Dear Parents and Carers,
Firstly, I would like to thank you all for your support over the last term; it has been a busy and exciting term for NUAST with events ranging from guest speakers to national competitions. Our breakfast club provision continues to be popular with students and we have also re-established a varied enrichment programme and strengthened links with the university. This has included examination groups attending lectures and seminars on their campus which has inspired students to do thier best. Further exciting events are planned for the summer term with more external visitors sharing their inspirational life journeys, and many trips and visits taking place. To keep informed of all the exciting things we have been up to, please don’t forget to follow us on X (formally known as Twitter) @NUASTUK. More information about these events is also below.
I am delighted to share with you that after leading the school in the role of Acting Headteacher, I have now been appointed as Headteacher on a permanent basis. I look forward to working with parent/carers, students and the wider community to drive the school forward further to ensure that our students receive the best education both in terms of academia and personal development. Our aim is to provide transformational education underpinned by excellence; we aim to encourage everyone, including ourselves to be the best versions of ourselves. Over the coming months, we will endeavor to develop communication further. I have sent this newletter out via both email and MCAS; if you are not using MCAS, please contact ksajjad@nuast.org for a log in as soon as possible as our regular communication, including behaviour, attendance updates and also school progress reports is all available on that portal.
As we approach the exam season, a great deal of work has gone into preparing our Year 11 and 13 students for their final examinations. Countless revision and intervention groups have been taking place with specialist staff and further work will continue during the Easter break with colleagues giving up their own time to support students even further. A great deal of progress has been seen from September, and we know that the vast majority have been working hard revising at home too. If your child is unsure or needs further help, please don’t hesitate to contact their Head of Year who will direct your query to the most appropriate member of staff. We wish all our students the very best for the summer examinations!
Kind Regards
Dave Thompson
Headteacher
Firstly, a massive thank you for helping us ensure that your child adheres to the uniform policy – it is really appreciated. Students will continue to be given regular reminders on the run up to the break so that there is opportunity to address any missing items prior to their return. We will continue our drive for excellence in all that we do at NUAST, and that includes students wearing our uniform with pride.
Additionally, please can we ask for your help in ensuring that all KS3/4 students are wearing all items of uniform (ties, shoes and blazers) prior to entering the school gate. This will ensure that students arrive at school ready to be greeted by their tutors on time, without the need to get dressed first. We thank the overwhelming majority who are doing this already.
All academy staff are aware of the above expectations so that we can consistently apply these across the academy in line with policy. For more information on our uniform policy, including the standards expected for 6th form students, please see - https://www.nuast.org.uk/page.php?p=uniform
This term we have re-launched our student council to ensure that student voice is paramount when developing the school. The focus this term has been on personal development. Each student is able to give their feedback and thoughts through tutor group representatives who then discuss issues raised with student council reps. These students discuss the items raised and think about possible solutions and finally 6th Form student leaders feed back to the senior team. The senior leadership team were incredibly impressed by our 6th form leaders when they presented in our SLT meeting last week.
Students were extremely positive about many aspects of the personal development provision in the school. Positives included our breakfast provision being a great start to the day, the changes to break and lunchtime which has given more indoor space, the clubs and enrichment opportunities and range of external speakers that we have welcomed to the school.
There have been a number of points which we are working to develop, these include:
1. Reviewing the structure and content of the personal development sessions which are in tutor time. Students would really appreciate a more discussion based approach with time given to discuss and debate. This is welcomed by school leaders and we are looking to facilitate this.
2. Water bottles and facilities to re fill. Hydration stations have been serviced already and water bottles are being reissued in the new term with clarity around the rationale behind the change from single use plastic being made clear.
3. Students would like to have more opportunities for presenting to the school. The weekly whole school assembly will be modified to include students in future.
4. "Read Aloud" programme. Students have asked for more ownership of the choice of texts. In future extracts from a choice of books will be given to students so that they can make a choice about which text to read.
Next term we look forward to developing our mission, vision and values with our students through the student council.
Our breakfast club provision has gone from strength to strength!
More students than ever are now attending our breakfast club provision and we have widened our offer with an increased range of food. We are also providing activities for students to engage with whilst socialising with each other and with the staff. Student feedback has been really positive and they say how much they value the positive start to the day. A big thank you to all the staff and students involved in making our breakfast club a huge success.
Students have enjoyed a brilliant variety of enrichment opportunities after school, from cookery club to Warhammer, from F1 in Schools to VEX Robotics, from asking big questions in The Brilliant Club like 'are we living in the real world?' to the Duke of Edinburgh Award. We also have an excellent range of sports activities, including the increasingly popular early morning run twice a week before school. We love seeing our young people get stuck into activities that stretch, challenge and enrich their lives. If your son or daughter is not yet involved, please do talk to them about what they might like to do after the Easter holidays!
Culture Day...
A great celebration of different cultures in our 6th Form. Students have led an incredible afternoon #diversity #culture #respect
VEX Robotics @NUAST continues!...
VEX Robotics is educational robotics for everyone. VEX solutions span all levels of both formal and informal education with accessible, scalable, and affordable solutions. Beyond science and engineering principles, VEX encourages creativity, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving among groups. It allows educators of all types to engage and inspire the STEM problem solvers of tomorrow!
Supporting our local foodbank
We are delighted to have been able to support our local food bank. Thank you to those able to contribute.
Taking the 2nd place in the March Qualifier, Arina secured a place in the 2024 British Figure Skating Championships which is held annually at the end of November. She is also one of the top-ranked figure skaters in the country at her competitive level (4th among all junior women as of today). Arina is expecting to be invited to selections for the ISU Junior Grand Prix of Figure Skating (International Series) in the end of May - beginning of June of this year. We wish her all the very best for the future!
NUAST Y8s took part in the indoor athletics and made it to the plate final. Both teams were a credit to the school with outstanding performances and showed great sportsmanship.
Results: Y8 girls - Silver
Y8 boys - Bronze
Friday morning running club at NUAST has grown with more and more students taking part.
No matter what the weather is like, they’ll be out bright and early! #aspiration #resilience!
We now have a girls running club!
This started this term - Tuesday morning meeting at 7:30am. It would be great to see this expand even further after Easter.
To do our bit for the environment, we gave students water bottles in September. We will be giving every student in Years 7 - 10 another reusable NUAST water bottle after the Easter holidays. We would like students to use these to hydrate throughout the day. They can refill with water at breaks and lunchtimes at our regularly-cleaned hydration stations around school. Please support us to cut down on single-use plastics. If you ever need to replace your water bottle, these can be purchased on ParentMail at a cost of £1.50.
We have taken advice and listened to our student council feedback and improved the water provision in the school. We are also reminding students of the reasons why we have replaced single use plastics at NUAST.
This term both Year 10 and 11 students have enjoyed Elevate Education’s high impact study skills workshops.
Having benchmarked the study habits of thousands of past students, the award-winning seminars cover the techniques utilised by the country's top students. 17 years of experience demonstrates that any student can improve performance by tapping into, and replicating, these techniques.
Year 10
Year 11
Year 11
A Fantastic Day for the Yr12 Engineering Design and Product Design learners. Lincoln University lead us through a series of inspiring workshops. These included Product Development, Aerodynamics, Coding and more.
World Book Day was created by UNESCO on 23rd April 1995 as a worldwide celebration of books and reading. World Book Day is marked in over 100 countries around the globe. The first World Book Day in the UK and Ireland took place in 1997 to encourage young people to discover the pleasure of reading.
We want to see more children, with a life-long habit of reading for pleasure and the improved life chances this brings them.
This year NUAST celebrated World Book Day with style with staff and students dressing up as book characters, activities and competitions!
A visit from Pride of Britain Winner - Hezron Brown.
Students were stunned to hear the story of Hezron Brown's life story which contained many important messages for them to reflect on.
Hezron Brown has overcome an early life of gang-related crime, to now becoming a Pride of Britain winner – and it all changed when a court judge made a decision that altered Hezron’s path.
Hezron fell into a bath of boiling hot water when he was just five years old and was left with severe burns on parts of his body. He was bullied at school and says he grew up feeling angry, turning to violence as a coping mechanism. He fell into gang-related crime and ended up in court.
He was facing a jail sentence, when a judge asked him how he had ended up there – and she made the decision not to jail him. It proved to be a life-changing point in Hezron’s life.
He went back to education, got a job in local theatre through The Prince’s Trust, impressing many with his work ethic. He then became an ambassador for the charity, and now works to help steer thousands of young people away from gangs and violence, through regular academic talk visits.
Click here to see when Hezron met King Charles
National Holocaust Centre
Students were given the opportunity to engage with an incredibly thought provoking presentation from The Holocaust Centre which allowed them to ask big questions and link the Holocaust to current events and lessons which can be learned. Students explored why hatred persists, how we can treat others, how we think for ourselves and how, more than ever, we need to learn the lessons of the Holocaust.
Coming next term...........
Dr Stuart Lawrence
On April 22nd 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially motivated, unprovoked attack while waiting for a bus. His brother’s murder cast a dark shadow over Dr Stuart Lawrence’s life. And as revelations of ‘mistakes’ in the investigation are still surfacing 30 years on, Stuart explores what it's like to grow up Black and British in his new book aimed at young people - ‘Growing Up Black in Britain’. Stuart talks with inspirational figures about their childhood experiences as he poses the question - What does it mean to be Black and British in 2023?
Baroness Stowell
Baroness Tina Stowell was Chair of the Charity Commission as Chair from February 2018 to February 2021.
She joined the House of Lords as a backbencher in January 2011 and was promoted to the government front bench in September the same year. She was Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal from July 2014 until July 2016.
Baasit Siddiqui - TV personality and educator
Empowering inspirational speaker, entrepreneur, educator, and television personality.
He has combined his experiences working in TV, business and throughout schools in a unique way. In 2013, along with his broths Raza, Umar and Dad Sid, they became cast members on the award winning show Gogglebox in the UK. In 2018, Baasit left his role as a full-time teacher and began his exciting journey as an entrepreneur and business owner.
Its been a massively busy time for our 6th form students and below are just a few highlights from the term!
Most of our year 13 students have now received offers either from their choice of Universities or their Apprenticeship applications. In terms of our early entry students, thirteen students have received offers to study medicine and eight have received offers from Oxbridge.
Year 12 have also had a very busy term. In February, we took a group of our students on a visit to the University of Oxford. The students were given a tour of Magdalen college, lunch in the main hall and a taster session.
Super-Curricular
The NUAST Super-Curricular has received a fantastic response from our year 12 students. We already have a number of students who have demonstrated they are meeting the gold standard. 20 students have now completed the Grade 4 Public Speaking qualification and a small group of students devised an oral hygiene project, which they delivered to children at Victoria Primary School. The students determination, ambition and vision for their futures is truly inspiring. We look forward to celebrating their success in the next academic year.
Computer Science
NUAST’s Computer Science department has continued to offer exciting enrichment opportunities.
In January we hosted the VEX Robotics Competition at NUAST. Schools from around the region came with their robots to compete against each other. https://www.vexrobotics.com/competition
In January also, students entered the British Informatics Olympiad to select the UK Contingent for the World Informatics Olympiad. This is a 3-hour programming competition. https://www.olympiad.org.uk/
In February we took 40 students to Bletchley Park. The students took park in a code breaking workshop, had a tour of the grounds and explored the history of Alan Turing and his team. https://bletchleypark.org.uk/
Year 13 exam preparations
Year 13 are working really hard in the final run up to the exams. Subject interventions are taking place after school which continue to be well attended. We have spoken to year 13 this week about how to use the Easter holidays to prepare effectively for the final exams:
Research has shown that there is a clear correlation between hours spent studying and student outcomes. Coupled with effective revision techniques, taking this approach will ensure students have the best opportunity to succeed.
UCAS and Apprenticeships
Thank you for all your support in the attendance to our year 12 Progress Evening. It was an extremely positive evening and it was great to hear about how successful our students already are in their studies and also as excellent ambassadors for the school. The UCAS presentation is now available on the school website. Peterhouse Cambridge College and Nottingham University have also delivered workshops in school to support students as they start to make decisions regarding their post 18 plans. UCAS opens late May for applications to start, and applications can be sent by the school from September.
The prime time for higher apprenticeship applications tends to be a bit later, in January, although bigger companies may advertise from late October.
We will be running a tutor time UCAS preparation programme. We also have a separate medicine and Oxbridge programme which we will be running with interested students.
Work experience
Unifrog is now up and running. A significant number of students have already secured placements. A reminder that the work experience week is the 15th-19th July. We are able to present some opportunities to students, but unfortunately cannot generate a whole host of work experience placements for students ourselves; part of the process is students reaching out to companies for themselves. This process launched in late February. Students are asked to give 8 weeks notice at least for us to order health and safety checks.
The Sixth Form Leadership Team.
Our student leadership team has continued to have a positive impact across the school. Four of our leadership team presented at a Senior Leadership Team meeting – delivering feedback from the whole school council and recommending solutions. The team are also looking to set up mentoring groups with younger students and helping out in lessons as teaching assistants.
Join our X (formally known as Twitter) community for content and the latest news and announcements! We have had much to celebrate so far and our students should be proud of their achievements - click the image below to learn more of what has been going on in and out of NUAST! @NUASTUK
NUAST
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