students are protesting at schools across the country about rules that they believe to be unfair. We had a small number of younger students on Monday who felt compelled to involve themselves in this trend. They used Tik Tok to attempt to spread inaccurate and potentially damaging information about the school while organising an attempted protest. Although I encourage all of our students to have a voice and stand up for their rights, this must be done in an appropriate way and must be based on fact, not opinion or gossip which is spread through social media. We have started this process in our last vision lesson before the break where students have written to me about ways the school can be improved as well as engaging our community in a student voice survey to seek out their valuable opinions.
As such I feel it is only right that I address some of these rumours so that as a community we can work together having a collective responsibility to achieve our mission of creating a world class learning experience for all. We pride ourselves on providing accurate information so that you can hold balanced and reasoned conversations with your child, and so for this reason, I wish to draw your attention to the misinformation.
Since becoming the Headteacher of our school there have been no changes to the:
- Behaviour Policy
- Make-up and Uniform Policy
- Punctuality process and timing of the day
Areas where we have raised standards:
- Greater consistency in the implementation our policies and procedures (please find on our website).
- Fighting or assaults resulting in a suspension.
- Persistent disruptive behaviour resulting in a suspension.
- Thoroughinvestigation takes place before any suspension is agreed and a planned reintegration meeting will always happen on return from suspension.
- Students have begun to report issues before physical conflict arises so that preventative work can take place.
- Students and staff havebeen told to be excessively clear when they report incidents of derogatory language so that they can be investigated and addressed by the pastoral team.
- Use of toilets during movement between lessons has been stopped to prevent truancy, lateness, vandalism, vaping and students mis-using the toilets by going into cubicles together.
Please note, all students have access to the toilet before school, at break and at lunch. Also, those students with medical passes or an identified issue can still use the toilet during lessons. We encourage our young people to take personal responsibility and treat them as individuals capable of preparing themselves for learning. This means that once they begin learning, they can fully focus on gaining knowledge and making academic progress.
In order to move the school forward we need your support and partnership to continue our journey of improvement together. We need you to discuss why the standards and expectations above need to be followed to remove any distractions and diversions which may impede our students ultimate success in terms of outcomes. Only through this collective responsibility can we achieve our goals.
If you have any questions, please contact the school on info@kingswaypark.org and one of our team will be in touch.
Kind regards,
Simon Ward
Headteacher
