Dear UCC Families

I hope you all had a great Easter. We've had a wonderful first week of the summer term, with lots going on at UCC.

Over the Easter break we completed two foreign trips, with students having amazing experiences in Iceland and Barcelona. Following a 2 year period where these trips weren't possible, it has been great to start providing these experiences for students again.

There are 2 further NEU strike days planned on 27^th April and 2^nd May. There are several reasons for this, but it largely centres around the pay offer from the government being rejected (by all teacher unions) and the fact that any increases are not fully funded, meaning that school budgets, which are already insufficient, will be further compromised. We will prioritise KS4 when it comes to the year groups that we will have in school, and it might be that all KS3 students have to remain at home. This is because there are slightly different arrangements being made by the NEU which are likely to result in more teachers opting to take strike action. I will be assessing our staffing capacity on Monday next week and will send out a final decision to you on Monday afternoon, regarding which year groups will have to remain at home.

We surveyed the Y8 parents at the parents' evening and the feedback was very positive. We have 2 remaining parents' evening events (Y7 and Y10) and we've decided that both of these will be 'in person'. This is because the format of face to face interaction with parents is one of the most effective ways of building positive relationships with our UCC families and this is a real priority for us.

We hosted a very successful Embedding Formative Assessment day on Wednesday, led by Mrs Rodgers, as part of our role as an Ambassador School for the Schools Students and Teacher network (SSAT). This involved teachers and leaders from schools across the country, visiting UCC to observe lessons, with a specific focus on how we provide feedback in the classroom for our students. Our visitors were very impressed with UCC, so I'd like to congratulate everyone who contributed towards that. 

Mrs Claudette encouraged a number of our students to enter the Rutland Youth Art Exhibition and those who entered were highly successful! Sophie in Y10 won the 14-16 category judged by Gay Woodley of the Rutland Art Society. Sophie submitted her artwork called 'Elizabeth'. Highly Commended in the Arts for Rutland awards were 2 of our Year 7 students, namely Helen, who offered an artwork entitled "Summer at the River", while Edward entered a piece of work entitled 'Companion'.  Former UCC art students (now at Harrington) also featured heavily in the winning categories, which was great to see. 

On Thursday this week, the students in tutor group 7KH attended Loughborough University for the Para Olympic Festival, involving schools from across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Our students had an incredible time, represented UCC magnificently and ended up winning the prestigious 'Spirit of the Games' award. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Mr Anderson has led assemblies this week for all students on vaping. There are further details on this included within this newsletter. Please be sure to look through this as it is very informative, and it is recommended that you spend some time talking with your child(ren) about this topic. 

Please take some time to read the Newsletter

I hope you all have a great weekend.
Mr B Solly