Following International Women’s Day, we are proud to highlight the incredible work of Miss Crook and the 'Her Own Way' extra-curricular club. This week, our pupils are leading assemblies to share their mission: ending period poverty and ensuring menstrual dignity for every pupil.

Since meeting every Monday after school, the group has been working on a campaign to support our school community:

1. Education & Emotional Wellbeing

The club has developed specific Personal Development (PD) sessions. To explore the emotional wellbeing tied to the menstrual cycle and educate pupils on the social impact of period poverty and how we can collectively combat it.

2. Dignity Through Direct Access

To remove the "barrier of the ask," period products are now being made readily available in girls' toilets. This ensures that no student has to feel embarrassed or lose lesson time by having to request supplies from a member of staff.

3. Clear Information & Myth Busting

Knowledge is the best way to tackle stigma. The club is installing informative posters in toilets that cover:

• Identifying the different stages of the menstrual cycle.

• Clear guides on how to use various sanitary products.

• Vital period hygiene tips and "myth-busting" to clear up common misconceptions.

4. The 'Holiday Gap' Support

Period poverty doesn't take a break for the school holidays. The club is launching School Holiday Packs, which include a supply of products and educational guides to ensure pupils stay supported and comfortable while at home.

Our Mission: To ensure that menstruation is never a barrier to education, confidence, or attendance.

Whatever the results inside the envelope, we hope our students are incredibly proud of themselves for the hard work and determination they have shown during their GCSE Exams.

We wish each and every one of you the best of luck for the future, we cannot wait to see you all later this year for your GCSE Certificate Presentation evening. 

Below you will find just a few of our outstanding students from this morning.

The café was a huge success and many books were borrowed. 

Elsewhere in the academy, staff got into the spirit of things and dressed as their favourite book characters or series of books. We had Where's Wally, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Famous Five, The Wizard of Oz and William Shakespeare.

Zain took some time out to give us a little insight into a day in the life of a 13-year-old racing driver.

We would love you to take a look. You can find Walkden features on pages 133-132 and 180-181.

Find out about updates, announcements and celebrating successes.

Dear parent/carer

Welcome to our latest newsletter. It's now the end of the first half term and our pupils are ready for a break and a very busy few weeks, not least for our Year 11 pupils who have now finished their first two weeks of mock exams. Over the coming half term break, there are a lot of additional sessions available to Year 11 students to support their preparation for exams, but we also hope they will take a much needed break too. We wish them the best of luck as they enter the final week of exams the week after half term. 

Arbor

I want to thank all parents and carers for your patience with our switch to Arbor. We now have the vast majority of pupils and parents with access now and quickly becoming more familiar with all the features. We will continue to support those pupils and parents/carers who haven't been able to gain access yet, so that everyone has access to all the information they need and to support more effective communications via Arbor.

New Parent Governor

Following our recent ballot for a new parent governor, I can now announce that our newly elected parent governor will be Paul Davies. Paul will no doubt make a brilliant contribution to the Academy Governing Council (AGC). I would like to thank all candidates for their nominations and for our wider community for engaging in the ballot. Further details regarding Governance can be found on our website here.

Parking and Road Safety

I have previously written to you regarding parking at the end of the school day, which has presented some on-going safety concerns. I want to reiterate that parking on-site at the end of the day is for the taxis for pupils in The HIVE only. Any other pickups by parents and carers must be on the local roads please. This means that the car park and exits are kept as car free as possible for our students leaving the site. I think we can all agree that our students need to be kept as safe as possible and we all have responsibility to ensure this is the case. We are exploring plans for the installation of a barrier at the exit to Old Clough Lane in the future.

Year 9 Options

Our Year 9’s are about to begin the process of choosing their options for the next 2 years. If your child is in Year 9, we look forward to welcoming you to our Options Evening on the first Thursday after half term (29th February) from 4pm-7pm. This will be a great opportunity to hear how the Options process works and to hear more information about the courses on offer from subject leaders.

I hope you enjoy the newsletter and I wish you all a brilliant half term break.

Matt Hacker

Principal

Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome to the latest newsletter, which marks the end of an action packed half term at Co-op Academy Walkden. Here, you'll find snippets of some of the activity over the past few weeks, but for more regular updates, please do check out our social media channels, which are updated most days, celebrating success and providing key information.

We have made a huge transition over the past half term to the new management system - Arbor. We now have the majority of parents logged into Arbor and the initial feedback is that it's useful, albeit very different to Classcharts. By the end of January, we are aiming to switch off Classcharts entirely and I therefore urge all parents to log into Arbor, so that we can continue to switch features on and ensure that all communications go smoothly through this one platform.

I want to remind parents and carers about the Parent Governor nominations which are live and close on Friday 5th January 2024. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you wish to discuss this important role.

For now though, I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas break. We look forward to welcoming all pupils back into the academy at 8.30 sharp on Wednesday 3rd January, refreshed and raring to go for the new term ahead.

Mr Hacker

Co-op Christmas Food Hamper

This year the Co-op community action group of Co-op Academy Walkden have organised a Christmas food drive. The aim is to collect as many canned food items as possible for local food banks and the less fortunate in the community area. This initiative allows us, as a community, to come together and show we care. We want to help our communities, because that’s what makes us different as an academy. We are asking for donations to help this amazing cause:

● Tin of soup;

● Stuffing mixture;

● Gravy granules;

Tinned vegetables;

● Tinned meats;

● Instant mash potato or tinned potatoes;

● Coffee, tea, hot chocolate or condensed milk;

● Condiments;

● 1 x gift. i.e - cuddly toy, crayons and colouring book, chocolate (please check the expiry date), Christmas crackers, reading books, magazines, teenager gifts (e.g. toiletry gift sets, socks, t-shirts, vouchers etc).

Any item or items that could be donated from the above list would be greatly appreciated. The final date for collection will be Monday 11th December. Donations can be left with me in the Global zone in the academy. Alternatively, students will be collecting items at personal development time from classrooms. We ask that parents/carers avoid donating any items such as refrigerated or frozen foods, foods containing nuts, alcohol and any electrical appliances.

We hope that you can help our community this Christmas and help spread some festive cheer.

Regards

A.Lamara

Community Action Group member

Dear Parents/Carers,

Arbor - Management Information System

You may remember from the recent newsletter that we have introduced a new management information system called Arbor. The next step in the roll-out is to get all parents and carers logged into Arbor, so that we can eventually move all communications, timetables, attendance, homework, rewards and behaviour data onto this one platform. In the near future, you will no longer need either Classcharts or MyEd as everything will be in the one place, which I am sure we can all agree, will be a very positive step for everyone.

Actions for all parents and carers

Please visit Arbor at login.arbor and/or download the app from Google Play (Arbor) or the Apple App Store (Arbor). If you are downloading the app please enable push notifications.

Please log in to Arbor using the forgotten password routine and the email address that you use with us at school. If the email address matches with the one we have in school already, you will receive a password reset link via email, and once completed you will be asked to verify your account using your child's date of birth. 

If you do not receive the reset password email please let us know your updated email address using the form sent via MyEd. Once we have updated your email address with us, then you should then be able to log in to Arbor. For those with pupils at different Arbor schools you will see Co-op Academy Walkden listed to be able to easily click between all of the pupils attached to your account.

You will be able to update any changes of address, phone numbers or email addresses directly through Arbor. 

All legal guardians can and should create separate logins on Arbor.

We will gradually switch on the features that you will be able to see on Arbor and at a suitable point in the future, we will then switch off the other apps, so that everything is in one place.

Thank you in advance for supporting us with this transition. There is lots of support available on the Arbor website here.

Yours sincerely

Matt Hacker

Principal 

Dear parents and carers,

Welcome to the first Co-op Academy Walkden newsletter of the year. The end of our first half-term has certainly come very quickly, but it’s fair to say that all students are ready for a short break, to recharge their batteries and be ready for the next half-term.

There has been a lot to celebrate over the past 7 weeks and you can read about some of those successes here in the newsletter or, as always, on our social media channels.

Our new Year 7 students have now completed their first half-term with us and have settled in really well. Starting a new school can be very daunting, but they have fully immersed themselves in the life of the school. Lots are already involved in our additional clubs, trips and visits and the majority of the year are soon to go away together to the Conwy centre in Wales, which will be a brilliant experience.

I want to take the opportunity to welcome and introduce some new colleagues who have started with us during this half-term:

Mrs J Clarke - Head of Food

Miss A Beech - DT Teacher

Miss L Foster - DT Teacher

Miss E Dassie - Foreign Language Teacher

Mr P Gardner - Head of Science

Mrs L Heppolette - English Teacher

Miss R McGinley - Deputy Safeguarding Lead

Mr W McHugh - Head of Year 9

Mrs S Garner - Head of Year 11

Mrs R Vaughan - Communications and Marketing Officer

Many students are already familiar with our new colleagues and are helping them to settle into our community.

I'd like to thank all parents and carers for your engagement and support over the last few weeks. I am particularly grateful for your ongoing support towards improving attendance. Our whole school attendance is currently 93%, but we need all students to be in school unless they are genuinely ill. On this note, I’d like to share some updated guidance about respiratory infections. You only need to keep your child off school if they:

•  Have symptoms  of a respiratory infection (e.g. cough)

•  They have a high temperature

 Classcharts and MyEd

After the half-term break, we are introducing a new management information system called Arbor. This is the system that stores all of our student, staff and parental information. It will be a very positive step for us, not least because it will allow us to move towards a single point of communication between school and home. I will write separately after the half term to explain these changes in more depth.

For now though, I want to wish all of our families a good half-term break and we look forward to welcoming all of our students back on Monday 30th October.

Matt Hacker

Principal

Our students' progress, well-being, mental and physical health matters to us: therefore we understand the importance of appointments with professionals. We also understand that these can sometimes be difficult to get outside of school hours.

This July, join the revolution that is our joint Trust production of the epic musical – Les Miserables!  Telling the story of one man’s journey of redemption and set against a backdrop of poverty, crime, love, rebellion and death – this show really has something for everyone.  Set to Boublil and Schönberg’s sweeping score, and performed with a live orchestra – our students will bring Les Miserables to life on the stage of the Academy Theatre with flair and passion.  Don’t miss your chance to be part of the revolution – come and join us and ‘hear the people sing’ this July.

Tickets are just £8/£5 and can be purchased by visiting https://theatre.cam.coop/whats-on