Dear Parent/Carer,
I am writing to thank you all for your support at the start of this term, as always; it has been a busy one! I am particularly grateful for your support of the testing days in the first week and of the ongoing covid-measures. We have followed government guidance and stopped requiring the students to wear masks again, although they can choose to continue to do so of course. We are still managing the school within some form of “bubble” timetable and our school transmission rates have still not peaked to a level that has necessitated any change to our operations so we remain confident that we are being as sensible and measured as we can be at this time.
I am very proud that we are now being able to develop our offer again so that it is much more “normal”. This includes being able to run trips, extra-curricular clubs and events – and mock exams! If you are a parent of a student in Y11 please tell them how proud I am of their conduct this week, they have been extremely motivated and mature – and given that they have had no opportunity to practise exams in this way I think this is greatly to their credit.
Y11 are also engaging well with the extra hour at the end of the school day to enable some additional teaching time and our catch up and tuition offer is now benefiting many students in all year groups; our staff are delivering this themselves so that we can maintain continuity and I am so grateful to them for this, it means the students are getting a good provision.
Academisation:
Today I am able to tell you that Kingsway Park High School will join Altus Education Partnership on 1st February. This means we will join Rochdale Sixth Form College and Edgar Wood Academy in an organisation with a deep moral purpose and commitment to Rochdale, and I am very pleased to be able to be part of it.
I also want to share with you that, along with Altus, I have been working hard this year (my first real, non-lockdown year in post!) to try to understand the strengths and areas for development here at Kingsway as I am deeply committed to making sure that the education we provide here is the best it can be. There are definitely some key areas we need to focus on, I am very aware that not all of our practice is as good as I believe it can be – and some of this is down to what has been a very disrupted couple of years. There are also great strengths here that I am very proud of - and I will share some of my evaluation of this with you in the coming weeks, but I want to take this opportunity to reassure all of you that my job here is to recognise need and drive continual improvement and I will always do all I can to achieve the best for our community. I am very confident that, with Altus’ support, we can create a truly exceptional school here, where all students have access to the best possible set of opportunities.
Thank you all, as always, for all your support – and have a lovely weekend,
Yours faithfully
Mrs J Langley
Headteacher
