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Weekly Bulletin - 10/03/2023

Please see the weekly bulletin from Mr Solly below...

Dear UCC Families,

What a week we've had at UCC! On Monday, the funeral of Margaret Jennings took place in Uppingham. Margaret taught at UCC from 1969 to 1991, working her way up to Deputy Headteacher, and then served as a governor from 1993 until 2020. Mr Redmond and Mrs Rodgers attended the service, as they had forged a close relationship with Margaret during her time as the Humanities link governor. I was also due to attend the service, but the phone rang just as I was walking out the door...

That brings me onto the Ofsted inspection. We are not permitted to reveal the outcome of the inspection until the report is completed and approved, and this can take up to 3 weeks. We are, however, allowed to share some details with you.

We were inspected by two experienced Ofsted inspectors and their work was quality assured throughout the 2 days by a senior Ofsted official for the East Midlands region. We were inspected under Section 8 of the Ofsted framework, and there is a useful guide to inspections for parents here: School inspections: a guide for parents (publishing.service.gov.uk) 

In terms of how the inspection went for us, I am allowed to tell you that we are very pleased, and it went well. The inspection team were fair, professional, and challenging. It was an incredibly rigorous experience. My colleagues and your children were simply superb throughout and really demonstrated what our school is all about. I am looking forward to sharing the report with you once it is published. We received a healthy number of responses to the Parent View survey, so thank you for contributing towards that. 

Once the inspection team had left, we turned our attention to Year 9 parents' evening, marking the end of two very intense days with another late night for our teachers. Then, the following day, we experienced challenging weather conditions with low temperatures and a lot of snow. We worked hard to make the site safe, and this required a big team effort. However, the snow continued to fall throughout the day, and we were concerned about the journey home for some of our students. I decided to allow parents to come early to collect their children, but in hindsight we were not adequately set up to facilitate this in an efficient manner. I apologise to those who spent a longer than acceptable time waiting in reception, this was entirely my fault. Today, of course, I made the call to close the school site for safety reasons, and you will hopefully have read the reasons for this in my email to you earlier this morning.

Finally, I'd like to congratulate our GCSE Drama students, who completed their Drama exam moderation yesterday, alongside our Y9 and Y10 girls who attended the first ever Barclay's Game On Girls Football Conference at Loughborough University on Tuesday. The staff involved in both these events told me how brilliant the students were, which was great to hear. 

Next week, the final 2 days of industrial action by the NEU will take place on Wednesday and Thursday. Our plan is to have Year 8 remaining at home on Wednesday and Year 7 remaining at home on Thursday. However, if our expected staffing capacity allows it, we could be open for all year groups, but equally if we experience any spikes in teacher absence then this could mean we have fewer year groups in school. I will make a judgement early next week and communicate this to you as soon as I can. 

Please take some time to read the rest of the messages in the newsletter.

I hope you have a great weekend. 
Mr B Solly