Academy Newsletter Edition 15, February 2012
FRIDAY 10th FEBRUARY 2012: ARRANGEMENTS FOR LAST DAY OF TERM Periods 1 -5: 3pm
Normal Lessons Academy closes at normal time
Welcome from the Academy Principal, Mr R Gilbert A rather belated Happy New Year to you all. This year, 2012, is one of the most exciting at the Academy. The progress being made with the new building is very good and the internal aspects are now clearly shaping very well indeed. I can report that the classrooms have now been firmly established and a great deal of mechanical and electrical infrastructure is almost complete. The project also seems to have generated a great deal of interest from external bodies, and I was very pleased to welcome Monmouthshire County Council to the Willmott Dixon site on Friday 27th January 2012. They took a very keen interest in what we were trying to achieve, through the building design, and also the fact that a large number of students in the Academy have been actively involved with the whole process, alongside Willmott Dixon. I have every confidence that our completion date of 9th July will be met, and look forward to being able to share our new build with you all at the earliest opportunity. 2012 also brings along with it the London Olympic Games. The Olympics are very dear to our heart, as an Academy with a Sports specialism, and we are very keen to develop our own Olympic legacy during this year, that will stand us in good stead for years to come. The Sport and PE team, led by Mr Revett, have actively engaged in a large number of high participation events in order to ensure that as many students in the Academy, both in the secondary and the primary phases, have access to competition during this Olympic year. There has been A, B, C & D competitions, in various sports, that have an Olympic theme; gymnastics, in the primary phase, and table tennis in the secondary phase. At this stage we are very pleased to be able to share some regional successes with you, in the shape of the Year 11 and Year 10 boys Pro5 Football Teams and the upper school Table Tennis Team. More details of this can be found in the Sport section of this newsletter. Another notable success, more on an individual level, has been achieved by Eloise Robertson, who has recently won the sub-regional heat of the Rotary Club Young Chef of The Year. She has now completed two parts of this national competition and moves on the South West regional final, to be held in the near future. It appears that we have our own Master Chef in the making and we would like to pass on our best wishes to Eloise for the next round and we look forward to hearing of her further successes. On the academic front, this term has been very busy with examinations for Years 12 and 13, with some modular examinations for Years 10 and 11. The majority of students in the Sixth Form have sat some examinations and the results of those will be known to us in March. We hope that their results are an indication of the hard work and progress they have made so far with their Post-16 studies. For parents in Year 9, this is an important time of the year. Prior to the half term break, you will all have known that we have had our Year 9 Subject Parents Evening followed by our Year 9 Options Evening. It is the time when our Year 9s decide the option choices that they are going to make, in relation to their GCSE and equivalent qualification studies in Years 10 and 11.