Friday 29 April 2022

Raising Expectations

As I begin to get to know the staff and students at The Bulwell Academy, I am keen to build on our core values: Respect, Resilience, Creativity, Ambition and Kindness.

Our new Attitude To Learning ‘growth mindset’ programme will be officially launched in September. However we have decided to introduce a small aspect of it starting from 16 May to offer our students the chance to go on our exciting end of year rewards trip to Alton Towers.

The programme is all about encouraging individual student accountability and decision-making, and ensuring that students who are consistently get it right and are great learners are recognised and rewarded.

As a result, we hope to be inviting the majority of students who consistently get it right to go on our end of year Alton Towers trip during the penultimate week of the summer term.

To qualify for the trip, in the period from 16 May students need to have:

Over 250 *new* rewards points
100% attendance (attend every day and on time)
Less than 20 negative behaviour points
No time in Reset
No suspensions

Students invited on the trip will be asked to pay £15 to attend Alton Towers. The remaining cost including coach transport will be provided by the school.

I am sure that those who gain a place on the trip will have a fantastic day with their peers, especially as the students have earned the privilege by having a positive mindset, contributing to the calm and purposeful learning environment, and displaying great behaviour and commitment to their whole school life.

More information regarding the trip will follow shortly, but the dates for your diaries are:

20 July for Years 7 and 8;
21 July for Years 9, 10 and 12

I am really excited for our students as Covid has prevented so many external visits like this for such a long time, and it will be lovely to see them enjoying such a well-earned enjoyable day.

Parents as Partners

This week we welcomed our Year 7 parents into the Academy for their first in-school parents’ evening since Covid. The event was very well attended by many parents who made the most of the opportunity to meet with subject teachers to learn about their child’s progress and to find out how they can support their child to improve their learning moving forward. Year 7 families also benefitted from being able to meet with myself, all Senior Leaders, the Year 7 Pastoral Manager, Mr Leith and our SEND team to discuss any further support their child might require. All in all, a resounding success!

The final Parents’ Evening of the year will take place on Thursday 14 July for Year 9. Further information will be sent to parents/carers nearer the time.

I was also delighted to meet with more families during my ‘Meet the Principal’ session this week. The conversations held with parents were really positive and I enjoyed meeting even more of our families. Thank you for taking the time to come to speak to me.

The next ‘Meet the Principal’ date is on Tuesday 10 May between 4pm and 6pm. If you would like to make an appointment to see me, please book your appointment here: bulwellacademy.schoolcloud.co.uk/

Wishing you all a great Bank Holiday weekend.

Sara Wildes, Principal

Important Notice

Site Safety

To further improve our site safety, we will be opening our main front gates at 7.50am. This will be the only entrance and exit for students for the current time. We are working with our site security team at Head Office to assess the site perimeters with a specific focus on the gates and the way our students arrive and leave site every day. We will be announcing new measures to improve and enhance current levels of site security in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I am sure you will agree that it is really important our students can leave and arrive onto site safely, and we will be encouraging them to enter the premises and not stand around in the local vicinity.

For this reason, we are asking that no adult tries to access or exit the site during the time slots below:

7.50am – 8.10am
2.50pm – 3.10pm

We ask that parents/carers support our efforts to encourage students to enter the site immediately on arrival and to not ‘hang around’ the community. We also hope this will better support our neighbours as we look to improve student behaviour whenever they are wearing school uniform and are representing the school.

If you are at the school gates during the times above, staff will ask you to please move away from the exit/entry and wait away from the steps for the 20-minute periods to allow all students a safe entry/exit. I hope you understand this is purely to keep children safe.

Please can I ask that all adults needing access to the site outside the above time slots use the gate intercom system to enable us to log all visitors correctly. Thank you for your support with this.

Weekly News Round-Up

Good luck to Year 11

Year 11 completed their French and German orals this week which marked the start of the GCSE exams. We wish our Year 11s all the best over the coming weeks as the exam period gets underway. You can access the full exams timetable here: bulwellacademy.org.uk/main/students-2/exam-information.

After-school revision and support sessions will continue for Year 11 right up until the end of exams. The sessions will vary each week with students being provided with a new schedule at the beginning of each week. Please encourage your child to attend to give themselves the best chance of success.

Raising attainment

Exam preparation begins long before Year 11 to ensure our students achieve the best grades when they reach their final exams.

This week, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, Careers Manager, Mr Turner, launched a five-week programme with Year 10 called Raising Attainment with Resilience. The techniques learnt throughout the programme aim to help participants maintain their academic performance during times of challenge and pressure such as exams and assessments.

There is also a range of support for Year 10 through catch-up and intervention sessions as part of our after-school programme.

Period Positivity

Through the government’s Period Poverty funding, we have been delighted to offer our female students either a free mooncup (menstrual cup) or washable sanitary pad. The take-up of the eco-friendly offer has had an extremely positive response from girls in Years 7 to 10.

We have also placed a free supply of disposable sanitary products in all girls’ toilets for students to use without having to ask staff.

If you have any questions about the scheme or would like more information, please email alice.wealleans@bulwellacademy.org.uk.

School Catering News

Next week we are launching our new school menu which will see our children enjoy a variety of dishes from across the globe. The new menu has a three-week cycle and can be found on the Parents and Student sections on our website: School Meals ⋆ Bulwell Academy.

Students can enjoy a hot meal or baguette with a dessert for a fixed price of £2.10. Jacket potatoes will also be available on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and pasta pots on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The new menu will operate until the summer holidays.

If your child has any special dietary requirements or you would like any further information about our new menu, please get in touch with our new catering manager: karen.ainley@aspens-services.com