NewsletterChristmas Edition

As you will see from the newsletter, it has been a very busy half term at NUAST. We have held a number of successful open evenings and events for prospective students and parents/carers for admission into NUAST for September 2023. I would like to thank the students who help at these events for their support. Visiting parents/carers have fed back positively about the students who have taken part in these events and the confidence they show when talking to both children and parents/carers. The school continues to be popular and is oversubscribed for entry into each year group.

We also had a visit from a team of OFSTED inspectors who carried out a full section 5 graded inspection of the school grading the school as good overall and outstanding for sixth form.  Following this visit and the valuable feedback given in the responses to our parental questionnaire we:

• are targeting improvements in our general communication with parents and carers
• are improving communication with parents/carers around the achievement and support for SEN students and have held coffee mornings as well as parent/carer review meetings this half term
• have now incorporated a translation button on the website and on our newsletters to enable parents/carers to translate our communication into other languages
• in addition, a new communication policy will be introduced to staff from January for home/school communication 
• have included detailed curriculum journeys for each subject on the website
• have provided additional parent/carer information evenings for Year 11 parent/carers to aid preparation for examinations.

 

Your feedback is valued and is used to shape the development of the school. Please do continue to tell us of areas where we can improve or where we are achieving well.

Our enrichment and wider curriculum activities continue to grow and students have visited the University of Nottingham and the University of Leeds recently in order to raise aspirations for future careers and study. Our Vex robotic team have had great success and have qualified for the National finals of the Vex competition. I wish them every success for the competition.  Our PE department continue to develop sport in the school and large numbers of students have successfully represented NUAST at local competitions.

External examinations will take place for Engineering students in Years 10 and 11 during January. Students in Years 12 and 13 studying BTEC Applied Science will also undertake external assessment. It is important that these students spend time revising for these examinations during the Christmas holiday and I would ask parents to support them in this.

We will break up for the Christmas holiday at 12:00pm on Friday 16th December with lunch available for students until 12.30pm. All students will return to school on Friday 6th January.

I wish each of you a restful Christmas break with family and friends and a Happy New Year.

Regards

Bob White

•Year 9 Boys became City Schools Dodgeball Champions.

•Year 10 Boys successfully beat Djanogly on penalties, scoring all 5 of their penalties!

•The Year 11 Boys have been out running every Friday in all weathers.

•Year 7, 9 and 11 Boys' football teams qualified for the Championship Football League.

•Y8/9 Girls' football  showed great determination.

•Y8 Girls' netball improved with every game and loved every second of it.

 

Employers from across the City generously volunteered their time to give our older students real interview experience.  This is an annual event and students always find it incredibly helpful in preparing for their next steps. 

The KS3 VEX Robotics team achieved the Excellence Award in a regional competition and earned a place at the UK National Finals in March 2023.

The KS4 VEX Robotics team achieved 2nd place in multiple regional competitions (mostly against private schools!).

Bebras Competition

Bebras is an annual computational thinking competition.  There are over 500,000 entrants.  All our Computer Scientists enter this and over 20 of our students achieved Gold.  This is a huge achievement and puts these students in the top 10% in the country.  Gold Award holders can enter the University of Oxford's Computing Competition in January.  

CyberFirst Competition

Some of our Year 8 girls have qualified for the Regional Finals of this competition in March.  They were chosen for being in the top 10 in the East Midlands.

Thank you to all the staff who support these events - often at the weekends.  Well done to all the students involved!

Since September, the English Team has been introducing our Key Stage 3 students to Drama.  With the help of the site team, Ms Milward has been creating a wonderful space for our budding thespians! 

Year 11 & 12 enjoyed a new field trip opportunity to Beeston to look at the impact of regeneration on a town centre.  Despite the freezing cold weather, the students were all really well behaved and focused on their work.