01 September 2025
Dear parents and families,
Welcome back! We hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable summer break with your children and are looking forward to a busy and successful school year ahead.
In this letter:
Arrangements for the start of term
Site updates
Pastoral care and raising standards staffing
Attendance matters
MCAS (‘My Child At School’)
Mobile phones
How was your holiday?
Arrangements for the start of term
Staff have returned to school today for the first of two Inset staff training days. Our students are returning as follows:
Wednesday 03 September – Year 7, Year 11 and Year 12 (SPACE Y1) only
Thursday 04 September – all year groups
The gates will open at 8.45am and close at 8.55am, after which students should report to the better-late-than-never gate (which is the KS4 gate between the sports hall and Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre.)
We begin teaching the timetable straight away, so please ensure your child comes fully equipped for lessons. We will also be checking uniform and will ask any child without correct uniform items to go home to change if possible, or to borrow school items if not.
Site updates
We have undertaken significant works over the summer break to improve the conditions of our buildings, and the decoration and cleanliness of the environment. I would like to publicly thank our own site team, our Operations Manager Mrs Ousley, and the CLF estates and premises experts, who have overseen a large number of contractors and projects whilst the rest of our staff have been on holiday. We will go through the details of these works, and those that remain, with the students on Monday. There are too many to list here! However, I would like to bring families’ attention to some new scaffolding covering B block to the front of the school. This is a project to repair the roof of that building, and it may have some impact on the available space in our car park. Please can we respectfully ask parents collecting children at the end of the day to only park in designated bays, and not the hatched spaces for buses.
Pastoral care and raising standards staffing
Please see below for a list of key staff.
Pastoral Support Leaders | Heads of House
Hanover House
Chandler Hallett
Stuart House
Sarah Kew
Tudor House
Ashleigh Potter
Windsor House
Kelly Bolger
York House
Evalina Catchpool
Your child’s house is denoted by the colour of their tie, but also by the initial of their tutor group; 7H1 is Hanover House, 7T1 is Tudor House. Etc.
Raising Standards Leaders
Year 7
Dawna Daw
Year 8
Rebecca Moore
Year 9
Isabelle Ashton
Year 10
Jon Roberts
Year 11
Katrina Darley
As previously, we encourage you to contact the school with any queries initially via the info@mwa.clf.uk email address, or by telephoning reception on 01823 412396. Our office team will take your call and pass your query to the most appropriate member of staff, which is usually their form tutor. This helps us to respond quickly to your query, even if a member of staff is absent from work for any reason.
Attendance matters
Later this week, we will share some more detailed information about our attendance policy and our work to improve school attendance. Today, I would like to simply highlight the vital importance of good school attendance at the start of the school year. Children missing the first day or days of school miss out on vital updates, staffing notices, timetable explanation, as well as the fun of reconnecting with their classmates and friends after the summer break. Please do spend a little time with your children today and tomorrow, supporting their preparations for their first day back and helping them get organised with their equipment and uniform.
MCAS (‘My Child At School’)
If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for MCAS, which has replaced Class Charts as our parental information app. You can access MCAS either via their website or via a smartphone app. To sign up on their website, please follow this link and use the school’s postcode to identify us. You should then enter your email address (which must match the email address that the school has on file) and click ‘sign up’.
Mobile phones
Thank you to every parent that has contacted the school since we shared our plans for ensuring a phone-free environment for children whilst they are at school. We have really appreciated learning from your experiences and especially your experience of using the many different parent control apps that are available on the market. As a reminder to all parents, our expectation is now that every child’s phone will be ‘locked down’ by their parent or carer during the school hours of 9.00am to 3.30pm. However, we know that much more is needed from us by way of training and support for families to achieve this in practice. We have also read in today’s updated statutory guidance for schools, ‘Keeping Children Safe In Education,’ a clear emphasis on parents and carers’ engagement with schools to keep our children safe online at all times of the day. Please stand by for more information and events at school as we work together on this pressing issue.
How was your holiday?
Whilst we hope you enjoyed a fun and relaxing summer period with your children, we know that the holiday may not have been smooth sailing for all our families. If you would like to share any information with us about your child’s experiences over the summer which you think we should know, or which will help us better meet their learning and behaviour needs, please do get in touch. You can contact reception and request a call back from your child’s tutor, or you can email us on info@mwa.clf.uk and ask for your email to be forwarded. You can also come straight into the safeguarding team on safeguarding@mwa.clf.uk
I am aware that the start of term brings a huge amount of new information; thank you for reading everything in this week’s update. I will write again soon with some more information and key dates for the year ahead.
We are looking forward to seeing all of our children later this week!
With thanks to you, for your continuing support,
Mrs H Jones
Principal
