Welcome
Dear Families,
As we approach the final two weeks of the term we are proud of the very positive start the majority of our students have made to the new academic year. Visitors to the academy have been commenting on the settled feel when walking around the school and visiting classrooms.
It was lovely to see so many Year 7 parents at the ‘Meet the Tutor’ evening on Monday. There was a lot of very positive feedback with a large number of parents saying that the negative picture the local press paint of Lodge Park has not been what they or their child has experienced. Working in partnership with our parents will help that smooth transition from primary to secondary. It has been pleasing to see so many of year 7 getting involved in a variety of House competitions which will help them develop that sense of belonging.
This week’s Character Assembly delivered by Heads of House have focused on ‘Connections’, whether that with friends and family outside of school or in school with your tutor group or House and showing your gratitude and investing in the people you care about and we launched Black History Month. Our Year Group Assemblies in the afternoon have been expertly delivered by Mr Cronin looking at the premise of becoming an independent learner and using a step-by-step guide to develop problem solving, skill development and knowledge retrieval.
The Year 11 mock exams start on Thursday 7th November and staff are busily putting together revision resources to help them revise over half term. Mr Cronin will be running a webinar on how families can support their child during that period. Details will be sent home to KS4 parents. Assessments for years 7-10 will also happen in Autumn term 2 and information will be sent home in relation to when the assessment window starts, how and what students should be revising.
Coming up in the next two weeks we have Deal or No Deal for the House competition, Year 11 Parents’ Evening, the Harvest Festival for year 7 and the Ravens' Programme continues. Please continue to encourage your child to actively and positively engage with all that Lodge Park Academy is currently offering.
Warm Regards
Senior Leadership Team
Year 11 Parental Engagement Evening – Tuesday 15th October (Please note date change)
We are very much looking forward to welcoming our Year 11 parents into school on Tuesday 15th October 2024 to discuss the progress of students and their preparations for the forthcoming KPI (Mock) Examination Series in Early November.
Please do all that you can to attend this essential evening. Your support in guiding, advising, supporting and encouraging our Year 11 students will play a huge role in their success this year.
Working together, we can achieve great things.
Mr McGeown – Vice Principal
Uniform – Winter Coats and Hooded Tops
As the winter weather draws in, please can I ask that you do all you can to support the school in ensuring that we maintain the highest of standards with regard to uniform.
We are currently seeing an increase in the amount of students that are arriving to school in hooded tops or sporting jumpers which students then expect to be permitted to wear inside the school building.
Please be aware that we expect all students to be in our designated LPA Uniform at all times, and please also be aware that outdoor jackets are not permitted inside the school building. This is no different to the expectations in a many schools up and down the country.
Where students are finding the weather to be cold, please be advised that we have an LPA jumper that can be worn above the shirt and tie and beneath the blazer. However, no other jumper will be permitted.
Thank you for your expected support with this.
The Senior Leadership Team.
Welcome to the English Department at Lodge Park Academy:
Dr King
Fate’s fickle fingers find me favourably lodged in the sylvan splendour of the academy once again. I have returned to the school after six years teaching away in Leicestershire and now looking forward to the challenges of being the Head of English and an Assistant Principal. I could never choose between the harmonious beauty of language and the myriad possibilities of literature, so studied both to a postgraduate level and still unashamedly obsess over the two. In those fleeting moments away from reading a narrative or extolling the virtues of grammatical constructs, I enjoy watching sport and occasionally taking part.
Ms. Corbally
Five years ago, I arrived in Northamptonshire as part of my own 'escape to the country' and found myself working in Lodge Park Academy as an English Teacher and Lead Practitioner for Literacy. Today, I am an Assistant Principal for Teaching and Learning. The real joy in my working day is exploring meanings in literature texts, looking for hidden interpretations and considering how important literature is to understand the world around us. The pupils in Lodge Park Academy are fantastic: intelligent, funny, perceptive and generous. I am really lucky to be part of the Lodge Park family and I hope your child is too.
Ms Gates
I am the Head of Red Kite House and an English Teacher at LPA. I’ve been at Lodge Park since 2021. At first I taught Media to Sixth Form and then Computer Science to KS3 alongside English. My favourite thing to teach is creative writing because nothing makes me happier than watching a student fully embrace and express their imagination. Outside of school I like to spend time with my family and cooking new vegan dishes.
Ms Shanks
This is my sixth year of teaching English at Lodge Park Academy. I would like to think that I am a calm, considerate, caring form tutor to my lovely Year 9 form and an enthusiastic teacher of every aspect of English. I always look for and hope to find the best in people. I would like to think that every student can be inspired to learn something by reading a good book or getting to know a great character in a good book. As you would expect, there is nothing I love more than curling up with a cup of coffee and a good book.
Mr Clifford
I have had the joy of working at Lodge Park Academy for over a year now and enjoy inspiring a love of literature in my students. Outside of school, I enjoy playing guitar and watching films.
Ms Felix
'I have been teaching at Lodge Park since 2014 and love teaching English because it provides unique advantages, including building bonds with my students and opening new doors so that they view English in a different light. Outside of school I enjoy travelling and meeting new people.'
Miss Webster
This is my first year at LPA and within the DRET community, and so far it has been a whirlwind! My favourite book to teach is The Odyssey, as I love Greek mythology and the study of myths and legends as a whole. I am also interested in Etymology - the study of the origin of words and the development of their meanings. I am Northamptonshire born and bred and in my spare time you will often find me going to the theatre or listening to music. I have quite the polyJAMorous playlist!
Dr Steenkamp
I am Dr Ute Steenkamp (Director of Diversity and Inclusion) and in my second year at LPA. I have been a teacher of English for 18 years (6 years in Essex and the rest in South Africa). I love painting, reading and conducting research in my spare time.
Mrs Sherwin
My name is Miss Sherwin and I am currently in my third year at Lodge Park Academy. I love teaching English - especially anything to do with Shakespeare. I am always inspired by the insightful interpretations that students are able to come up with. English is a fantastic subject because it allows pupils to look at the world through different lenses. Through reading, we are able to experience a multitude of lives and experiences. In my free time, I enjoy reading, walks in the countryside and spending time with my cat, Milo.
Mr Elhasbaoui
I started my teaching journey back in Morocco after I finished my Bachelors degree in English literature and taught English and Drama for three years. I came to the UK to complete a Masters in Drama at Essex University in 1994, then decided to complete a teaching qualification in the UK in 2000 as a French teacher. I worked in five different schools in four different regions in the UK, including London. I worked in Corby for five years before deciding to apply to join Lodge Park Academy. As well as teaching English I also teach Drama this year, and I am also the Designated Safeguarding Lead at the Academy. I enjoy cooking, cycling and writing poetry in French and English in my spare time.
Attendance
As many of you will be aware from publicity in the press, and letters we have sent out previously, the government have significantly toughened the law in relation to school attendance and have now published revised guidance which has become mandatory from September 2024.
From September 2024, schools have to consider a penalty notice if a pupil misses 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 school weeks. Half of a day (am or pm) is considered as a ‘session’. The threshold of 10 sessions can be met with any combination of unauthorised absence, for example, eight sessions of unauthorised holidays in term time and two sessions for other unauthorised reasons would trigger a penalty notice.
The ten school week period may span different terms or school years, for example: 2 sessions of unauthorised absence in the summer term and a further 8 in the autumn term.
National Framework for Attendance Penalty Notices (fines)
The new penalty notice regulations are:
- Each parent will be issued a separate penalty notice, for each child who is absent. For example, 2 parents and 3 children, each parent will receive 3 penalty notices for £160 each, with a family total of £960 in fines.
- The fine amount will be £160 per parent, per child paid within 28 days, reduced to £80 per parent, per child if paid within 21 days.
- The first penalty notice will be considered your first offence.
- The next time an offence occurs, within 3 years of the date the first penalty notice is issued, the fine amount will be £160 per parent, per child paid within 28 days, with no reduction.
- The third time an offence occurs this will be presented to Magistrate’s court for prosecution.
Where a child is absent, and it is believed they are absent without valid reason, we will carry out a home visit and see the child on or before the third school day of absence. If the absence meets the thresholds explained above, you will be issued fixed penalty notices as detailed above.
Please review any holiday plans you have for term time this year to ensure you are not issued with a penalty fine or prosecuted in the Magistrates’ court.
The above rules also apply to punctuality as registers must close at the end of our tutor period. Arriving to school after this time will result in an unauthorised absence. To enable our morning registration (AM) to begin promptly, we require all students to be on site for 8.30 a.m. This is the time your child must be in school, ready to be marked into registers. Therefore, we ask that you ensure your child arrives at 8.30 a.m. and they are with their tutor by 8.40 a.m. at the latest.
Your child must register with their tutor and attend P1 to ensure their ‘present’ marks are captured within the AM registration period. Your child must attend afternoon registration and P5 to ensure their ‘present’ marks are captured within the PM registration period. Even if your child is on site they will not be registered unless they are in their tutor room and classrooms and an unauthorised mark will be given. Ten unauthorised sessions in a ten school week period will result in a fixed penalty notice.
Pupils who attend school regularly will achieve higher grades than those pupils who don’t. In the summer of 2024 pupils at Lodge Park who had above 90% attendance achieved half a grade higher than those who below this.
If you require any support or advice please get in touch via email us on attendance@lodgeparkacademy.co.uk
Students' Leave of Absence
A Principal can only authorise a leave of absence in exceptional circumstances. We will take into account the Government guidance when considering what the exceptional circumstances are- all applications are considered on a case-by-case basis. You may be able to take your child out of school in exceptional circumstances, providing an application is made in advance by the parent/carer, this request complies with Government guidance and the leave is deemed to be ‘exceptional’ by the Principal.
If you take a leave of absence without our permission, or if your child fails to return by the agreed date if permission was granted, then this will be recorded as an unauthorised absence and noted in your child’s record. You might also be issued with a fixed penalty notice for this absence. If your child has not returned within 10 days of the expected date of return then, after consultation with the Local Authority, we may take your child off our school roll.
As examples, the following reasons are not considered to be exceptional circumstances:
• availability of cheap holidays
• periods overlapping with beginning or end of term
• visits to family
• renewing passports
House News
Harvest Festival House Competition
Please can we ask if possible for students to bring in just one item for the Corby Foodbank if they feel able to do so. Year 7 will be taking all donations to St Columba Church on Thursday 17th October for a Harvest Festival Service with Revd. Pullinger and then the food will be collected by Martin from the Corby Food Bank.
Deal or no Deal
It is the final house competition of term next week, where Heads of House take to the stage to play House Deal or No Deal. As seen on TV, Heads of House will try to win as many house points as possible by navigating their way through the rounds, avoiding eliminating the high scoring boxes. There will be a maximum of 250 house points on offer for each Head of House but there is also a high chance of picking up much lower points totals, including the dreaded one house point.
Deal or No Deal will take place across the week during each of the respective morning house assemblies.
Please can we encourage parents and carers to show this youtube click of the original Deal or No Deal TV programme with their student so that they are aware what our Heads of House are up against next week. Of course they will be trying to win House points and not actual money. Please copy and paste this link into your browser to view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PgVJSlgYXo
Good luck to each of the house teams!
Goshawk House Netball Champions
It was an action packed week of sport at LPA last week as over 120 students across Years 7 to 10 represented their house teams in the week long Netball competition.
The cold and wet weather failed to put a stop to the competition as students displayed resilience to play through the conditions. Following four days of exciting and competitive matches it was Goshawk who prevailed, picking up the most combined points from across the week.
Well done to everyone who took part and represented their house. Thank you to the PE department for hosting this competition.
Masked Speaker Results
Last week, five members of LPA staff released a recording of them speaking a different language to celebrate European Languages Day.
Students and staff worked together in tutor time to try and work out which members of staff were behind the mask and guess the language being spoken.
Well done to Goshawk House who accumulated the most correct answers across the Academy and earned 100 house points. Red Kite finished in 2nd place (75 points), Osprey in 3rd place (50 points) and Kestrel in 4th place (25 points).
Thank you to Mr Edwards for organising and delivering this competition.
Fantasy Premier League
The gap at the top of the Fantasy Premier League is getting smaller. Daniel is still holding on to his position at the top of the league however only 15 points now separate 1st to 4th place as we approach the final game week before the next International break.
Lots of players have already activated their ‘wildcard’ chip leaving those players who still have theirs remaining with a slight advantage going forward. Will any players break into the ‘Top 10’ next week?
LPA House Totaliser
Following points additions from House Netball and The Masked Speaker, Goshawk are now top of the House Championship. Kestrel have dropped to 2nd place with Red Kite and Osprey in 3rd and 4th place respectively.
The updated totaliser also includes House points achieved throughout the week by tutor groups working their way around their Houseopoly boards and successfully completed their ‘chance’ and ‘community chest’ challenges. House Football to be added next week.
Music at Lodge Park Academy
Scan the QR code below or click the link to follow the LPA Music Department Instagram page where you will be able to keep up to date on all the exciting music making that goes on at Lodge Park Academy.
https://www.instagram.com/lpamusic_dret?igsh=MXhtYWZhbnJydjIycg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
DRET choral festival June 2024, Royal & Derngate Theatre Northampton
https://youtu.be/JI78TqGuT-0?si=3R6_dSd8bJU8x-Bq
Helen Della Torre - Director of Music
Lodge Park Academy - Book Fair in the library from 2nd October until 9th October 2024.
LPA is hosting a Book Fair filled with adventures, new worlds, and endless possibilities. Whether you're looking for your next favourite story, educational resources, or something to spark your imagination, we have it all!
At Lodge Park Academy, we believe that reading is a powerful means to support progress for every child in every lesson. Every pupil in Key Stage Three will have the opportunity to visit the Book Fair at a point during the school day with one of their teachers. All pupils in Key Stage Four and Key Stage Five will be able to visit the Book Fair during breaktime and lunchtime
Get ready for an exciting event where books come to life!
The Library is open for parents to visit the book fair on Monday 7th October until 4pm.
St Columba's, Corby - 15th October 2024 7.30pm
Riding Lights Theatre Company is pleased to announce
"Cups on a String" by Bridget Foreman, a new play touring in partnership with Transforming Lives for Good, a Christian charity that helps churches to bring hope and a future to struggling children. A powerful and moving evening of theatre.
Alongside the performance of Cups on a String, the evening will provide an opportunity to hear about the work of Transforming Lives for Good, and how each of us can play a part in supporting the lives of struggling children.
"You think I’m some kind of broken kid and you just want to fix me. With games."
Joe’s eleven and home is hard. School is even harder. He breaks stuff: pencils, chairs, rules.
One thing he won’t break is his silence.
Heather’s fifty-seven. She’s got a comfortable life and a comfortable home. But her comfortable world is about to be turned upside down as she and Joe spend an hour a week together. Every week. For a year.
Where will this journey of hours and weeks take them?
Cups on a String is a warm-hearted and moving new play, developed from remarkable true stories. It’s about playfulness, listening and laughter, and how risk-taking and trust can lead to growth and transformation.
Challenging, surprising and beautifully hopeful, Cups on a String blends theatre, live music and digital technology to take you into the heart of the friendship between Heather and Joe, and the profound impact it has on them both.
AGE GUIDANCE: 14+
Tickets cost £15 for adults and £10 for under 18's, students, unemployed and senior citizens, can be purchased from Riding Lights by going to the following link:
Dates to Remember and Useful Information
SWI Uniform Supplier
Academy closes to students on Friday 18th October 2024
Academy opens to staff and students on Monday 4th November 2024
Contact Us
Telephone: 01536 203817
Email: lpa-enquiries@lodgeparkacademy.co.uk
Please be aware this mailbox is monitored by a number of individuals, please do not disclose any confidential information.
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/lodgeparkpe?igsh=aDJxcDJzc3ozd3No
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https://x.com/lodgeparkacad?s=20
Facebook:
https://m.facebook.com/lodgeparkacademy
Visit our website at www.lodgeparkacademy.co.uk
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Credits:
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