Parent Welcome Letter Sept 2025
Dear Parents and Carers
I would like to wish you all a warm welcome back to the new school year and I hope you have all had a lovely summer. An especially warm welcome goes to our new Year 7 families and to those whose children have joined us in other year groups.
We always look forward to seeing our students return to school after the summer and finding out what they have been up to in the holidays. It has been a good start to the new academic year, and I have been impressed with their positive attitude to learning in the first few days of the academic year. I have spent a lot my time week going into lessons to see students and staff at work and I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing a wide range of activities taking place and students fully focused on their learning.
The summer holidays in school were very busy with the building work taking place on our new Sixth Form Centre. This area of the school has been transformed through a £1 million refurbishment into a state-of-the-art learning centre for out Sixth Form students now and in the future. There is a new Learning Hub with facilities that will allow our students to develop their independent learning skills and gives them an excellent learning environment in which to work. There is also a new Student Hub where they can socialise. Classrooms have been refurbished and project rooms created. This new Sixth Form Centre was made possible due to the donation from the Story Group of companies, Story Homes, Story Contracting and Story Plant. We are delighted with our new centre it is truly amazing, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved for making this happen. Photographs of the new Sixth Form Centre can be found on our Facebook and Instagram pages.
The new Sixth Form Centre is part of the project to further raise the achievement and aspirations of the young people who attend Caldew School both now and in the future. The donation from the Story group of companies has enabled us to develop ambitious plans to provide the highest quality of teaching, with opportunities and experiences outside the classroom that raise the aspiration of our students, so they have the confidence to compete at higher education, in apprenticeships and in the workplace, with young people from across the country. This includes employing additional teaching staff, investing in training to ensure teaching and learning is of the highest quality, developing more extra-curricular opportunities for all students, an elite sports coaching programme and a programme to stretch and challenge the Most Able students. You can find our improved extra-curricular offer attached to this newsletter. We will keep you updated on how this money is being used
Last year we had a focus with students and staff in ensuring that behaviour was good so that students could learn. We saw a significant improvement in behaviour and we are determined that this will continue this year to ensure that every student’s behaviour and attitude is the best that it can possibly be. At Caldew School we have three rights:
- Students have the right to learn
- Teachers have the right to teach
- Everybody has the right to be safe.
Our expectations, policies and systems are designed to ensure that these rights are in place so that everyone of our students can be successful. Our rewards and consequences systems can be found attached to this letter. If your child receives an achievement log or a consequences log and you will receive a notification.
I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on our students’ successes in last year’s external exams. The results days in August for both A level and GCSE were lovely occasions where we were able to celebrate with both students and parents and other family members. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all our students on their achievements, which are the culmination of years of hard work and study.
At A level we maintained our track record of good results. The vast majority of Year 13 secured their first-choice places at University and on Higher Level Apprenticeships. Our students have gone on to study a wide range of subjects at Universities all over the country including the top Russell Group Universities. They have gone to study subjects such as Law, Medicine, Zoology, Maths, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Psychology, Physics and Nursing at Universities including Oxford, Manchester, Lancaster and Liverpool. I am very sorry to see this cohort of students leave: they have been a lovely group of young people who are credit to the school and we are very proud of them.
We are very pleased with our results at GCSE. The percentage of students achieving a grade 4 or above in both Maths and English has increased and is in line with national figures. The percentage achieving the Ebacc (Maths, English, Science, a Humanity and a Language) at grade 4+ and at 5+ has also improved and will be at least if not above national figures. We saw an improvement in the achievement of high prior attaining student and those students with Special Educational Needs also did well. I am also delighted to see so many students returning to Caldew to continue with their education in the Sixth Form alongside 19 students who have joined us from other schools.
My thanks go to staff and to parents and carers who supported students during the exams.
Yours faithfully
Ms Vicki Jackson
Headteacher