Last Friday, over 90 students went to Anderby Creek as a reward for their excellent attendance this year.

A great time was had by all – paddling, building sandcastles and playing games.

Our Anderby Creek trip has become an annual firm favourite and special thanks go to Mrs Kuffour for once again organising a successful and fun trip.

On Wednesday the RAF came to the Academy to lead Personal Development Training sessions with Year 9 and Year 10.

Students heard of the variety of apprenticeship opportunities the RAF have to offer and took part in team building activities to help build their communication skills and work together effectively as a team.

The academy is pleased to support the new Lincolnshire Holiday Activities and Food Programme booking system.

All of our FSM eligible families will be receiving a code for them to use to book onto one of the many provisions available during the summer holidays.

Each club will provide a variety of activities, including fun and games, sports, arts and crafts, cooking, music, drama and much more.  All of the clubs will also include a choice of health meals.

For more information, parents and carers of eligible children should visit https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/school-pupilsupport/holiday-activities-food-programme or email the HAF team on HAF@lincolnshire.gov.uk.

LCC Holiday Activities And Food Programme

HAF Secondary Clubs

On Friday afternoon, a group of year 9 and year 10 students visited Grantham Electrical and Pentangle Engineering as part of National Manufacturing Day.

Students toured both sites and were given insights into the world of engineering and opportunities available to them after school.

We are having a fantastic week with our new year 7 cohort for September.

Our transition week activities are all themed on the amazing book, ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ by Onjali Q Rauf.

The week started with a treasure hunt around the academy organised by Mrs Atkins.  This activity was designed to familiarise the children with our academy and find out where all our departments are.  They did a brilliant job whizzing round the building!

Throughout the week the children are sampling the whole of our KS3 curriculum, with afternoons spent exploring our creative subjects of drama, music and cooking.  The pupils cooked up a fantastic Syrian dish in their cooking lesson.

In maths the pupils took part in an adventure and had to get from London Kings Cross to Buckingham Palace calculating time and cost whilst picking up adventure points from famous London landmarks along the way.

Each day the year 6 children have been greeted by their year 7 buddies with a bagel in breakfast club.  At lunch all of the pupils are receiving a free lunch so that they can sample our new Head Chef’s cooking – the feedback from them has been a big thumbs up!

We are really looking forward to welcoming the year 6 back as full time new year 7 students in September.

The Science and Gardening Club have been very busy this term.

Students have spent the past months sowing seeds, weeding and tending to plants in the courtyard.  This week the students were really pleased to harvest their first crop of potatoes.  We hope they cooked something delicious for their families with them!

A special thank to Mrs Campbell for her donation of gardening equipment and books, and to Mr Hulse for his help with planting.

Yesterday evening our Year 11 students joined staff to celebrate the end of their secondary school journey at their annual leavers’ Prom.

The group have shown the most amazing resilience in studying for the first element of their GCSEs during a Covid lockdown, we are all very proud of you.

Thank you Year 11 – we  wish you all the very best as you prepare for future study, apprenticeships and careers.

A very special thank you to Ms Blakey , Mr Price and Mr Hulse for making it a memorable event for everyone.

Our Science department were delighted to welcome Year 5 from The West Grantham Church of England Primary Academy on Thursday morning.

The children joined our Science teachers to use their investigative skills to find out how different factors increase the rate of evaporation.

More exciting events for the Year 5 and 6 pupils will be held next year as part of our transition programme.

Year 9 and Year 10 welcomed Stephen Seki to the academy to talk to them about his journey from living in poverty in Uganda to studying to become a pharmacist at the University of Kent.

Stephen’s talk was personal and inspiring as he shared the story of his life and told the students that with a lot of hard work and determination you can be whoever you want to be.

Thank you to LiNCHigher for arranging for Stephen to come and meet our students.

Year 10 have enjoyed a lovely day in the sunshine taking part in an archaeological dig at Harlaxton Manor.  They have spent the day uncovering the history of the Manor.

Thank you to Harlaxton Manor for inviting the students, they have all had an amazing day!

Yesterday evening the Academy was recognised for the support of our students on BBC East Midlands.

Special thanks go to Caroline Milligan for her amazing work.  We are all incredibly proud of our school.

Congratulations to Bethany Thibert!

Students were invited to participate in submitting a short Fantasy Fiction story.  Bethany won the competition with her short story entitled, ‘What did I just do?’.  Her story has a zombie theme and outlines the consequences of bullying in a very insightful way.

Our Year 7 students have been invited to join an archaeological dig at Harlaxton Manor.

The archaeological project is looking to uncover the forgotten lives of individuals who have helped run the manor, reveal traces of the site’s prehistoric past, and investigate training trenches from WWI.

The students had a brilliant time helping the archaeologists and took part in a number of activities, including mapping and digging.

David Hyner has visited the academy to present a motivational talk to our year 9 students as part of our careers programme.  The students were totally engaged with his enthusiasm and very impressed with his incredible motivational session.  Thank you David and LiNCHigher.

Yesterday afternoon students took part in a special reward Easter Egg Hunt, searching for hidden eggs around the academy.

The students were ‘eggs-tremely eggcited’ and really enjoyed running from location to location solving clues to find their Easter Egg reward.

Our rewards week continued on Wednesday with 48 students taking part in a sports afternoon.  It was great to see so many of our students working together as a team.

A big thank you to Mr Martini and Mrs Paton for organising the event.

20 students participated in an afternoon of arts and crafts as a reward to celebrate their positive behaviour around school.  All of the students involved thoroughly enjoyed themselves making tissue paper flowers, clay sculptures and printed cards.

After the event, Miss Archdale, who arranged the afternoon, told staff that ‘It was great to celebrate our students and see lots of smiling faces.’

Yesterday evening Jake Pettinger was honoured at the Children of Courage Awards.  This annual event honours young people who have shown great courage in overcoming personal difficulties.

Jake was nominated and accompanied for the evening by Tracy Willows for this honour for the bravery he showed whilst undergoing cancer treatment.

Thank you to our parents, students and staff for their kind donations in support of Mr Madejski’s humanitarian appeal for Ukraine. Your generosity is overwhelming.

The people of Ukraine are in the thoughts and prayers of the students and staff at the academy.

On Monday the academy is launching a ‘Word of the Week’ competition.

Students will submit up to 3 sentences using the word of the week into the ‘Word of the Week’ box in the library. Each submission gets 1 reward point, and the best 3 sentences from each key stage get 5 points each.

Can you come up with 3 sentences using next week’s ‘Words of the Week’?

We are really pleased to hear how well Armandas Jursys is progressing in his goal to compete at Olympic level in Judo.

The academy has followed Armandas through his school and sporting careers, with the school contributing towards his training.  Armandas is now number two in the UK in the under 83kg weight category and to further his career in the sport is seeking additional sponsorship.

If anyone from our school community would like to sponsor Armandas, he has set up his own GoFundMe page and you can donate on this link: GoFundMe.

If you would like to read more about Armandas’ fantastic achievement since leaving the academy, please click here.

It was our pleasure to host another visit from our local MP, Gareth Davies, who spoke to our students about his life, former career and his current work in politics.

Students enjoyed the opportunity to question Gareth and we very much look forward to seeing him back in the Academy soon.

Students in years 7 to 9 have supported the Rotary Club with their annual shoebox appeal.

All staff and students attended a service of Remembrance.  Shannon Lewthwaite said a reading and prayers were led by the Revd David Shenton.

This year’s theme in Collective Worship theme is ‘Heroes of Faith’.  Students have being exploring our Value of ‘Ambition’ and have had their belief put to the test by Andrew Morton, our guest in this week’s assemblies.  No students or staff were harmed!

The West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy are today celebrating the success of their year 11 students following an unprecedented GCSE year. English, maths and science performing particularly well maintaining the trend of improving results in recent years.

There were many outstanding individual performances from students. Aldas Bukovskis achieved a grade 9 in maths and an 8 in further maths alongside 3 grade 8s in science. Layla Ashberry achieved a grade 9 in Art and grade 7s in English Language and Literature. Charley Smith achieved a grade 8 in Chemistry and Physics and grade 7s in maths, biology and English language. Reece Laundon achieved 5 grade 7s and 5 grade 6s overall, while Lilliemae Reid, Headgirl achieved a grade 8 in RE and a 7 in PE. David Stark achieved 3 grade 7s in chemistry, physics and music and Hope Temperton also achieved a grade 9 in Art.

Mr Mark Fowle, Interim Chief Executive Officer of The West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy, said

“I am really pleased that these results reflect the hard work, resilience and commitment of the students and staff at The West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy and the positive support of parents. We are determined to continue to improve our results year on year and we are working very hard to achieve this.

This was a very committed and giving cohort of young people who worked very hard. Many attended revision sessions after school. A number of them also made significant contributions to our community and they fully deserve their success. It is good to know that their hard work has been rewarded despite the uncertainty over exam results nationally. We must not forget that these results are the culmination of 11 years of education and hard work and that many of these students were unable to have the opportunity to prove themselves in the exam hall, something which many of this cohort would have relished. I would like to congratulate all our students on their achievements and I wish them every success in the future.”

Dear all

I would like to send you all very best wishes from every one at the Bluecoat Meres Academies for the upcoming Easter weekend. These are challenging times. History is being made and in the future people will be learning all about what’s happening to us now and how we managed the changes to our daily life.

During the period of the Academy closures, on-line work for our children and students continues to be updated regularly. I would ask all parents/carers to encourage and monitor the completion of the on-line activities on a daily basis. This will ensure that when we re-open your child is well placed to resume their learning and to make the best possible progress in school. At the time of writing there has been no indication from the Department of Education of when schools will re-open and I am sure that we will all hear on the national news once a decision has been made by the government.

I asked our Academy Chaplain, Father Jonnie, to kindly provide a message about the importance of Easter Sunday to all Christians and it is a message that is particularly relevant to us all at this time. He writes that:

“On Easter Sunday we celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead and burst out of the tomb, that love and life and light are ultimately stronger than the grave. If Holy Week feels very real, then perhaps Easter Sunday feels very distant. It is at best a promise or a rumour, a whisper in the dark we don’t dare to believe. I shall be praying for you, and looking forward to the time we can be together again and celebrate the victory of life, hope, light and love, and give thanks for the many people who have shown love and courage.”

I was recently reading an article by an inspirational historian and TV presenter Lucy Worsley who explained that ‘Once you appreciate that everything changes all the time, there is hope that the world will be better again.’ We are living through a period when it is very important to remain positive, to be kind and hopeful, and to find joy in the world around us. We can’t be certain of exactly when, but what we do know is that we will overcome the Coronavirus and that normality will return.

I would like to offer my very best wishes for the Easter Weekend and please remember it is very important that we continue to follow government guidelines on social distancing and staying at home to support our NHS.

God bless and take care.

Mark Fowle

Interim Chief Executive Officer

Staff and students have had a great day dressing up as their favourite book characters.

Mr Dewhurst (aka Gangsta Granny), our Librarian, organised lots of fun activities throughout the day, including a treasure hunt, designing book covers in Art, snowball poems in Maths, five minute plays in Drama and a whole school ‘Drop Everything and Read’ for 30 minutes.

As part of our Careers Programme, Year 10 students have spent the day learning about career opportunities in the medical field.

The students had hands-on experience of key hole surgery and taking each other’s blood pressure as well as having the opportunity of talking to the Medical Mavericks’ team about further education routes into the medical profession.

We are delighted to announce the opening of our new library.

There has been much activity getting the new space ready for students, including the creation of a reading tree for students to recommend their favourite books to others.

As an introduction to the library, Mr Dewhurst has organised a Scavenger Hunt to help students familiarise themselves with the layout and resources.

The library will become a real hub of learning and activity at the academy.

Library Newsletter Issue 1

Talented students from the academy have performed their Panto ‘If the Shoe Fits’ to their parents and families.

Miss O’Malley, said ‘They have all done such an amazing job, going way above and beyond giving us all a fabulous evening full of fun, joy and laughter!

‘If the Shoe Fits’ has been such a wonderful show to produce; we have had so many laughs along the way, coped with the trials and tribulations of illness and rescheduling, built such tremendous relationships and proven great teamwork; I feel incredibly proud to be a part of this.

Our two ugly sisters, MacKenzie Brown and Maddison Baker were incredible; leading the show with such panache, brilliance and professionalism; supporting the  cast and crew throughout without exception.

This show is one of the many occasions as a school, where we show our real strength of our support network; we are a true family here which I am so proud to be a part of.   May I take this opportunity to again give a huge thank you to so many wonderful friends and colleagues, we really couldn’t have done this without you.’

Students and staff have exceeded all expectations in their donations for the Grantham Foodbank over the last couple of weeks.

Mr Thornton and Mrs Blakey, accompanied by Brandon Sharpe, Lily Taylor, Lily Richards and Oliwia Grabinska, visited the Foodbank today and staff were overwhelmed by the generosity all at the school have shown in supporting local Grantham families.

As a school we appreciate that need is not just at Christmas and will continue supporting the Foodbank next year and beyond.

Year 9 students have enjoyed an extra English lesson with visiting lecturer Dr Claudia Capancioni of Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. Dr Capancioni spent the day at The West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy, delivering a series of talks for groups of Year 9 students, teaching the whole year group in one day.

This term Year 9 have been studying examples of travel writing from a range of contemporary writers in their English lessons. In her inspiring talks, Dr Capancioni helped students to learn more about the origins of travel writing through its literary heritage. She  explored ways in which we can identify key features of the genre, and considered how both fiction and non-fiction writers represent travel for their readers. Students worked together to study some examples of nineteenth century fiction writers using features of the travel writing genre, including extracts written by Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker.

The talks also gave students an opportunity to find out more about academic life as Dr Capancioni explained her role as Programme Leader for English at BGU, and described her recent research into travel literature. Many students who are interested in teaching as a career enjoyed the chance to find out more about the world of work beyond school.

Neil Paddison, Curriculum Team Leader for English at The West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy, said “Our Year 9 students were really grateful for the opportunity to learn more about travel writing from an academic expert.” He also said that Dr Capancioni had generously taken time to talk with English department staff after the talks, helping them to develop their resources to support Year 9 further still.

The talks were arranged by Wayne Martini, Head of Voltaire House at The West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy, and funded by LiNCHigher, a local partnership of organisations whose aim is to increase aspirations amongst young people and improve access to Higher Education across Lincolnshire.

A group of eight Year 8 students have taken part in the annual Shakespeare School Festival.

The students performed ‘All the World’s a Stage’ at the Lincoln Drill Hall.

Miss O’Malley said, ‘The students performed fantastically, I was very proud of them all’.

SSF Feedback

Staff have been busy cataloging over 1600 books, redecorating and putting up shelves in readiness for the launch of our new library.

Books will be added to the library, including latest releases, popular graphic novels and books recommended by students.

Shortly we will be having induction sessions for all students to guide them how to use the library so that they can undertake research and access resources.

Mrs Bainbridge has very kindly painted a reading tree for students to leave their reviews and recommendations.

An experienced school leader has been appointed to help further improve the academy.

Mark Fowle has been appointed interim Chief Executive Officer by West Grantham Academies Trust, responsible for this school and Bluecoat Meres Primary.

Mr Fowle has over 36 years’ experience of working in schools, with more than 13 years as a successful Headteacher in Lancashire and most recently leading William Lovell in Lincolnshire, which enjoyed significant improvements under his leadership. He brings expertise in school improvement and he is passionate about providing the best possible education for every child.

The appointment follows the end of the Trust’s relationship Archway Learning Trust.

Interim Chair of the Board of Directors, Jackie Waters-Dewhurst said: “We would like to place on record our thanks to Archway for all it has done to bring about sustainable improvements at Bluecoat Meres and Bluecoat Meres Primary academies and for its help during a period of change.

“The Trust is now in a position to provide long term, sustainable improvements for Bluecoat Meres and Bluecoat Meres Primary academies.

“We are pleased to have appointed Mark Fowle as interim Chief Executive Officer. He brings an enormous amount of leadership experience and a proven track record of turning around schools.

“The Board is determined to focus on the future and provide the best possible education for our children.

“To that end, it looks forward to working with the new interim CEO, staff, parents and the rest of the school community as we continue to make positive strides in our improvement journey.”

On Friday 26 April, twelve lucky students enjoyed a masterclass in presentation skills from Nick Boles, Member of Parliament for Grantham and Stamford.

Mr Boles made a special visit to the academy to help students preparing for their Speaking and Listening assessments.  He gave two unscripted talks on topics chosen by the students, then discussed the pros and cons of both speeches.

Mr Paddison (Curriculum Team Leader – English) said, “It is so rare for students to get a chance to be taught about rhetoric by a serving MP!  Our students really enjoyed the session and everyone said they felt more confident about their assessments thanks to Mr Boles.”

Seats for our annual celebration of extraordinarily talented students are available to book now by clicking on this link:

We have a fantastic night lined up, showcasing singers, dancers, bands, actors and much more.

Who will triumph on the big night?  Join us to find out!

Talent Show April 2019

We were thrilled to nominate Hope Temperton (Y10) for the prestigious School Physicist of the Yearaward, on behalf of the University of Lincoln and the Ogden Trust.

On Friday 18 January, Miss Buffham and Mr Butt accompanied Hope and her family to the awards ceremony, where she was celebrated for her hard work and resilience despite facing adversity during the autumn term.

The night also included a wonderful talk delivered by Dr Phil Sutton on the possibility of life on other planets and how we might go looking for this, as well as how to discover planets in other solar systems and measure their atmospheres.

We were very proud to celebrate Hope’s achievements and raise her aspirations through this awards evening.