Crew Finch: Giving Back

15th January 2022A Parker

Crew Finch, along with other Y11 Crews, have been giving back to the school community by offering their help and expertise to their “buddy” Crews.

This has involved running Crew sessions for Y7 and Y8 focussing on Crew team building and character traits. For example, Dakota and MacKenzie led activities in the sportshall for Mr Currie’s Crew:

Meanwhile, Noah, Ali and Callie have been helping Y9 Crew Mercury prepare for their upcoming Passage Presentations.

Here’s Noah’s explanation of how they have supported in these sessions, by drawing on their own experiences of Passage:

“These sessions have consisted of individual peer critique and how it could be improved. Whilst others may have seen a fishbowl activity, where somebody would read out a piece of work for everyone to hear, which would then be critiqued by ourselves and others in the crew. This ultimately prepares them the best they can so that they have the best key points to make and that they have already built up the confidence to speak in front of an audience.”

Moving on – we will be focussing on how we can give back to our wider community. Crew Finch have already done some amazing fundraising for Firefly and collected items for our local foodbank, so we are looking forward to being able to make more positive impacts throughout the rest of our time together.

Busy morning at D6!

15th January 2022A Parker

Absolutely fantastic to see so many Y11s here at D6 this morning, especially as it meant dragging themselves out of their warm and cosy beds on such a cold and frosty Saturday morning!

We’ve got about 20 students here either undertaking independent study or taking advantage of the support on offer from our Student Coaches to produce some high quality revision notes.

Some of the boys have even snuck in a game of chess during a ‘brain break’ – still developing their mathematical and critical thinking skills 😉

D6 runs every Saturday morning during term time, 9am-12.30pm, over at XP. East. It is open to all Y10 and Y11 students.

Working hard and getting smart – that’s what we like to see!

Keep up the fantastic work, Y11, we’re so proud of you!f

Mrs Parker & Miss Cocliff x

What’s on our Plate – This Term

15th January 2022Web Blogger

Student Led Conference

“Student-led conferences require and empower students to take the lead role in communicating their learning. The practice helps to build dispositions and skills—such as adapting speech to the appropriate context and organising and presenting information—that will be vital for students in college and careers…..” (Ron Berger)

Crew Rashford will be preparing for their SLC’s next term, if last year is anything to go by it’s going to be brilliant. 

This is a chance for students to showcase the work they have done since September. By presenting to parents and carers face to face (fingers crossed). 

SLC’s will start WC 31/01/22 – parents look out for the invitation in your mail boxes soon. 

Becoming book worms! 

This term we are committed and determined to become more engaged with reading. Tranquil Tuesdays is an opportunity for students to sit and read independently, 1:1 and or as a group and enjoy some quiet time during crew. All while improving their reading skills. 

Wise up! – Wise Wednesday

This term we are looking at e-safety and why it matters. 

As a crew we enjoy our in depth discussions and I expect these sessions will allow us to explore further. 

Academic Success! –

This term we are focusing on pledges and ensuring we uphold them. Also, we will be continuing on with our ‘catch me, praise me’ where students praise each other for their efforts, identifying HoWLs and XP character traits. 

Community Work and Being Mindful

With the up and coming SLC’s most of our Friday sessions will involve preparing for this.

Additionally, as you can see from our previous blog our visit to Age Well Doncaster was a brilliant success, we hope to return in February spreading Valentines joy 💜.

Alongside this we like to get out and around the school grounds, armed with our litter pickers to make sure XP/XPE grounds are clean and fresh!

XPionage and First Aid

14th January 2022Web Blogger

Crews across the E26 phase have been taking part in ‘XPionage’ recently. This involved pupils keeping a beady eye on their classmates (targets) during sessions and then reporting their findings on a top secret document. Some pupils felt more comfortable writing their appreciations down rather than verbalising them publicly in a community meeting. The activity was organised in a way to encourage pupils to focus on peers they might not ordinarily work closely with, or make appreciations of. Here are a couple of the positive comments Crew Obama are delighted to have received:

“My target not only worked hard in all sessions but also showed craftsmanship and quality when given their new book. They showed all of the character values by putting their hand up and showed courage in maths when there was a question.”

“My target showed compassion when giving me more of an insight on the passage work in crew by saying what order I could do things in. They also showed courage by speaking up and voicing their opinions which I know can be difficult for some people.”  

We have also been continuing with our Duke of Edinburgh Award skills. Last week, pupils worked in small groups to work out how to deal with a range of first aid situations they might encounter whilst on outdoors expeditions. Some groups opted to use their amazing drama skills to re-enact the case studies, which was great! We then paired up with Crew Mercury this afternoon for everyone to present their work to an audience. 

Pupils conducting XPionage during lessons, ready to report their observations to Crew Leaders.

Bus Driver Shortages

13th January 2022Web Blogger

Communication Received from SYPTE

First bus service changes – from Monday 17 January 2022

We have been advised that, as a result of bus driver shortages due to COVID-19, First South Yorkshire will be introducing  a number of short term journey cancellations, from Monday 17 January 2022, to help prevent on-the-day cancellations and provide a more reliable timetable.

To enable customers to plan their travel, First South Yorkshire intend to publicise the impacted journeys for the following week each Wednesday the week prior to the changes being implemented.  The operator has endeavoured to maintain the first and last journeys for each service, cover school movements and maintain evening frequencies.

First will review the situation each week in line with their forecast driver availability and if the situation improves during the week, additional journeys will be restored as resource allows.

Up to date information is available at https://www.firstbus.co.uk/sheffield/plan-journey/timetables/suspended-journeys and https://www.firstbus.co.uk/doncaster/plan-journey/timetables/suspended-journeys

Please see the communication below confirming how this will be communicated… if you are concerned by this please speak with your child’s crew leader or contact the school office.

How will this information be communicated to customers?

First South Yorkshire will be tweeting service changes and cancellations via @FirstSouthYorks which we will retweet on our @TSYalerts Twitter feed, as well as sharing overall messages from first via @TravelSYorks. They will also be keeping customers updated of these suspended journeys via their web pages https://www.firstbus.co.uk/sheffield/plan-journey/timetables/suspended-journeys and https://www.firstbus.co.uk/doncaster/plan-journey/timetables/suspended-journeys

To ensure customers can stay up to date with the latest changes, we will create a news story at https://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com/en-gb/newsupdates/latest-news directing customers to the First web pages, as well as updating our Service Changes and Journey Planner pages to direct customers to the latest information. We will also include a story on the service changes in our email newsletter sent to subscribed Travel South Yorkshire customers directing them to our news story for more information.

We will continue to update our Disruptions page to reflect any short notice service cancellations attravelsouthyorkshire.com/Disruptions.

Our live departure screens at bus stops and within our interchanges will advise customers of the journey cancellations and direct them to the latest information.

In the first instance it is recommended that customers check service availability via the above links before they travel and make alternative arrangements where required. 

Alternatively, customers who do not have access to the internet or social media can call Traveline on 01709 51 51 51 for the latest information.

Y11 Learn2Earn revision rewards

12th January 2022A Parker

Today we launched our Learn2Earn Revision Rewards scheme to Y11 as a way of recognising the hard work and commitment of those students who are attending our lunchtime and after-school GCSE revision sessions (and perhaps encourage some of our other students to attend, too!)

So, what is Learn2Earn?

  • A rewards ‘loyalty’ scheme for revision – the more sessions students attend, the more points they earn! 
  • After 5 sessions, students receive a small ‘reward’…
  • After 10 sessions, students receive a medium ‘reward’…

All completed cards will be entered into a ‘big CREW reward’ prize draw – so the more crew participate in sessions, the more chance their crew have of winning the bigger prize at the end of Y11!

Y11 students working hard in one of our lunchtime History revisions sessions.

Here is our current revision timetable. Please note this is currently under review and we’ll be adding more sessions soon:

Don’t forget that Y11 – and Y10 – students can also attend D6 on a Saturday morning, from 9am – 12:30pm, which is back up and running this weekend (15th January). D6 provides students with a relaxed and informal study space working alongside our expert Student Coaches. We are expecting these to get busier as GCSEs get closer (16th May – 24th June.)

Phase 2 of the COVID programme

11th January 2022Web Blogger

The RDaSH vaccination team have been asked to return to schools to deliver phase 2 of the COVID programme to 12 -15 year olds. The dates of which are not confirmed but are to be arranged in the next few weeks. The vaccination team will return to school to administer second dose vaccines to students who are due or first vaccines to children who may have missed the vaccine, and students who have now turned 12.

Once we have confirmed the dates for vaccination in school, we will give out letters, consent forms and information leaflets, these will be distributed to those students aged 12 -15 (16-year-olds in year 11 can also be included).  

Enrichment Update

10th January 2022Web Blogger

New Year, new exciting opportunities in extra curricular for our students. Please see the new enrichment extra curricular timetable below to see what fantastic academic and sporting opportunities we are offering this half term.

The timetable comes into effect today with basketball for all years with Mr Stables

Any questions about any sporting clubs please contact Mr Stables

XP East Ofsted Response

10th January 2022XP East

Dear Parents and Friends of XP East

Please find attached the Ofsted report for XP East school that took place on October 12 and 13 in 2021. 

You will probably be wondering why the report has taken so long to be published and that is because we were compelled to complain to Ofsted about the judgement regarding the overall effectiveness of the school and the conduct of the inspection team. 

As you will see when you read the report we achieved a ‘good’ judgement for the quality of education. We strongly disagree with the ‘good’ judgement as we are confident that our curriculum and implementation is world class.

In addition, we were given a ‘good’ judgement for behaviour and attitudes. Once again, we strongly disagree with this judgement as our students respectfully and amazingly express who they are every day.

The school was judged as ‘outstanding’ for personal development and safeguarding was judged as effective. 

Indeed, comments in the report are very positive, even though we were disappointed by the ‘good’ judgements. Inspectors did not seem able to grasp fully what we do in terms of our curriculum model or recognise the impact that the high quality work our students produce has on their character growth and academic success.

The judgement for sixth form is ‘requires improvement’. This was based on the fact that our quality assurance of external provision has not been robust enough and that we need to improve this aspect of our work. Within 24 hours of the inspection, we identified the risks and mitigated the issues raised regarding the quality assurance of our external Post 16 provision to put things right.

This in no way reflects the excellent external provision in place at both Harrison College and Higher Rhythm, who provide amazing provision for some of the most vulnerable students in Doncaster.

There were no issues with our in-school Post 16 provision.

Nevertheless, this judgement has then led the inspection team to judge our leadership and management and overall effectiveness as ‘requires improvement’. We consider this to be disproportionate and it is contradictory to the other judgements and general comments in the report.

Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, Ofsted did not uphold our complaints regarding the above, the unprofessional conduct of the team and their conflicts of interest.

Regardless of Ofsted’s view, we know XP East is a fantastic school that provides world class provision. The school is not defined by Ofsted but by the work we do, with our students, parents and wider community on a daily basis. Our students produce beautiful and important work that impacts positively on the community, develops their character and sense of social justice whilst allowing them to succeed academically. Hundreds of visitors from around the world who come to see our school as a model of excellence agree with that analysis.

We would like to thank you for your ongoing support of the school and the noble work that we are engaged in and that we deliver every day. We are not deterred from our mission to enable our young people to make the world a better place and we will continue to focus on this in the future.

With my very best wishes, as always.

Andy Sprakes

Chief Academic Officer

XP School Trust.

XP East Ofsted Report