I met with both 7 Explorer and 7 Pioneer students this morning to talk about their MEGs (Minimum Expected Grades).

MEGs are based upon their prior attainment at Key Stage 2, and are based on a four point system: Beginning, Developing, Secure and Excellence. A student’s MEG will remain the same for every assessment throughout a student’s school career. Essentially, they are the academic targets that students are expected to achieve in their assessments.

We have mapped our assessment criteria so that if students continue to meet their minimum expected grade on the four point system, they will continue to make at least expected progress towards GCSE. You can read more about our assessment system here.

MEGs can be revised up, but never down.

This morning I also spoke about how our ‘common mission’ is to ensure that everyone goes to University (if they so wish) and consequently, we all have a role in supporting one another to get there.

I also made a point about not allowing a Y6 SATs score to define them as a student. For example, some students may not have done as well as they might have hoped but that XP East was a brand new start, and that everyone is making terrific progress: socially and academically. In addition, those who may have done well should not be complacent. MEGs are designed to be very challenging, and that hard work is needed in order to achieve them.

The assessment process is complicated: they always are, and I’m sure they always will be. Consequently, I encourage parents or guardians to contact us in order to clarify any questions that I’m sure you may have at this early stage of our school’s development.

At XP, the two different classes for each year group are called ‘Admiral’ and ‘Skipper’. They are named after different types of butterflies, and are also linked to the Outward Bound and Expeditionary Learning values of which the school is based upon.

Before the holiday break, I asked students to come up with their own suggested names accompanied with a brief explanation of how they linked to our school.

The different names can be found here, but we narrowed down the options down to four, and students voted for the names that would stay with XP East for hopefully decades to come. It was a close run thing, but students voted for ‘Explorer’ and ‘Pioneer’.

Students formally in 7X are now ‘7 Explorer’ and those who were in 7P are now in ‘7 Pioneer’.

I’ve attended 15 different Y6 Open Evenings during my 15 year teaching career, and our recent one was an event where I hardly spoke! As Head of XP East some may think that this would be an event where I talked all night about our curriculum, ambitions and current learning expeditions. Instead however, our students did all of the talking.

Mr Smith came up with the idea of setting up different work stations in one classroom where students showed their exercise books, described the processes behind our current expedition, explained scientific experiments, discussed our fieldwork, presented on what ‘Crew’ is, and took questions in the form of a panel from parents.

All students volunteered. None were ‘cherry picked’. I gave them no instructions to talk about anything other than their work. No tricks. No gimmicks. Their honesty and courage in being truthful about their development over a period of 7 weeks was breathtaking.

Some spoke about how how their behaviour had improved from Y6, and explained how their confidence was growing to the extent where they were able to present in front of several hundred parents over the course of 2 days. Some spoke about how hard their work was, but in a way that was good, and made them really productive. Others spoke about how Crew was affecting their ability to support others, and be supported. All students answered questions from parents in an open and honest manner.

I must admit, I was a tad nervous. What if they said something like the work was easy, and that lessons were dull and boring? I knew that this wouldn’t be the case of course but I was anxious nevertheless. From this however, I learned a lot from the Open Evening event. I learned that if you are authentic in everything that you do with students (every single day – and I mean every single day), and if we are explicit about the detail of what they are learning, and where it fits within our culture – they are with you.

A massive well done to all of our students who presented!

Wednesday 18th October was a special day for the students and staff at XP East, as we all got to visit the new build site for the first time.

We were grateful to the construction staff at Willmott Dixon who were kind enough to not only gives us a brief tour into the heart of the building, but also created a safe pathway in which to access the site.

Students were really excited to sign a steel girder with their names, and although this will be boxed in by the builders at a later date it is symbolic of the fact they will be the pioneering year group for XP East. We discussed how we could drive past the building in decades to come, and we would know that our names are actually within the fabric of the building.

Any students who were absent will also get an opportunity to also sign their names.