WLD Update for Parents & Carers - Friday 6 May 2022

Good afternoon,

There are some important notices today - particularly for Year 11 whose final examination series starts next week.  We wish our senior students all the very best in the coming weeks!

All years

• Homework Support:  We run a homework support session every day after school, staffed and supervised by experienced teaching assistants who are able to assist students with their homework.  Please encourage your son or daughter to attend, particularly if they are sometimes in trouble for not completing their homework.  It runs in A7, A8 and A9 from the end of school until 4pm each day.  Late school buses operate every day at 4.15pm except Friday.
• Attendance  and Punctuality (from our Attendance Officer, Mrs Gorrill): It is important that your child arrives in school on time every day. Please encourage your child to get their uniform and equipment organised for school the evening before. Should your child arrive late (after 8.45am), without a valid reason, they will receive a breaktime detention. 
• Online safety newsletter:  Please see the link here to our website for this month's Online Safety Newsletter.
• Trips Day Thursday 21st July: Places are still available on all trips - please see letter on our website here.

Year 11

• Year 11 final exam series starts this coming week:  Please be aware that the normal lesson timetable for Year 11 continues to operate in parallel with the examinations – lessons are focused on revision in the relevant subject. Formally “study leave” as we would have known it 10 years ago no longer exists – students are meant to attend school right through until the end of June, in fact. Realistically that doesn’t happen – the final assembly, shirt signing etc… will be on the afternoon of their final exam (Physics on 23 June) and after that they no longer attend school.  Up to May half term, and probably a week after, Year 11 will have a lot of exams and, when they are not in exams, their normal timetable will have lessons in the subjects they have not yet finished, which they will need to attend.  In the first couple of weeks of June it will start to “thin out” and there will be more and more lessons where the students have completed the exams in that subject.  At that point we will have individual discussions with parents & students to determine whether they need to be in school on particular days.  This will be done on an individual basis and more details will follow as we reach that point.
• Year 11 Individual student exam timetables (from Mrs Riding, our examinations officer): We use information downloaded from exam boards to create and submit the Summer entries for examinations. This tells them which students are entering for which subjects and tier where applicable. Once the entry process is complete, we can usually produce individual timetables for students automatically from this data. However these have been delayed this year due to some exam boards not including the correct and exact exam date and time within the information that we download. The decision was made by them to do this in early December 2021 due to uncertainty around whether Covid-19 would be in circulation and have the potential to disrupt the published timetable. Due to this information not being included, individual timetables would not list all the necessary entries or information as needed.  We are looking to correct this and issue these if possible.  The overall examination timetable has been on our website https://www.waltonledale.lancs.sch.uk/teaching-and-learning/examinations since the end of February.
• Messages regarding various subjects - please see emails/texts sent out earlier in the week regarding exams/revision for Computer Science, History, French, German, Resistant Materials and DT.
• Uniform:  As I have said for the last couple of weeks, all students must be in correct uniform for all their examinations or they may not be permitted to sit the exam.  This is the same for all schools across the country.

Year 10

• Geography Field Trip: Wednesday, 15th June; Thursday, 16th June and Tuesday, 21st June - please see emails sent out this week. There is no cost to this trip, however consent must be given on parentpay by Monday, 23rd May.
• Year 10 Business Trip to Trafford Centre: Tuesday, 28th June - places are still available, please make payment and consent on parentpay by 10th June.
• Year 10 Computer Science trip: Wednesday 29th June to Manchester Science Museum - please see letter sent out this week and payment/consent should be made on parentpay by 13th June.

Have a good weekend,

Best wishes

James Harris

Headteacher