8th November 2024

Dear Parents/Carers,

I hope that the start of term has been a positive one for you and now we are hurtling towards Christmas at the academy. As usual we have some exciting things happening that I wanted to share with you.

Firstly, we have a new reward for this year which will be in addition to our rewards for behaviour, attendance and academic progress. This is our Stone Soup Christmas present. The expectation for all our young people is that they achieve a behaviour score of 7 or above (1-10 scale) in each lesson. These scores are averaged and this gives your child a weekly score which we expect to be 7 or above. This is a realistic expectation and does not need them to be angels in every lesson! Every child who achieves an average score of 7 over the next 6 weeks will be put into a draw and we will be taking 6 winners to London by train on Wednesday 18th of December. They will each be given £100 spending money to spend on themselves or their family, we will of course ensure that what they would like is appropriate to their age. No cash will be given. We will be taking them to Oxford street and to Hamleys toy store and they will get the opportunity to see the Christmas lights.

As you can’t see this is a great prize and we hope that it will motivate our young people to focus upon improving the way that they operate in their lessons and in the academy.

The next exciting aspect is the development of our first Stone Soup Sixth Form. If we can get everything in order this will happen from September 2025. Following this development, our next even bigger dream is to open a Stone Soup Sixth Form Hub in the centre of Nottingham for any student who has attended an alternative provision in Nottingham to attend from September 2027.

For a few years now we have been considering the creation of an in-house sixth form as the next logical step for our young people. We feel now that the time is right. We will have the accommodation at High Pavement and we believe that for some of our young people this could be a great opportunity especially those who may find the transition out of Stone Soup a little challenging.

Our idea is that like the rest of the academy we will do things a little differently. Our sixth form will continue to deliver GCSE English and GCSE Maths alongside a life skills qualification, all students will do this. They will also complete one day a week work experience with a local company, with a view that at the end of the year that they would commence a job with the same company. To complement this arrangement, each student will also complete a vocational qualification at Nottingham College that will complement their job role. All this and our continued outstanding pastoral support. All in all it is meant to be a Stone Soup bridge to employment.

Jordan Senior, our Head of Sixth Form and Careers will be discussing this fantastic opportunity with all year 11 students. He will explain what they have to do to be part of the lucky 8 students who will form part of our first cohort. Obviously we still have quite a lot to do to get everything in place and this brings me onto my next announcement.

Now we have a second site and in order to develop these opportunities for the academy moving forward the trustees and myself have made some changes to the leadership of the academy. Moving forward for the next two years to give me the capacity to develop the academy I will be moving to the position of Executive Principal. I will continue to lead the academy from a strategic level and on the day to day operational matters Younes Henini will be moving into the position of Interim Principal for this year. Younes has been my Vice Principal for nearly 6 years and he will ably lead the academy whilst I seek out more opportunities for our young people.

As always I am thankful for your continued support as we grow and develop and if you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Kerrie Henton Executive Principal