Dear Parents, Students and Colleagues
 
It´s been an enormously busy week at the Academy with so many important things going on. I was delighted to see so many parents from Year 10 who attended a briefing about the work experience programme that will take place later in the year. The value of work experience is inestimable and is often a watershed for many students. The problem for so many young people is that they gain qualifications but don´t have the experience or employability skills that will get them into their chosen job or career. Work placements start the process of building up these skills in a real commercial or business context.
 
With our sixth form programme we are planning to address this by setting up an ‘Intern´ programme, to run alongside examination courses. We believe that this will give our students the combination of qualifications and workplace experience that will ensure that they capture the best jobs or university places. Thank you to everybody who has responded to the sixth form consultation exercise, we will let you know as soon as possible the outcome from this process.
 
Another event this week was a presentation evening where we welcomed back last years Year 11 students to receive their certificates. It was an informal and hugely enjoyable evening that was well attended. It was great to see our ex-students and to catch up on their progress, whether they were on courses at college, in jobs or, as in one case, training to be a chef with Jamie Oliver! These sort of events are very humbling, as you realise the privilege that teaching affords you to help young people achieve their goals and launch themselves into adult life.
 
The examination system hit the headlines this week for rather negative reasons with doubts being cast on the integrity of some chief examiners who were alleged to be undermining the credibility of the system by telling teachers, in exam board training courses, what question might crop up in the exam. Sky News dropped into the Academy to seek our views on this issue with Richard Shelly, Our Head Boy and Zowelele Kotamo, Head Girl volunteering to be thrust into the media spotlight. A very long interview was condensed into a couple of sentences when it was broadcast but I very much supported their view that it´s important to achieve qualifications by a route free from cheating or underhand practices. They are typical of the vast majority of young people who don´t value something unless it is earned through an honest and hardworking approach. Well done to them both for expressing their views so clearly and for maintaining a strong sense of morality on this issue. 
 
Nick Jones, Principal