Dear parents and families,
I hope you have had a good week. Thank you for taking the time to read these updates from the school.
In this letter:
Year 10 Work Experience
Our Year 10 students will be taking part in work experience, in the week commencing 06 May 2024. We are determined that all students in the year group will take part in this invaluable part of preparing for working life. Organising a work experience placement can be challenging for some of our students; in particular, students whose own parents’ or carers’ workplaces are unsuitable for children. If your workplace could offer a placement for a Heathfield/Monkton Wood student, irrespective of whether your own child is in Year 10, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at [email protected] and we will be in touch. Mrs Draper will be contacting Year 10 families with more details about arrangements for work experience, shortly.
Year 9 Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme
We are delighted to be offering the Duke of Edinburgh scheme once again, to students in Year 9. We are grateful to the Somerset DoE team who are supporting us in the delivery of the award. Students received information on the award scheme in assembly recently. If your child has not yet signed up, and would like to do so, they have until 13 December to return their form to their tutor.
Lost Learning – term time leave
Students with excellent attendance have a greater chance of leaving school with excellent qualifications. A student even with 95% attendance will have missed 8 school days, or 40 lessons, in one year. We would like to remind families that we do not authorise leave during term time for family holidays, which should instead be taken during the 12 weeks of published school holidays. We are only able to authorise term time leave for circumstances that are exceptional and unavoidable. We thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Parent Forum
This Thursday, 30 November at 5:30pm, is our next parent forum. We will be discussing our school uniform, and whether the time is right to consider making a change. If you are planning to attend, please make sure you have emailed the school office to let us know. We look forward to seeing you then.
Federation Network Night (FNN) – request to remain in school
As detailed in my last parent letter, the school day will finish at 2:30pm on Wednesday 06 December 2023, as the teaching staff will be taking part in professional development and training with their subject specialist network from across the CLF.
If you would prefer your child to remain in school until 3:30pm as usual, please complete the form linked here, by 3:30pm on Friday 01 December. This will allow us to make arrangements for spaces and supervision. Please note that, if you do book a place for your child, it is essential they then attend. We will take a register and will follow our usual safeguarding procedures if a child is unaccounted for.
Finally, we are expecting our conversion to Monkton Wood Academy to complete this coming Friday, 01 December 2023. I will be writing again with more details, later this week.
We thank you for your continuing support, as always.
Yours faithfully,
Mrs H Jones
Principal
