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Parent Bulletin 15/07/2022

Please see the last bulletin for this year from Mr Solly below...

Dear UCC Families

The last day of the 2021-22 academic year has arrived, and it feels like we are departing for the summer break on a real high point. Reflecting back to the start of 21-22, we still had work to complete in repairing the fire damaged parts of the school, and we were still deeply entrenched in Covid restrictions. We also experienced unprecedented staff absence levels as colleagues inevitably picked up the virus and were forced into periods of isolation (and in some cases very ill health). We didn't really emerge from this until quite recently, when after the Easter break we relaunched many of the school processes that were well-established routines and expectations at UCC. Since then, day to day life at school has felt as normal as it has done for a very long time. It has taken a great deal of hard work and planning, but the impact has been very clear to see. 

I am very grateful to you all for the support you have given your child and our school throughout the past year. Everyone has faced their own set of unique challenges but throughout the year I have observed kindness, empathy and compassion from the school community.

We will enter 2022-23 with a great deal to look forward to when we return on Wednesday 31st August. We welcome a number of excellent new colleagues to the team and we are embarking on a number of capital building projects, including the refurbishment of our former nursery building and a brand new teaching block for Modern Foreign Languages. We will also be launching a new House system, which students and staff have been voting for in recent weeks. We have made Head of House appointments within our staff team and this morning Year 10 students were given responsibilities as House Captains for 22-23. This was part of a wider meeting where Mr Sievewright and I distributed leadership responsibilities to the students who had applied to be part of the Student Leadership Team when they are in Year 11. Interviewing the 27 students who put themselves forward was an absolute joy and it was an incredibly difficult decision. Eventually, we arrived at four Head Students, with Nyah, Florence, Charlotte and Tim, who will be supported by a superb team of Student Leaders with various responsibilities. Well done to all these students; I am looking forward to working with them next year.

We say goodbye to a number of colleagues today and we wish them well in their new endeavours and opportunities:

Mr English 
Mr McQuiggan 
Mr Sharp 
Mr Heppell
Mr Cort
Mariia Donets
Tetiana Holub

We will be welcoming new colleagues to Team UCC in August, who are listed below:

Mr Brooks - Head of RS and Citizenship
Ms Gillard - Teacher of Science
Miss Rogers - Head of Science
Mr Koomson - Teacher of Maths
Mrs Bishop - Teacher of Art
Mrs Hoult - Transition Teacher for Mainstream+
Mrs Hooton-Nash - Transition Teacher for Enhanced Resource Provision students

It has been an action packed final week of term, so there is a lot of great content to read about in the newsletter; please do take the time to see what has been going on at UCC over the past 5 days.

Newsletter

I hope you are able to have an enjoyable summer break as a family.

Take care,
Mr Solly.