Welcome to this week's newsletter
It has been another fantastic week here at Manor. We have had the pleasure to go into many great lessons, where students have been focused and determined whilst receiving excellent teaching. It has also been great to see students attending a variety of extra-curricular clubs in a variety of activities both at lunchtime and after school.
Today we presented Year 7 student Brooke C with a special Principal's Commendation certificate. Brooke demonstrated our REACH value of Humanity when she helped a lady in Raunds Market Square who fell ill. Brooke called for an ambulance and waited with the lady, comforting her until the ambulance arrived. We are incredibly proud of Brooke and were delighted to present her with this award.
This week we have had our introduction to the sixth form evening which was well attended, and we are preparing to launch our new house system soon. We are also preparing for our Year 6 into 7 Open Evening on Wednesday 6 October - further information on this can be found below.
As always, we appreciate your support and hope you have a lovely weekend.
Glenn Martin and Lee Towers, Co-Principals
An introduction to the pastoral team
At its simplest, pastoral care is the provision a school makes to ensure the physical and emotional welfare of students. It is the essential foundation upon which learning can take place. That said, Manor School is a school with high standards of pastoral care and we go further than a basic commitment to welfare, with pastoral care extending to every aspect of school life in order to foster student’s personal development as much as their academic progress.
All parents and carers want their children to be safe and happy at school. The importance of pastoral care goes well beyond this. Education and health are closely linked, and we think students with better health and wellbeing are likely to achieve better academically. Good pastoral care at Manor School is also fundamental to the development of our REACH values, which we believe are critical to students in later life.
We are dedicated to high standards of pastoral care and it is apparent in the friendly and respectful staff-student relationships, and how far students are known and treated as individuals by all members of staff.
We have a fantastic pastoral team here at Manor School which begins with your child’s form tutor. Each year group is overseen by a Progress Leader who is supported by a non-teaching, Pastoral Support Officer.
If you would like to speak to a member of staff regarding your child, it will help us provide most efficient support if you follow the guidelines in the graphics below. These should help you to identify who should be contacted in the first instance, and who to go to next, should you need to do so.
If you would like to speak about the pastoral care of your child with a member of staff other than their Form Tutor or Progress Leader, please feel free to contact me directly by emailing msturgess@manor.school. In addition, contact details for all members of staff can be found in the parents section of the school website.
Matt Sturgess, Director of Student Services
Homework and Microsoft Teams
Student timetables are now available via their Outlook Calendar. This will automatically refresh with our school information management system every term.
Following our message last week, all homework will be set by teachers on Microsoft Teams. This does not mean that the homework has to be completed on a computer, just that the place to find set homework is here. Students will still be able to complete homework on paper, in their exercise books, on computer or in any other appropriate format as necessary. To help parents and carers with supporting their child, our IT providers EasiPC have set up Microsoft Teams Guardian Summaries. Each week on a Sunday, parents will be emailed a summary of the previous week's assignments, includeing the status of turned in or missing work. The summary will also include a look ahead to any due dates for the coming week. This information is private to each indivdiual student and only shared with parents and guardians.
Guardian Summaries will begin from Sunday 19 September. If you don't receive a summary email, please contact enquiries@manor.school in the first instance who will check that your contact details are up to date. If students have forgotten their login details for Microsoft Teams, please contact form tutors initially who will raise necessary tickets with our IT providers.
New student absence procedure
With immediate effect we will be using an automatic system to send a message via email to parents/carers informing them that their child is absent, with a request to contact the school urgently if you are expecting them to be in. We will continue to make calls home for unexplained absences, as well as notifying parents/carers if their child is late.
Therefore, if your child is due to be off, please follow the absence procedure by calling the absence line by 8:30am on 01933 627020 or emailing attendance@manor.school. This should be done on a daily basis for the duration of the student's absence.
Thank you for your support.
Incident reporting
This week saw the launch of See It, Scan It, Log It. This is our new incident reporting system which allows students to log any incidents they may have seen, and forms part of our anti-bullying campaign. We adopt a zero tolerance approach to potential bullying where it is reported, and See It, Scan It, Log It allows a safe system for victims and witnesses to report incidents they are not happy with.
This new system allows a more rapid response to be made for incidents and allows the pastoral team to more thoroughly tie incidents together where there are allegations of potential bullying.
Students access the system either by scanning the QR Code, visiting bit.ly/ManorWatch or via the Student Portal, and can be reported using either smartphones or web browsers from a computer.
School photographs
Our School Photographer will be on site on Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 September. These photos are uploaded to our school information management system and are only used for student records. Parents/carers will receive a link to an online portal after the photographs are taken where they will be able to purchase prints of these photos if they wish to do so. As always, please ensure students arrive at school on these days in full uniform.
Parent forum
Would you like to help your child to navigate the virtual and real world safely? If so, join us for our ‘Friend or Foe?’ parent forum on Thursday 30 September from 6:30-8pm.
This session examines the risks young people face and offers ways of keeping safe. Led by experts in online safety and child sexual exploitation, it will provide resources, promote awareness and provide hints and tips for educating others around positive and negative relationships, peer pressure, sexual exploitation along with the use of new technologies within this arena. Refreshments will be provided.
Book your place by completing our online form:
Parent/Carer Consultation Evenings
During the 2020-21 academic year we switched all our Parent/Carer Consultation Evenings to virtual events in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to believe firmly in the relationship between home and school as a key factor in the success of students and so Consultation Evenings remain a crucial part of our educational journey.
We currently operate one Consultation Evening per year group, with an additional evening for examination groups in Year 11 and 13. This is in addition to evenings such as our Year 7 Meet the Tutor evening, our Year 7 Transition Evening, or our Information Events.
Traditionally at these events parents/carers would book appointments with their children's subject teachers and come into school for these appointments in the main hall. Our virtual replacements last year involved parents/carers booking appointments for Microsoft Teams video calls with their children's subject teachers.
We are keen to gather views of the entire school community on the operation of our Consultation Evenings and appreciate the views and comments of students, parents/carers, and staff to support us making the best decision for all. This survey will remain open until Friday 24 September at 4:00pm.
The link to the survey is as follows:
Catering provision
The school canteen offers a variety of hot and cold lunches for students to purchase. There are two hot meals with traditional accompaniments, a potato dish and two vegetable sides to choose from each day. The main meal costs £2 or £2.80 as part of a meal day. We also offer pasta, jacket potatos, paninis and sandwiches for our buffet meal, which cost £1.50 individually or £2.30 as part of a meal day. In both instances, meal deals include a hot or cold dessert and a small drink. There is likely to be a small price increase in 2022, but this will be announced in due course.
The current lunch menu can be downloaded below.
Student lockers
We will be including details in next week's newsletter of how Year 7 and 8 students can apply for a school locker. Parents/carers will be required to make a one-off, non-returnable payment to cover the hire cost for the entirety of the student's school life at Manor.
Manor Maths Challenges
In this week's blog, Mrs Radd presents a series of ratio problems for you/your child to try and solve.
Online gaming safety guide
As part of our online safety information provision for parents/carers, this week we are bringing you a guide from National Online Safety on the popular game Rocket League. Click the link below to download their poster.
Alumni news
Congratulations to former Manor student Tyrese A who will be starting an apprenticeship with Mercedes AMG next month. The company usually takes on post-degree apprentices, so it is a fantastic achievement for Tyrese to be starting just after he turns 18. His top overseer is Lewis Hamilton, so we'll be keeping a keen eye on his progress.
If you would like to share an alumni success story, please email tdamon@manor.school.
PE notices
The whole-school extra curricular timetable has been tweaked slightly to reflect changes to the PE activities on offer. Please see the timetable below:
Please remind your child that they should let Miss Hustwait (or another member of the PE team) know of any sporting achievements over the past year. If they have represented the county or higher in their sport then let us know so we can get their name up on our sporting honours board.
It was great to see the start of our sports leadership academy this week with Ed Reeves from NSport. There are still a few spaces left open for Year 7s so if this is something that your child thinks that they would be interested in doing, please tell them to contact Miss Hustwait.
We have been given the opportunity to pull together a team of students who would be keen to help lead an SSP competition for 20 primary schools on Tuesday 19 October at Wellingborough Rugby club. If students are interested can they please get their names to Miss Hustwait by Friday 25 September as we then will need to organise a training session in preparation.
In order to continue being able to lead high quality PE lessons and run our extra-curricular clubs, it is important we have all our equipment - in particular, footballs. Should students have any equipment that belongs to the PE department, we would welcome the return of this, so please feel free to bring it to the PE office where only thanks will be given.
On Friday 24 September we are being visited by Alex Marshall MBE, David Bolt and Mark Beattie to give students a taster of the sport of bowls. They will be working with Year 9 students during their PE lesson period 4, and then they plan to stay around over lunchtime. If any student would like to come and have a go over lunchtime they will be in the sports hall.
Finally, our Year 11 boys football team have their first fixture on Tuesday 21 September for the first round of the ESFA National Cup, so please wish them luck and keep your fingers crossed for a win!
NMPAT Saturday Centres
Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust is excited to be re-launching Saturday Centres in September 2021.
After a year of Virtual Centre, they will be opening their doors to their members from pre-lockdown, as well as whole new group of students. They are delighted to be able to offer all students a fully funded first term of activities (from September to Christmas), so there is nothing to stop young people from getting involved.
They have a team of staff excited to get back to a full morning of activities that will be designed around the students at each Centre, ensuring everyone has something of interest to get involved with.
Registration is via an online form (please see below poster) where students can tell them which Centre they’d like to attend, as well as a little bit about their interests. They will then be in touch to confirm the finer details before the start of term in September.
There will be no charge for the first term of activities. Following the fully-subsidised first term, subscription for membership of the Centre for one term (where there are three terms in the year) is £80 for the full morning.
For more information please visit www.nmpat.co.uk/centres