A note from your 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