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July 2017

As one year group arrives, another one leaves. Our Year 13 students have marked the culmina-tion of seven years at the school with their annual Prom before heading off for University, Ap-prenticeships or employment. Year 11 marked the important milestone of completing their GCSEs with their Prom in Marston. Once again a dazzling array of dresses, smart suits and classy modes of transport were in evidence!

This year also marks the five year anniversary of our Sixth Form, so our very first Sixth Form students will be graduating from universities up and down the country this Summer. It was lovely to hear that Tom North, from our pioneering first cohort of students, has received a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics from Lancaster University. I hope to be able to update you on other stories of success from his year group as the information comes into school.

Much still lies ahead in the final few weeks of term – just as our Berlin trip has safely returned, our trip to Paris leaves. Year 12 have embarked upon their Sixth Form Work Experience with a broad variety of employers, our Performing Arts Trip heads off shortly to London and our Activity Day on the final day of term will round-off a very busy and productive year.

Thank you to all parents and carers for your on-going support of the school – it is your children that make this school such a great place to work. I hope you enjoy a happy, restful and safe Summer.

Best Wishes,

Mark Guest Headteacher

It has been a pleasure this week to wel-come more than two hundred Year 6 pupils, from forty nine different Primary Schools to our annual Induction Day. I always gauge the success of the day by the broadness of the smiles on faces as our newest pupils head home on their buses, tired but happy. This is a vital part of our transition process – we want our pupils to be confident and excited by their first day at Sir William Robert-son and not to be anxious about what lies ahead. A sea of smiles confirmed that the day had gone extremely well.

During our assembly on Induction morning I asked all of the children to look around the room and explained that each of the two hundred pupils present represented a great opportunity for new friendships, great learning and fantastic adventures – the first of which will be the camp at Hill Holt Wood!

SWRA News Page 2

In this issue: Reading Buddy Presentation Page 4

Former students - Success Page 5/7

Carnegie Book Awards Page 8

Work Experience 2017 Page 8/9

Lily Divall Teenage Author visit Page 9

Sports News Page 10

Swimarathon Presentation Page 11

Primary Rounders Competitions Page 14/15

Young Designer - Emma Sahall Page 16

Tour of Britain - school closure Page 18

Photography Competition Page 20

GCSE & A Level Results Day Page 21

Primary Maths/Fearless Learners Page 22/23

Dates for your diary Page 24

Wow Day with

football trickster

Ash Randall

Football Freestyle and Multiple

World Record Holder Ash Ran-

dall visited school recently on

one of our Wow days delivering

skills workshops to the Year 7s!

They enjoyed watching and

learning some amazing tricks.

Visit http://

www.ashfreestyle.com/ to see

him in action.

SWRA News Page 3

Fashion Academy Success with Special Award

& Involvement in Lincoln Fashion Week 2018

Enormous congratulations to our Fashion Academy students who celebrated success in The Fashion Academy 2017 held at The Drill Hall on 23rd June. Their many months of hard work and creativity guided by Mrs Lawson & Mrs Norman culminated in the students receiving the Fashion Academy Special Award 2017. The students have been invited to take part in next year’s Lincoln Fashion Week 2018.

Our theme was Travel & Transport inspired by the Art Deco move-ment of the Twenties & Thirties so lots of geometric shapes & me-tallic in evidence! This is our eighth year and we were delighted to repeat the success of the last couple of years when we were fortunate enough to win awards.

Well done everyone!

Mrs Lawson & Mrs Norman

Our Fashion Academy students:

Katie Hall Eve Lawson

Evie Pearson Asher Williams

Isobel Butler Libby Carrington

Abbie Hudson Charlie Hamilton

Chloe Pearson Katie Randall

Josh Ashwell Sophie Richardson

Lilly Donohoe Poppy Haggo

Alyssa Owen

SWRA News Page 4

Reading Buddy Project

Reading Buddies from Years 7 and 12 enjoyed a celebratory breakfast of pains au chocolat to mark the end of a successful year’s reading. Mr Guest presented certif-icates to Year 12 volunteers and Year 7 readers who have met in the library every week since the Autumn term to read together during base time. The Reading Bud-dy Project has helped Year 7s to improve their reading skills as well as enjoy shar-ing stories. The positive impact of the support they’ve received from their Year 12 Buddies can be seen in their increased reading ages and good records of borrow-ing from the library. Well done to everybody who has been involved!

Mrs Ackland

Year 13 Leavers - Mr Mann Awards

Our annual fun Mr Mann Awards helped celebrate our Year 13’s last day at Sir William Robertson Academy in-cluding a surprise return visit from Mrs Brewer. The Awards ended with a delicious cream tea and in the evening the students enjoyed their Year 13 Prom at The Tower Hotel in Lincoln. Goodbye and good luck with your univer-sity courses, training programmes and employment. Please stay in touch and let us know how you are getting on!

Mr Mann & All the Staff at SWRA

SWRA News Page 5

First Cohort of Sixth Formers -

Leavers of 2014

Thomas North Thomas North has gained a First at Lancaster University in Maths. Mr Guest studied at Lancaster so he is particularly pleased to hear this news! Congratulations.

Hayley has completed her degree in History at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and is expected to graduate with a 2-1. She has also worked at a USA Summer Camp as part of the drama department and in 2016 she returned to the camp after they asked her to be the Head of Drama for summer 2016.

Hayley has also extensively travelled around the USA visiting cities such as, New York, Virginia, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Nashville, Chicago, Miami, LA, San Francisco and Seattle. She even spent some time stay-ing in a boathouse on a lake close to Boston.

Now she has competed her studies she is taking a year away from studying and intends to stay in Cambridge and has a full time job at Marks and Spencer’s, with the plan to continue with her travels (this year she is off round Europe) and investigate the opportunity to take on a Mas-ters in History.

Mr and Mrs Simons

In this issue and our October newsletters we will be featuring some of our former students and reporting on where and what they went on to study and how they have done in their studies or what careers they have em-barked on and have recently been in touch via email with parents to gain updates on their son/daughter. A cou-ple of parents have recently got in touch with news independently and it would be lovely to include more of our former students particularly as they were our first cohort of Sixth Formers. We are extremely proud of the way the Sixth Form has grown and developed in such a short space of time and our first Sixth Formers helped shape it into a wonderful learning environment.

Emily, has just completed her degree in Psychology and Criminology with a First from Nottingham Trent Uni-versity. She is hoping to spend the next year getting some experience of working with disadvantaged young people in order that she can then to apply for the two year 'Think Ahead' Graduate Social Work programme.

Whilst at university, Emily worked for Childline as a volunteer counsellor and in her final year worked part-time at River Island.

Emily Ditton

Hayley Simons

Chloe Hill

Chloe Hill has recently graduated from Bishop Grosseteste University

with a 1:1 in Mathematics and Education Studies.

She is furthering her education with Nottingham Trent University and Tuxford Academy next year, training to become a Secondary Mathe-matics Teacher.

Chloe back in her Sixth Form days

SWRA News Page 6

Update on Former Students

Former Sixth Formers

Keep up to date with school events and news on our Facebook page

‘Sir William Robertson Academy’

League Football Education (LFE) 'Celebrating Success' programme names 11 starlets and former student from Welbourn, Luke Andersen, is amongst the 11. 18 year old Luke who left Sir William Robertson two years ago plays for Lincoln City and this accolade highlights his impressive performance on and off the pitch.

Luke flourished on the pitch this year, captaining Lincoln’s Under-21 and earning a first-team debut in a 2-0 win against Boreham Wood in October, as well as playing 25 senior matches as part of work experience.

He has also immersed himself in a number of different projects in the class-room, completing extended units and coaching in a local primary school to gain extra experience for his pursuit of a coaching career.

Luke Andersen - Footballer

Luke will be an Ambassador next year on behalf of the Academy while studying, as he has been accepted onto a Coaching and Teaching Foundation degree at Bishop Grosseteste University. And as if that wasn’t enough, the midfielder has also applied to join the Schoolboy Academy coaching staff for 2017/18.

Congratulations Luke! We are very proud.

Mr Symmons

Tom Lane

Tom decided last year not to take up his place at SAE in London to study Music Technology. Instead, this year he has spent taking private drama lesson with the aim of applying to Drama school. His first love is and always has been acting.

He applied to RADA, Guildhall, Guildford, ArtsEd, Bristol Old Vic, Mountview and Manchester Met. He had call backs for four of these and was offered a place at two of them on their Foundation Degree. This in itself was a huge achievement. He was very determined though that the Foundation Degree option was not for him. I am sure that you will be delighted to know that he had three call backs for Mountview Acting School in London. The au-ditions were tough and the competition very great with 3000 applicants for 30 places (15 boys and 15 girls). He had to recite a number of monologues one of which was from Hamlet.

The outcome of this is that he has been offered a place and starts his course this coming September. Not only are we brimming with pride but we just thought you would like to know for when Ofsted come to call so that you can add Tom to your list of wonderful Alumni achievements. It goes without saying that without the support from your school and staff together with the opportunities that came his way he would not be in this position now. Our abiding memory was when he played Marius. The school's motto is ASPIRE - and my word did Tom aspire to be an actor. How lovely to achieve this and to start a career in something you love. Of course Tom has worked hard to achieve but with the support and en-couragement from your school.

We will try to keep you informed of his progress and any future roles he lands! Please thank everyone because it all started at your school in Welbourn.

Mr Andrew Lane (Proud Father)

SWRA News Page 7

Bernadette Rijnenberg OBE

Former pupil of the school (1967-1972) Bernadette Rijnenberg, has recently been in touch to let us know that she was recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2016 and honoured with an OBE. She goes on to say in her message that she was helped by John Halpen, Sheila Goldsborogh and Daphne Page. Bernadette went on to the University of Nottingham and Fitzwilliam Cambridge and became Chief Officer of Probation before retiring in 2016.

Deciding that University was not the right route for her, Holly Pickerill left SWRA and went straight into employment as an apprentice at Tom Geraghty and Associates, a firm of accountants in Newark. Working hard and passing every exam on the first at-tempt, she completed her apprenticeship in just one year and achieved the AAT quali-fication. Demonstrating her dedication to both the accounting profession and her con-tinued studies, she was awarded a prestigious scholarship with Kaplan Financial: one of just five awarded nationally.

Holly Pickerill

Now a fully qualified Accounting Technician, she is currently studying to become a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Keeping up her impressive record of exam suc-cess, she has already completed the first of the qualification’s three levels, in just 4 months: a feat that should usually take between 12 and 18 months. Her employer is immensely pleased with her, as demonstrated through her progression up through the company to the point where she is now managing her own portfolio of clients, completing a wide range of tasks daily including accounts preparation, corporation and personal tax returns, VAT returns, payroll, company law work and book-keeping. Holly has been working together with the AAT on a project with three other successful students from across the country to help and support more school leavers into accountancy via the non-university route, as she wants other students to have the same opportunities she did and receive increased support in accessing them.

Holly is thriving both in her career and her personal life, and is now keeping busy running her own home and planning her wedding!

First Cohort of Sixth Formers -

Leavers of 2014

Elizabeth Evans I am, like many others, a first time student of SWRA’s Sixth Form and since leaving, a lot has changed. I am now currently a graduate in English Language and Linguistics from York St John University and have achieved a 2:1. Prior to attending University, I wasn’t sure as to what I would do in the future and what career I would find myself in. However, all I was sure on was that I had an interest for the English Language. Taking Eng-lish Language at A-Level made me realise the scope of what there is to know about language. This interest grew and lead me to taking a course in English Language and Linguistics. This course entails learning about how lan-guage is acquired, articulated and structured, the meaning and intentions behind our social interactions as well as the social attitudes we have and share on language.

What drew me towards York St John in the first place was the relaxed, friendly atmosphere of the city, with the quaint shops and cafes and cobbled streets. Spending three years in the beautiful city of York was a pleasure. The University is small but welcoming and full of life, with an array of societies to join. I am glad that I chose to study at York and I couldn’t imagine studying at any other. During my time there I have met many people that will now be friends for life as well as having the opportunity to work for the Newark Advertiser, an experience that may draw me to a career in journalism in the future.

My advice for students who are looking to study at University is to visit as many Universities as you can. This allows you to get a feel of what each campus is like which will give you an idea as to what you want in a Univer-sity, whether this be for the night life or for the best University for your chosen course. The choice is yours.

Elizabeth Evans

SWRA News Page 8

SWRA Students Shadow CILIP Carnegie Book Awards

Eight of SWRA’s avid readers together with Mrs Morton agreed to ‘shadow’ this year’s Carnegie Book Awards by reading and reviewing a shortlist of seven books. They spent the last two months racing through the nominated novels so that they could get together and discuss them at meetings held in the library.

The Carnegie Awards are the UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s book awards. Often described by au-thors as ‘the one they want to win’ – they are the gold standard in children’s literature. The Carnegie Medal is awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding book for children.

The seven nominated books were good reads and it was difficult to choose our own favourite. The official win-ner of the Award was ‘Salt to the Sea’ by Ruta Sepetys. However, our group were quite split to our favourite but the majority vote went to ‘Rail Head’ by Philip Reeve.

Mrs Morton

SWRA News Page 9

Keeping your Child Safe Online

As your child grows and becomes more independent, it is only natural that they take this independence online. In our teenage years we explore, try new things and sometimes push boundaries and take risks, this is an essential part of growing up.

With all of the potential that the online world and new technology offers, young peo-ple now have access to huge opportunities. They use technology to express them-selves, explore, and be creative; it has changed the way they communicate.

The internet has changed all of our lives, and your child has grown up during this change. Many of the things that confuse, baffle or even scare us, are part of the everyday for them. For many of us, this can all be a bit too much.

Whether you’re a technophobe or a technophile, it’s still likely that you’ll be playing catch-up with the way your child is using the internet. You might wonder whether what they are doing is safe, and you might also be thinking how can I be as good a parent online as I am offline? For advice about keeping your child safe online, please see the ‘think u know’ website:

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk

This website is run by CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. Should you have any ques-tions or concerns, please contact myself.

Mr S Grant, Child Protection Officer & Deputy Head

Lily Divall Teenage Author Visit

Keeping your child safe on-line

We were delighted to welcome talented local teenage author, Lily Divall to school on Tuesday 13th June where she shared her story on getting her novel ‘A False Creation’ published and worked with more than 120 pupils from Years 7 to 10 on developing their creative writing skills. Lily was very inspirational and provided our students with some fantastic sessions throughout the day. Each pupil was set the challenge to produce a short piece of creative writing which Lily judged over lunch. The quality of their writing was superb making the judging extremely difficult. However, the winners were declared as:

Henry Yates (Y7)

Alice Heaton (Y8)

Shivam Keshvala (Y10)

The three winners received a signed copy of Lily’s book ‘A False Creation’. Congratulations to our winners and to every-one involved in the day!

Read more about Lily in the Newark Advertiser article (September 2016): http://legacy.newarkadvertiser.co.uk/articles/news/Hard-work-pays-off-for-teenage-author

or see her book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/False-Creation-Lily-…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

SWRA News Page 10 Sports News

House Match Winners

Congratulations to Dragoon - winners of Year 7 Handball

Congratulations to Simla - winners of Year 9 Handball

Lancer victorious again at Sports Day!

They've only gone and done it again!! Congratula-tions to Lancer on winning Sports Day for the third time in four years!!

The PE department held its first ever `Sports Re-view of the Year' on Fri-day afternoon. 200 pupils attended the ceremony which included a short highlights video of the sporting year. Click below or visit our YouTube chan-

nel SWR Academy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sGzehkaUCs

Congratulations to Lewis Rowland (Year 8) who has managed to get into the Lincolnshire Schools’ Football Association Under 14 County Football team for next year. Lewis has been selected following trials where the standard was extremely high. Lincolnshire produces some excellent technically proficient central midfield players who are neat and tidy on the ball so the decision was very tough!

Well done Lewis - we are extremely proud of your great achievement!

Lewis makes U14 County Football Squad

SWRA News Page 11

Sports News

Grantham Rotary Club Annual Swimarathon Presentation Evening

Good luck to our Iceland Outlook

World Challenge students

Our Outlook World Challenge 2017 students when they headed to Snowden as part of their preparations for their Ice-land World Challenge...have a fantastic time! They have ar-rived safely in Iceland.

We can’t wait to hear how you got on.

The annual Awards ceremony was held on Thursday 29th June at St Wulfram’s Church in Grantham. This was a super evening as we were asked to help run the presentation evening too! James Martin was asked to present the special awards. His calm, eloquent manner with occasional funny inputs went down a treat and the number of business people, Rotarians & public that approached both him & myself afterwards to congratulate him was fan-tastic! We also had Toby Latham & Curtis Taylor welcoming the 50+ organisations on front of house & did so very professionally. Garrett & Laura compiled the very important cheques for every beneficiary, as well as organising the buffet & refreshments. I was so impressed. Caitlin Colquhoun-Scoffield could not attend as she was off enjoy-ing the weather on Duke of Edinburgh but she was congratulated for her input too back in the event itself in Febru-ary!

James received a new award of ‘Swimarathon Young Male’, I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from them for all the work I have done over the past few years which was lovely and collectively the students & the school received a new award – a framed certificate of appreciation for all our assistance from the Club President.

All in all a wonderful evening & nearly £30,000 again given to lots of fantastic charities. Well done everyone (BTEC students & all the swimmers) you should be super proud!

Mrs Mower

SWRA News Page 12 Sports News

Year 10 Rounders Success

New PE Kit from September

Our PE kit design and supplier is changing from September 2017 but this is only compulsory for new Year 7

pupils starting with us in September. We are having to change the kit due to the current style being discontinued.

Existing pupils will be fine in their current PE kit but if any kit needs replacing it will now need to be from the new range. Our rugby tops will now be reversible and the black panelled polo shirt will have the school logo on. Shorts are to be plain black and the socks will have white stripes on. Girls will still have the option of the black and white or plain black skort which is available from the suppliers below.

Our suppliers are:

Uniform Direct in Lincoln www.kandhsports.co.uk

K & H Sports in Newark www.uniform-direct.com

Grantham Clothing Company www.granthamclothing.com

Sleaford Clothing Company www.granthamclothing.com

This new kit becomes compulsory for all pupils from September 2018.

Visit the website to see information on uniform: http://www.swracademy.net/parents/school-information/uniform/

Mr Symmons, Head of PE

Keep up to date with match fixtures, pick up times and match news on our Facebook page

‘Sir William Robertson Academy’

Congratulations to our Year 10 Rounders team who won three out of their five rounders’ games on 15th June at the Kesteven Finals coming in 3rd Place. Top fielding girls and well done!

Mrs Davison

SWRA News Page 13

Sports News

Well done to all our eight athletes who represented the school in the Kes-teven District in the Lincolnshire Schools Athletics Finals at Boston on 7th June. The pupils were: Zion Dixon, Finlay Bass, Luke Horne, Tom Price, Celia Davis, Libby Parker, Frankie Ward & Evelyn Shaw. Congratulations to all involved - we are very proud!

Mr Quincey

Kesteven District Athletics Success

Y10 Basketball Match at

Carre’s

Simla declared Year 7/8 House

Rounders Champions

SWRA News Page 14

Sports News

See School Life in Videos

See some of the school activities by watching the various videos on our YouTube channel

‘SWR Academy’. Videos include:

Berlin Trip July 2017 Ski Trip 2017 Sports Review of the Year 2017

Mudathon The Movie Sports Day 2016 BTEC Music Video 2017

Fashion Academy 2016 Activity Day 2016 Performing Arts Trip to London 2017

Hill Holt Wood Year 7 Adventure Sixth Form Induction Day

Da Vinci Day at Nottingham Castle Pembrokeshire Trip

Level 2 Primary Schools Competition – 15th June

We had four schools attend this Level 2 Competition on 15th June which was held at SWRA & ran by our fantastic Year 12 BTEC SPORT students. We also had two Year 13 BTEC SPORTS students involved and four Year 9 prospective GCSE students. They were amazing & got fantastic feedback from the Primary School teachers & parents & pupils. I was very proud of them! The winners representing our area through to the final were Mether-ingham. They played so well & showed some excellent skill.

Well done to:

Y13 – Kieran Howard – Official Y12 – Caitlin Colquhoun-Schoffield – Official Y12 – Laura Pinfold – Official Y12 – Toby Latham – Official Y12 – Garrett Etheridge – Official Y12 – Curtis Taylor – Official Y12 – James Martin – Official Y12 – Kira Owen – Event organiser Y9 – Poppy Haggo – Team Manager Y9 – Evie Pearce – Team Manager Y9 – Katie Randall – Team Manager Y9 – Libby Carrington – Team Manager

Mrs Mower

SWRA News Page 15 Sports News

Level 3 Primary Schools County Competition – Final

@SWRACADEMY

@performingSWRA

Holiday Activities Ideas for activities to do over the holidays are available on the

Family Services Directory at www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/fsd

Click on ‘What’s On’

We then welcomed seven teams from across Lincolnshire for the final held here at SWRA for a full day of round-ers in the glorious sunshine on 21st June. The standard of talent & skill was amazing & the results were very close – having to go to goals scored with only one rounder in it! The winners were Ayschoughfee Hall.

Again I was very proud of our students & the manner in which they represented the school & our department. They only had a 15 minute break for lunch and were so professional & knowledgeable & despite the heat gave their all from the minute it started until the last school left!

Thank you guys!

Y13 – Kieran Howard – Official Y13 – Toby Rumley – Official Y12 – Caitlin Colquhoun-Schoffield – Official Y12 – Laura Pinfold – Official Y12 – Toby Latham – Official Y12 – Garrett Etheridge – Official Y12 – Curtis Taylor – Official Y12 – James Martin – Official Y12 – Kira Owen – Team Manager Y9 – Poppy Haggo – Team Manager Y9 – Evie Pearce – Team Manager Y9 – Katie Randall – Team Manager Y9 – Libby Carrington – Team Manager Y9 – Lily Kempster – Team Manager Y9 – Olivia Sharp – Team Manager

Mrs Mower

SWRA News Page 16

Did you know that you can set an alert so that your child doesn’t run out of money for school dinners?

Since the introduction of Cashless Catering we are finding that a small number of pupils are trying to purchase school meals with insufficient funds on their accounts. In the first instance we will encourage your child to call home to get their account topped up online.

In order to ensure that the canteen runs as smoothly as possible may we suggest that you set and receive automated alerts from ParentPay for low balances and other purposes! It’s quick and easy to set up giving you peace of mind that your child/children will not get to the till only to find they have insufficient funds.

Go to the ‘I want to…’ area of your home page View/edit profile>Alert settings

Balance alerts: simply choose the type of alert you wish to receive (Email or SMS text) and set the ‘Threshold’ for each child. We recommend that this is set to cover the cost of meals for 3 days in order that you have time to top-up. Other alerts that may be of interest include:

New item alerts: you can choose to receive an alert when your child’s school sets up a new payment item for your child.

Payment alerts – cheques and cash: you can set up alerts to tell you when a cash/cheque payment has been recorded against your child’s account in school ensuring you know the payment has been received safely.

Should you have any queries please contact Finance on: finance@swracademy.org

Helping you manage school dinner money allowances

Lincolnshire Young Designer of the Year 2017 -

Year 13 Emma Sahall shortlisted

The DT department is excited to announce that Emma Sahall has been shortlisted for Lincolnshire Young Designer of the Year 2017, for work undertaken as part of her A Level Product Design course. Emma’s product and elements of her design portfolio was on display at The National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford, from 30 June until Sunday 2 July. Emma has worked tremen-dously hard throughout her A Level course and is very humble about her achievements.

Emma’s work was one of only 24 students selected from over 75 entries. This is a huge achievement. To add to this, until opting for A Level Product Design (Graphics), Emma had not studied the sub-ject since Year 9. She has produced Grade ‘A’ design portfolios for both AS and A Level, and looks set to achieve a high grade overall.

Congratulations Emma on your well-deserved success.

Mrs Davie & the DT Team

SWRA News Page 17

Income Support

Income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance

Income-related Employment & Support Allowance

Support under Part VI of the Immigration & Asylum Act 1999

Guarantee Element of State Pension Credit

Child Tax Credit with an annual household income of less than £16,190 & do not get Working Tax Credit

Cashless catering*– there is no differentiation between who pays and as a parent you can track your child’s meals online. An additional sum of money has also been allocated to pupil’s daily allowance above the pre-scribed floor value.

Trip subsidies – for all curriculum based off site events to ensure they can participate fully in all learning oppor-tunities.

Easter revision classes* – to ensure your child is prepared for their final examinations by accessing additional sessions based on examination technique and content linked to a wide range of courses.

1:1 Tuition in Maths and English* - to bridge any barriers to making progress in these key areas of the curricu-lum.

Learning Mentor* – provided to support pupils who are struggling to make progress or who are having difficul-ties at home or school.

For a full list of the interventions the school is providing please see the school website (under Parents, Pupil Premium).

Mr D. Bensley, Assistant Headteacher (*This intervention is accessible by all students)

Making the claim not only benefits your child in providing a healthy meal but also releases additional funds to the school to ensure they meet their full academic potential through a range of interventions that the school has put in place. Current initiatives include:-

Free School Meals

– Are you claiming your entitlement?

According to current research it is estimated that over 200,000 pupils entitled to claim Free School Meals are not doing so in Lincolnshire! School meals offer a nutritionally balanced meal during the school day to ensure your child is ready and able to engage fully in their learning and we would encourage you to apply for this entitlement. The following eligibility criteria apply:

Sign up for Free School Meals

There is a universal checking service for free school meals which will enable us to check all secondary school pupils for free school meal eligibility. This system will also determine eligibility for Pupil Premium, which means schools receive an extra £935 per eligible pupil from central government to fund valuable support such as ex-tra tuition and learning support.

The form and further information is available on the school website and can be found under: Finance/Free School Meals and under

Pupil Premium on the Parents section of the website.

SWRA News Page 18

School closure – Wednesday 6th September 2017

The Tour of Britain cycle race is taking place between 3rd and 10th of September 2017. Stage 4 sees cyclists racing between Mansfield and Newark on Wednesday 6th September. It has come to our attention that there will be signifi-cant road closures in the Newark area on this day. The disruption is set to affect a significant proportion of our school catchment area making many of our bus-routes unviable. In accordance with other schools that are affected by the race, we have taken the decision to close the school to pupils on this day and hold a staff inset day instead. The arrangements for pupils at the start of term will now be as follows: • Tuesday 5th September: Year 7 and 6th Form only • Wednesday 6th September: Staff inset day, school closed to pupils • Thursday 7th September: All pupils in school This is the first time that Nottinghamshire has hosted an entire stage of the Tour of Britain. 120 of the world’s top cyclists will be racing through the 175km stage attracting visitors from all over the country for the finish in Newark. If you are in the area on this day, please check the Tour’s website for details of any further disruption: www.tourofbritain.co.uk

Finally, on behalf of all the staff at the academy, I would like to thank you for the tremendous support you have given us over what has been a very busy and successful year. Have a great Summer! Mr Grant, Deputy Headteacher Read more about the route plan and finish stage on Newark & Sherwood District Council’s website: http://www.newark-sherwooddc.gov.uk/tob/thetourinnewarkandsherwood/

SWRA News Page 19

Are you due to be deployed? As a school we recognise the strain that deployment can place on the families of Service Children and have implemented the following resources that you might want to access during this challenging time.

A learning mentor – who can be assigned to your child to offer both pastoral and academic support.

A counsellor – trained and experienced specifically in helping Service Children.

Tablet PC’s – discrete access to email and Skype has been made possi-ble to ensure that pupils can maintain strong communication with a de-ployed parent.

If you would like to make use of any of these services please contact Mr

Bensley for further information.

Help us to help you! Keep us informed

Please make sure that we have up-to-date contact information in the event we need to speak to you during the school day.

Absences:

If your child is absent from school or has a medical appointment, it would really help us if you could telephone and leave a message by 9am on the same day. Messages can be left by:

Dialling 01400 272422

Selecting Option 3 to record pupil sickness/absence/medical appointment

Selecting Option 5 to report anything else or leave a message for a named member of staff.

Alternatively, we have an Attendance email address: attendance@swracademy.org which can be used to com-municate absence and appointment information. For future medical appointments, a note can be written in your child’s Planner and should be shown to Mrs Jex at the Office in advance of the appointment.

Attendance is monitored daily/weekly and parents are contacted about any unexplained absence.

Thank you for your help with this important communication process.

Pupil Premium change in Eligibility Please be aware that the criteria for Pupil Premium funding is being widened to include:

Pupils who are adopted but have been looked after for one day or more or were adopted from care or left care under:

- a Special Guardianship Order - a Residence Order

If you feel that you may be eligible for the funding (£1900), please contact the school office.

Mr D. Bensley

Visit the website to keep up to date on school activities, revision sessions, news, trips and clubs. All letters are available to view and download on the website - ‘Parents’,

‘School Letters’

www.swracademy.org

SWRA News Page 20

If you are a keen photographer, how about your enter one of your photographs in a competition Your Local Lincs magazine (Sleaford area) is running a competition and the winning photograph will feature on the front cover of their October issue. To find out more visit their website: http://yourlocallincs.co.uk/ Entries need to be by 1st September. Send your photograph to: info@yourlocallincs.co.uk

Calling Budding Photographers

SWRA News Page 21

GCSE & A Level Results Day Information

New GCSE & A Level Grading Explained - new resources available New and refreshed resources to help explain GCSE and A Level grading and re-forms are now available to watch on the Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Exami-nations Regulation) YouTube channel. Click to view the videos via our website: http://www.swracademy.net/new-grading-gcsesa-levels-youtub…/ or by visiting their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ofqual/videos

SWRA News Page 22

We were delighted to welcome four primary schools to our High Achiever Maths workshops over the last six weeks of term. Once a week Navenby, Cranwell, Welbourn Primaries and Witham St Hughs Academy have visited school on a Wednesday afternoon. Head of Maths, Mr Barnes has been running the sessions which gives the ‘more able’ pupils exposure to Maths in a secondary school environment and looking at the kind of Maths prob-lems that would be covered during their first 2-3 years.

During one of their sessions the pupils enjoyed seeing our new Augmented Reality Sandbox which allows users to create topography models by shaping real sand, which is then augmented in real time by an elevation colour map, topographic contour lines and simulated water. The children enjoyed playing with the sand to change the contours and enjoyed some cookies and drinks.

Four Primaries take part in our High Achiever Maths Workshops

Singing Exam Success

In early July I took two pupils to an exam centre to take Music Theatre Singing graded exams. I'm pleased to report that both pupils did brilliantly and their results are in.

Evie Pearson (Year 9) scored 75% for Grade 5 (MERIT) and

Charlotte Pearce (Year 10) scored 87% for Grade 8 (DISTINCTION)

Charlotte has also earned herself 65 UCAS points for her exam.

These results will also be my swan song from giving vocal tuition at Will Rob. I started as a voice tutor here about 13 years ago as a favour to the, then, music teacher as she had too many pupils wanting lessons and not enough frees on her timetable to teach them. I came in one afternoon a week whilst on my day off from my job as a photo lab assistant and I somehow ended up here full time and the rest is history.

Of course you'll still see me around in my TA duties but "singing Mr Norton" is signing off.

Mr Norton

SWRA News Page 23

Fearless Learners

We are delighted to share the names of our latest ‘Fearless Learners’ for this last half term. These students have been nominated by their teachers for demonstrating a positive atti-tude to learning. They have pushed their limits and remained undaunted by any setbacks that they have encountered along the way. We are extremely proud of them all!

Thank you for your support with this exciting new initiative. To read more about the programme, please visit our website: http://www.swracademy.net/curriculum/growth-mindset/

w/c 10th July Lydia Pinfold (Y12) for History Ellen Chambers (Y9) for German Ashlie Richardson (Y7) for Music Poppy Haggo (Y9) for Drama Sam Wright (Y10) for Geography Oska Murfin (Y9) for Religious Studies Erin Draper (Y12) for Psychology Jessica Fry (Y10) for Art James Lesinski (Y8) & Mark Young (Y8) - Rocket Car Challenge Peter Wynn-Jones (Y8) for Maths

w/c 3rd

July Steven Howard (Y7) for Maths Joe Statham (Y9) for Drama Zack Gilley (Y10) for Science Maria Mills (Y7) for History Alfie Cornish (Y10) for Business Michael O’Connor (Y9) for German Jessica Fry (Y10) for English Alethea Meachem (Y10) for PE Morgan Hymers (Y10) for Food Preparation & Nutrition Joseph Gascoigne (Y9) for Art Allister Spence (Y9) for Music Ben Scott (Y10) for Geography

w/c 26th

June 2017 Ellie Sunman (Y8) for English Sophie Hobby (Y8) for French Callum Laud (Y10) for History Emma Heffer (Y9) for Music Sasha Idin-Smith (Y9) for Drama Jake Whiteside (Y10) for PE Alex Shearer (Y7) for Art Daniel Sanderberg (Y7) & Henry Martin (Y7) for D&T (Rocket Car Challenge) Henry Martin (Y7) for Science Sam Newton (Y12) for the Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition

w/c 19th June

Ben Scott (Y10) for History Oliver Nicholson (Y10) for Drama Imogen Watson (Y7) & Gracie Jai Longden (Y9) for PE (High Jump) Mia Hedley (Y9) for Music Mark Young (Y8) for Graphics Jemma Finch (Y8) for Art James O’Connor (Y7) for German Kerry Hancock (Y10) for French Hannah Pinder (Y10) for English Jospeh Beeken (Y8) for Maths Bobby McDonald (Y9) for Geography/Travel & Tourism

w/c 12th June Chelsea Duffy (Y8) for Art Chelsea Duffy (Y8) for Science Hannah Ball (Y7) for English Poppy Haggo (Y9) for Music James Lesinski (Y8) for Creative Writing at the Lily Divall Author Day Rebecca Dwane (Y12) for Drama Alicia Matts (Y8) for History Megan Milner (Y13) for Psychology Lottie Shelbourn (Y10) for Maths Natalie Major (Y7) for PE Kian Deighton (Y10) for PE High Jump Alice Heaton (Y8) for French Bethany Lineham (Y10) for D&T Joel Meachem (Y8) for Geography Kai Harris (Y7) for German w/c 5th June Jasper Hardwick Shaw (Y8) for English Josh Wright (Y9) for Maths Celia Davis (Y10) for Geography Katie Harrison (Y10) for Media Studies Lauren Coupland (Y8) for Spelling Millie Stott (Y7) for Drama Evelyn Shaw (Y7) for PE Lily O’Hara (Y10) for Science (Chemistry) Jessica Blankley (Y7) for Art Ben Scholes (Y10) for French Dylan Mercer (Y10) for Business Studies Aaron Scholes (Y8) for Music Emily Scrivener (Y9) for History

SWRA News Important Dates for 2017/18 Page 24

@SWRACADEMY

Sir William Robertson Academy

July

16th - 30th Outlook World Challenge Trip to Iceland Wed 19th Activity Day & End of Term 6 - Summer holidays

August

Thurs 17th A Level Results Day Thurs 24th GCSE Results Day 25th - 1st Sept Summer School (for some Y7 new starters) (exc Mon 28th)

September

Mon 4th Inset Day Tues 5th Start of Term for Year 7, 12 & 13 only Wed 6th Inset Day - school closed due to Tour of Britain finish in Newark Thurs 7th Start of Term for all years 8th - 10th Duke of Edinburgh Silver final expedition 13th Y12 National Citizen Service Assembly 13th HPV Girls’ Vaccinations (Y8 pupils plus some outstanding Y9) 14th School Photographs (Y7,9 & 11) w/c 18th - 22nd Year 7 Hill Holt Wood Camp Week 18th - 20th Year 4/5/6 Open Mornings 9.15am - 11.15am Wed 20th Year 4/5/6 September Open Evening 6.00pm - 8.30pm 28th Y13 Biology Trip

October

5th Friends of Sir William Robertson Academy AGM 17th Year 7 Parents’ Evening 4pm - 6.30pm Thurs 19th Sixth Form Open Evening 6.30pm - 8.30pm 20th End of Term 1 Mon 30th Inset Training Day for Staff Tues 31st Start of Term 2

November 14th Y9 Parents’ Evening 4pm - 6.30pm

December 4th Senior Citizens Christmas Party 5th Year 8 Parents’ Evening 4pm - 6.30pm 6th Sixth Form - 2fast2soon presentation 11th Our House Dress Rehearsal 13th - 15th Our House Show dates Tues 19th End of Term 2

Watch us on YouTube

SWR Academy

January 2018 Tues 2nd Start of Term 3 16th Year 11 Parents’ Evening 4pm - 6.30pm

Feb 2018 20th Y12/13 Parents’ Evening 4pm - 6.30pm

March 2018 26th - 29th Trip to Italy

May 2018 15th Y10 Parents’ Evening 4pm - 6.30pm