Welcome to this week's newsletter
Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.
We are delighted to be back and to see all the students and staff. The school is once again a place of vibrant chatter, warmth and smiles. We are looking forward to a year of academic success brought about through proactive learning, hard work, excellent attitudes and ‘Ambition’. This will be interspersed with exciting events beginning with Competitions Week and including Duke of Edinburgh and theatre trips, sports fixtures, Matilda production and many more. Please encourage your child to get involved in as many opportunities as possible. The more they do, the more they feel like they belong, the stronger friendships they form, the happier they become and the more they benefit.
We would also like to introduce our new staff, starting with Assistant Principal and Senior Leader link for maths, Mr Ian Cooper. Mr Cooper will be an invaluable asset to the school. Thank you to the parent who has already been in contact to thank him for the impression he has made with her daughter on his very first day. I promised Mr Cooper when we recruited him that by joining Manor School he would be joining a generous and kind wider community and you have already shown him how we live our values together. Thank you.
Elsewhere, Mr Okorie has joined us to teach science, alongside Mr Khan in geography/humanities. We are also delighted have Mrs Hall as a new cover supervisor. In addition, Mrs Edmonds and Mrs Hammond have joined as Pastoral Support Officers, giving daily support to all the children as part of the wider Pastoral Team.
Please talk to your children about making each of them welcome and embracing them into the school community. We all need to do our part in recruiting and retaining the highly skilled staff at Manor School which your children deserve.
Have a great weekend.
Dr Newman and the Manor School family
Additional teacher training (INSET) day
In response to feedback since September, our leaders have been working hard to develop the next stages of the strategy to improve key areas the education we provide at Manor School. In order to increase the rate of progress in these areas, the Nene Education Trust have approved an additional teacher training (INSET) day for Manor School staff.
In order to use this time effectively, this will be split over two afternoon sessions. This means that the school will be closing early for students in Years 7-10 and Year 12 at 12:35pm on both Friday 26 January and Wednesday 7 February. An education provision will continue for Year 11 and 13 groups on these afternoons, and we will direct all other students towards appropriate learning that they could complete at home on these afternoons.
Exam certificate collection
Exam certificates for our 2023 Year 11 and Year 13 leavers can now be collected from main reception during school hours (8:30am-4:40pm).
Students must provide identification when picking up their certificates. A proxy can be nominated to collect the certificates on behalf of a student, but that proxy must have signed permission from the student concerned. Reception will not release certificates without proof of ID or proxy signed permissions.
Current Year 12 students (who attended Manor for the 2022-23 academic year) will receive certificates for any external exams they sat at the end of Year 11.
Please note that the majority of BTEC certificates were handed out with results slips in August 2023.
2024 GCSE physics exams
Following a consultation, the government have announced that full equation sheets will be provided to students for their physics exam papers in the summer 2024 exam series. This applies to both separate sciences and the combined science courses.
The official 2024 equation sheet will be released later this month but the exam board we use has confirmed that the sheets will be the same as the 2023 ones and that students can use these for revision and exam preparation. These can be found on the AQA website here.
In practice, this means that students should focus less on remembering the equations and more on what they mean and how to use them. Your child’s science teacher will guide them on how to do this effectively.
Currently there are no plans to provide the full equation sheet for the 2025 exam series or beyond, but parents/carers of students in Year 10 may wish to write to their local MP to find out if this is likely to change as it has done this year.
Competitions week
The second competitions week of this academic year is taking place from Monday 8 to Friday 12 January. There are a number of opportunities for students to earn points for both themselves and their house by entering the subject competitions outlined in the poster below. We are strongly encouraging all students to take part in as many competitions as possible.
Students will receive 5 enrichment points for every entry they submit, with these points going towards the overall house point totals.
We will be announcing subject winners in a future edition of this newsletter.