Half Term Update

Dear Parents, Carers and Students,

The first half of the autumn term has been as busy as ever here at Sewell Park Academy. Our new Year 7 students have started exceptionally well and have been demonstrating our social routines and values of being calm, engaged, respectful and creative as if they have always been with us! We also had an amazing Open Evening for prospective students, with a huge proportion of our current students volunteering to help and demonstrate what life at SPA is all about - they were all a credit to the school and their families.

The end of term Celebration Assembly was held this morning during form time, with many students receiving certificates and badges. Individual Year Group awards can be found on the website here.

Year 11 PPEs & 2022 results

The provisional 2022 results were published this week and showed that the Sewell Park Academy class of 2022 made fantastic progress with their studies - all the staff at SPA pass on their congratulations to them.

Our current Year 11 students have their PPEs (Pre-Public Examinations) after half term. Revision and Review work for over half term has been set on Google Classroom to help their preparation for these - I know the rest of the school community will support them by demonstrating calm conduct around the site as usual while these are taking place.

Staffing changes

As with any time during the academic year, there are changes in staffing which take place. At this point we say farewell to Ms Main, Reading Intervention Manager, who moves on to a new role. We have been very fortunate to have her working on the set up of our reading programme to support students, and we all wish her well for the future.

Some other changes for you to be aware of; Mr Dempsey has taken up the role as Head of Maths, with Mr Horton taking on the role of Acting Head of Year 10.

We are also very excited that Mrs Hesmondhalgh and Mr Merry have taken on roles on the Senior Leadership Team this year. This is to lead a very exciting new development for the school with 'SPA+' which I will mention in more detail later…

St Clements Hill Traffic

I attended a meeting on St Clements Hill with local residents, the Highways Agency and Councillor Brociek-Coulton in regards to parking and traffic speed on the St Clements Hill side of the school. As an outcome from the meeting, the speed of traffic there will be highlighted as a priority for Norfolk Police. I would also like to thank Sewell Park parents for their continued consideration when parking to ensure that residents’ driveways are not blocked at any time. I would also ask that you, as we will also do, continue to reinforce with students the need to be safe when crossing the road at any time.

On another positive note from the meeting, the residents were exceptionally positive regarding the conduct, manners and social behaviour of our students when leaving Sewell Park and commented on the improvement, along with the all round success of the school, in the last two years. Please share this praise with our young people at home.

SPA+

One key aspect of everything we have been working on at Sewell Park Academy, is to be a key part of our local community and NR3. SPA+ is a new part of the work we do, led by Mrs Hesmondhalgh and Mr Merry, to focus on three key areas. These entail enrichment opportunities for students, developing student leadership and the community. We look forward to sharing this as it develops over the year. Please take a look via the link here.

Please have a well deserved break and half term together and we look forward to welcoming back our students on Monday 31st October.

Best wishes,

David Day

Headteacher