End of Year Letter from the Principal

24 July 2024

Dear parents and carers,

As our academic year comes to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my personal thanks for the support you have shown to me since being appointed Principal back in October. It has been an extremely busy but very rewarding year and I have felt truly privileged to have become part of this great community.

Celebrating our successes

It is important for us to reflect upon the year in full, and there have been many successes this year. You can see photos of some of these in our latest magazine!

Some highlights include:

Rewarding Co-op Heroes through iPads, bikes, cinema experiences, and trips out to Arcade Club, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Chester Zoo. Co-op Heroes show excellence in attendance, behaviour and punctuality.
Sporting successes in rugby, football and netball, including our Year 8 girls winning the Manchester Cup and a brilliant (if a little hot) Sports Day where hundreds of students competed to win medals.
Amazing enrichment opportunities such as the Girls Out Loud programme, University trips, First Story Writing workshops, REACH careers project, Brilliant Club, Envision social action project, Pot Noodle Enterprise project, Trust Public Speaking Competition, Spelling Bee and many more.
We have seen some successful improvements to our SEND provision, including remodelling the dedicated SEND space and bringing all staff into the Autism In Schools (AIS) Project through specialist training. The AIS project also supported the launch of monthly SEND Coffee Mornings for parents and carers, as well as a special marketplace event that connected parents and carers to statutory and community services.
Our STEM extracurricular offer has continued to go from strength to strength, and we enjoyed welcoming the whole community to our Astronomy Evening. This year we have been a pilot school for the National Education Nature Parks project that aims to improve biodiversity in school grounds nationwide. We have created an area in school devoted to ecology that is now being used by students in science and geography lessons. STEM Champions took part in a residential trip to the inspiring Eden project in Cornwall.
Our Community Fridge has reduced food waste and provided a much-needed service for our local community.
Several students were successfully shortlisted for Co-op Academies Trust Young Musician of the Year Award, with one student being awarded Key Stage 4 musician of the Year across the entire Trust.
Our big academy show this year, Little Shop of Horrors, entertained packed audiences over three nights. Our Theatre has hosted a number of other concerts and performances this year, such as our festive concert and an orchestra performance.
We held our first ever ‘Life after Year 11’ Careers Week for our Year 10 students, allowing them to develop vital interview skills, as well as be able to meet colleges, universities, employers and external providers.

These are just a few of the wonderful things that have happened throughout the year. I am sure they give you a flavour of the variety of opportunities that our students and staff have been involved in. Next academic year we plan to provide even more experiences and opportunities for everyone to succeed.

You Said, We Did

I was delighted that so many parents and carers took part in our ‘Edurio’ survey this year. It is so important for us to know how you feel about a wide range of issues. The senior leadership team and I have listened to what you have told us and are using this to inform our plans moving forward. Whilst there were lots of positives raised in the survey, which we will continue to build on, it was also clear that there were some priorities that needed to be addressed:

Quality and quantity of communication
Profile of rewards
Specific terminology used in our Key Stage Three assessment model
Access to key workers within the school

As a result, we have already begun making changes in the way we do things, including;

We have returned to in-person Progress Evenings, which have been positively received.
We are sending report cards to parents and carers twice per year. Year 10 will receive three ahead of their important final year. We have removed the term ‘inadequate’ from reports. The whole reporting system for Key Stage 3 will look significantly different in September. We will be communicating this in detail in September.
We are sending weekly bulletins and posting regularly on social media to let you know what’s going on in school. Please contact the academy if you are not receiving these.
Next year, emails and phone calls from parents will be entered into a ticketing system so we can ensure that all queries are responded to within a timely fashion. We will provide additional information before September with regards to this.
Next year we will move to using Arbor for messaging parents, for online payments and for sharing your child's behaviour data. This means everything will be in one place.
We are increasing our budget allocation to rewards. This means that are now more trips and experiences for our Co-op Heroes planned for September, which will all be heavily subsidised and, where possible, free of charge for students who regularly meet our expectations.
We have launched a Ways of Being Co-op Award which rewards attendance and behaviour but also places an emphasis upon community service. Students are rewarded for engaging the local community by giving of their time and efforts. This award will result in a celebration event each year.
We have revamped our SEND internal provision, building an ‘Inclusion’ centre structured around zones of regulation.
All staff receive weekly 'Known, Valued and Understood' updates on individual students with SEND.
Key workers are assigned to learning areas, ensuring that students get the support they need when they need it.
We host monthly SEND coffee mornings which all parents and carers of students with SEND are invited to.
A number of new staff roles have been created and recruited to better support our students. From September our students will have access to educational psychologists, on-site councillors, a mental health lead, a reading improvement lead, an on-site paramedic (for first aid), a speech & language therapist and a primary school teacher to support students in the transition from Year 6 to Year 7.

Looking forward to the new year

Improvements to the school building

Over the summer we will be completing a number of improvements to our building:

We have already turned the Humanities Zone into several enclosed classrooms, ensuring fewer distractions and greater focus on learning.
A new library is currently being created in the former Modern Foreign Languages open learning area. This new library area will allow students to read and study in a quieter, more purposeful environment.
The existing library will be converted into a large, dedicated dining area. This will enable students to have a more suitable, calmer and more enjoyable dining experience. We felt that the previous eating arrangements for year 7 and year 9 were not conducive to a calm and relaxed lunch.
A dividing wall is being built in the central corridor between the old and new phases of our buildings. A one-way system will be in place, ensuring that students can move safely through this area, reducing previous congestion issues.
Our reception area is being remodelled to be a more welcoming area for parents, carers and visitors.

Curriculum and homework changes

We are structuring our curriculum to ensure that students acquire, retain and apply knowledge to unlock their potential as knowledge experts. Teachers will be providing consistent, predictable experiences for students using well defined routines and expectations so that students know what to expect in every classroom they are taught in, ensuring they can focus on their learning and the expert teaching taking place. We will soon be sharing our new academy curriculum intent statement and a set of curriculum maps that show the knowledge journey that students access from Year 7 through to the end of Year 11.

In September, we will also be sharing our new approach to homework; making it clearer, simpler and more accessible for students to ensure they understand what homework they need to do. We will keep you informed on how you can help students outside the classroom. We will be explaining this fully in September.

Inviting you to hear about our plans in detail

As Principal of Co-op Academy Manchester, I have three key priorities. In the new school year we will be focussing on these three key priorities:

Keeping students safe, happy and well
Achieving and Embedding Excellence in Education
Showing We Care for our Students, Colleagues and Community

To ensure that we do this, I will be starting the school year with a clear vision for staff, students, families and the community. In September, I will be inviting parents and carers to several events where I will share our academy roadmap in more detail and where there will be an opportunity to ask questions regarding our collective direction of travel.

Keeping in touch

As a reminder

Our primary method of communication is to your mobile phone (My Ed app messages if you have the app; SMS messages if you don't).
We send reports by email.
Copies of general letters and weekly bulletins are available online at https://www.manchester.coopacademies.co.uk/latest-updates
We use social media (@coopmanchester) and website news stories to share extra helpful information and academy news.

Finally, on behalf of everyone at Co-op Academy Manchester, I wish you all a very happy and safe summer holiday and look forward to seeing everyone in the new academic year. We will write to you separately with everything you need to know about the arrangements for coming back in September.

Allan Glover
Principal