A very warm welcome back to parents, students and staff. It has been a very settled return to school after the three-week holiday for Christmas. This term we are pleased to welcome a number of additions to our school staff.

• Bhavisha Solanki – Primary teacher
• Sarah Murphy – Subject Lead in Drama
• Robert Nowell – Humanities teacher
• Komal Vaghela – English teacher
• Rosanne Bates – Receptionist (started prior to the holidays)
• Nita Patel – Receptionist (to start in two weeks)
• Nelisha Rampersad – Attendance & Admissions
• Hetal Joshi – PA to the Principal
• Tanya Nicholson – Lunch supervisor
• Macy Bone-Gell – Pastoral support officer

We also have a few internal structural changes with our pastoral team. John Clampin will be stepping into the role of Head of Year 9 and Joseph Tailby will be moving from joint Head of Year 11 to Head of Year 10.

I am pleased to share the exciting news that Miss Sicotray has had a healthy baby daughter over the Christmas period. I am sure you will all join me in wishing her well as she starts her new family.

You will see below that this half-term is very busy, with plenty of extra-curricular activities planned for our students, as well as a number of parent information evenings. Our Year 9 students will begin to make their GCSE selections, which is an important step in their educational journey. Our primary students have a number of visitors planned and we will be running a variety of parent workshops throughout the half-term. In particular, we are running additional reading workshops as many of our students have made accelerated progress with their phonics skills and are progressing onto the next stage of books. Please see below the calendar updates with key dates.

Primary Calendar

• Monday 16th January: Primary mini beast visitor
• Thursday 19th January: Nursery reading workshop
• Monday 23rd January: Nursery and reception food workshop
• Monday 30th January – Reception food workshop
• Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd February – Primary parent consultation evening
• Tuesday 14th February: Nursery parent workshop
• Wednesday 15th February: Reception parent workshop

Primary parent consultation evenings will be held onsite and details to book your time slot have been sent.

Secondary Calendar

• Monday 16th – Friday 27th January: Student PASS survey
• Wednesday 18th January: Year 8 parent consultation evening (early finish for all secondary students at 12:50pm)
• Tuesday 24th January: Year 11 parent consultation evening (early finish for all secondary students at 12:50pm)
• Tuesday 24th January: Year 11 GCSE Drama controlled assessment
• Monday 30th January – Wednesday 8th February: Year 9 & 10 PIP 2 assessments
• Tuesday 7th February: Year 8 parent survey
• Thursday 9th February: Year 9 Options evening
• Wednesday 15th February: Year 11 parent survey

Secondary parent consultations will be via our online schoolcloud system. Information about how to login and book slots is sent one week prior to the parent evening.

Please note that secondary students will finish school early for each parent evening at 12:50pm. Students should be picked up from Tesco at an earlier time, or alternative arrangements made for them to get home. Lunch will not be provided (unless pre-booked for pupil premium students). The school bus will be coming at an earlier time, approximately 1pm.

A polite reminder to secondary parents to park at Tesco and allow your child to walk into the school site. We have noticed that the number of parents dropping off or collecting along Colin Grundy Drive and Furrow View has increased since we have returned. Parents should also not be using the small intake/turning point near the school gates, as this has double yellow line markings.

Parents that drop off close to school impact staff trying to come onto the school site by causing traffic delays; it has also become more dangerous to drop your child off along the side of the road with the increased backlog of traffic.

We currently have a vacancy for a secondary teaching assistant out to advert. If you, or someone you know, is interested in the post, please visit the Avanti Careers page: https://www.avanticareers.org.uk/

Avanti Fields will also have further recruitment opportunities coming up. If you know of anyone interested in joining our recruitment pool, please share with them this bulletin to have them sign up.

Communications – Wherever possible please use the contact form on our website to get in touch. This is detailed on the website at https://avanti.org.uk/avantifields/contact-us/. The appropriate member of staff will pick up the message and get back to you as soon as possible.

Absence

To report an absence to the school, parents should contact us by 8:00am (primary) and 8.30am (secondary) 

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 0116 326 6813 (Option 1 to leave a voicemail) 

Please remember to state your child’s full name, tutor group and reason for absence. If your child is unwell, please could you give a brief description of the symptoms. 

All education research highlights how crucial it is to a child’s academic progress and wellbeing they attend school , on time, all of the time. Therefore, a reminder that it is important that families organise events or holidays outside of school time to ensure that their child is at school as often as possible.   

The school works closely with the Education Welfare Officer at LCC, and we do seek to ensure that any requests for authorised absence are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, in a sensitive manner. However, the school can never authorise a family holiday or a trip abroad to visit family members during term time.   

This academic year, families will have two weeks at the October half-term, three weeks at Christmas and two weeks at Easter for extended family holidays. Please do ensure that if booking holidays, they fall within the holiday periods.