New School Day

Wed 04 Jun 2025
Dear Parents and Carers,

Following some reporting in the local press I would like to follow up on my letter dated 23rd May with further details about what our proposed school day will look like in January 2026.

You will know that over the last 12 months there has been discussion about a change to our school day/week. Our rationale for the change was to meet the following objectives:

  • To refine the curriculum to better serve our students' needs, ensuring that science has appropriate time allocation

  • To allow students to receive intervention time within the school day for core subjects (maths, English, and science) at KS4, without disrupting their attendance in other subjects rather than pulling them out of other subjects to receive extra maths or English.

  • To extend the Personal Development and RE curriculum across all year groups, including Year 11 (currently LIFE lessons), enabling students to explore careers, work experience, and personal finance, as requested by our pupils.

A review of the curriculum and school week model would also allow us to reflect on and address the DFE’s minimum school week length expectation. By September 2024, this was expected to be 32.5hrs. In almost all of our schools we fall short of this.  

Following extensive consultation with parents, staff and other stakeholders the new school day/week that we will introduce in our school in January 2026 will have:

  • A 45-minute tutor-led session each morning, designed to enhance students' broader personal development and including careers and financial education and an enhanced reading programme to support outcomes across the curriculum
  • 5 full hour lessons per day
  • 15 minutes of supervision distributed across the beginning and the end of each day.


This creates a 6.5 hour school day, from the designated time for all students to be on-site until the conclusion of the final period and a 32.5-hour school week for our pupils, aligning with the Department for Education's minimum expectations. 

Yours faithfully
J Norman
Principal


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