Shirebrook Academy

Great Exam Results and a Great Start
My summer holiday came to a lovely end in August with our fantastic exam results. 79% of pupils gained 5+A*-C passes and 55% of those did so with passes in Maths and English. This represents a real improvement on previous years and is a credit to our students and their families. We are one of the most improved schools in Derbyshire and one of the highest achieving in the area. Our present Year 11 already have some very good results and we are confident our results will continue to rise. We are due for an Ofsted visit this year and I have no doubt they will be impressed with our progress
We have had a calm start to our second year. The whole community is excited by the progress that has been made with the new building and we are now starting to take students, staff and governors on tours of the site. When I go into the building I can now comprehend what the central atrium will feel like and how impressive the size of some of the student break out areas are. I have been able to stand in the area that will be my new office – very exciting!
We have lots planned over the coming year but a date for everyone’s diary is the Christmas Family event on Saturday 26th November from 1.00p.m until 5.00p.m. We hope this will be a real family event and equally as successful as our Community Fun Day.

This year has flown by but it has been a very rewarding one. We have developed lots of new initiatives, put teaching and learning at the centre of everything we do and seen the start of the new building! There has been lots of fun too. Sports day was fantastic and we finished the year with ‘Shirebrook’s got Talent’ – a real treat to see so many students on stage performing.
The staff here have been fantastic and so have the students and wider community. The community fun day was a real success and we are already planning a Christmas event.
I am off to France for a bit of a break but I am really looking forward to the next year. We see our first post-16 students start their education with us and no doubt we will also enjoy watching the new building progress.

On Thursday 7th April I went to Matlock and signed all the final contracts for the new building to start. This has been a long time in the planning and I know many in the community had begun to lose faith in it ever happening at all. I hope that the new school will be a centre for the whole of Shirebrook. We are already working in partnership with Shirebrook Rangers and Bolsover District Council. It was through the partnership with Shirebrook Rangers that we were able to secure a bid from the Football Foundation to build a 3G pitch. Once the building is finished Shirebrook Rangers intend to use the facilities as their hub for the growing number of teams they have. The new facilities will have first class ICT, conference and dining facilities, a full sized Sports Hall and 3D cinema screen, all of which will be available for community activities. As the building work starts over Easter this is an exciting time for the whole community. Staff and students will be keeping an eye on the progress through the webcam on the website while we are on holiday!

We have had a lovely start to the new half term. This week has been reading/literacy week with an emphasis on encouraging students to read and understand the importance of literacy skills in their life. On Monday morning staff dressed as characters from their favourite novels. Chosen favourites were as varied as P.G. Woodhouse and the Bertie Wooster collection to one of my favourite novels as a teenager, the Lord of the Rings. Students have been treated to storytelling in the newly refurbished library, spelling quizzes in form time, activities in lessons and reading marathons. Assemblies have also emphasised the importance of literacy through a short film made by our media students. Literacy will remain high on our agenda over the coming years and we are planning more events including expanding the reading some of our students are doing in our primary feeder schools.

Working closely with all our partner primary schools is very important to us at the Academy. Last week we had a very successful literacy conference together. From this a number of exciting joint activities’ around literacy have been agreed. Our own launch on literacy is due to take place after half term and this coincides with the opening of our library that has had a complete refurbishment over the last 6 weeks
I was very privileged last week to accompany a group of our gifted and talented triple science students to AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals PLC in Cheshire. The students were treated to a tour of the facilities including the small and large scale chemistry, dispensary robotics and the protein crystallography department. The scientists all took time out of their busy working day to explain their work to the students and in return our students were an absolute delight. It was lovely to hear one of our boys say he had decided that X-ray crystallography was the career for him!! His trip to Cambridge University at Easter should help to confirm for him the benefits of a University education.

It has been another busy but eventful week at Shirebrook. I have had meetings with Chesterfield College and Shirebrook Rangers as we continue to plan our post-16 offer in partnership with Chesterfield and the final agreements before the builders begin work on our new building.

On Wednesday Year 11 attended taster sessions held at the Academy by Chesterfield College in Construction courses and Health and Social Care. It was great to see some ex-students working with our students to help them understand the demands of the various courses and the benefit of continuing to study post-16.

The student council have been active this week. I met with the School Council and we looked at vending machines and made more plans for our Reading Week in February and Healthy Week in March. As usual they had some great ideas and I know they are sharing these in Year groups. A group of our councillors also worked with the student council from Park Juniors to prepare a presentation about sport and the need for extra funding for sporting activities across our family of schools.

We also had a visit from members of the Royal Society of Chemistry who met with Science teachers from across the region to look at developing safe but exciting practical lessons in science. The training was well received by all those involved.

On Thursday Year 9 treated us to an exhibition over lunch. They have been working on sculpture ideas for the main entrance to the new building. There is no doubt we have some excellent artists in the year group and the standard of the work was very impressive.

Finally, I was delighted this week by another increase in the number of people attending our community night on a Thursday. This week many parents came and I believe a fun tournament was played in table tennis. If you would like to join us (any age) for table tennis, holiday Spanish or teen gym (young people only) from 6 until 7.30, it is free to come along and you are very welcome.

A delightful group of students came to talk to our governors last night about some of the activities they had been involved in at the Academy. Key Stage 4 students talked about the ‘Raising Girls Achievement Group’ and the recent trip they had made to the theatre to see Swan Lake. Some Media students impressed governors with their film making and the creativity of their ideas. Year 9 students told governors about the Christmas hampers they had collected for in form time, the scarves they had knitted to go in the hampers and the thank you cards received from members of the community. Finally, a Year 7 boy talked about the reading club he attends on a Monday lunch-time.

I am always impressed by the charm and good behaviour of our students. However, I am often saddened by the number of visitors to the Academy who arrive ready to enter a school with poor behaviour having been told that it is ‘tough’ at Shirebrook by people from outside the community who have never visited! I do think this acts as a barrier to our students as so many in the wider community have already judged them without knowing the reality. Certainly the governors got to see Shirebrook students at their best last night!

Welcome to Shirebrook Academy website. We are committed to ensuring that every Shirebrook Academy student meets their maximum potential and we will equip all of them with the best possible education during their time with us, so that they are fully prepared to succeed in their chosen careers and be active and responsible citizens of the society in which they live and work.

Shirebrook Academy is at the heart of the Shirebrook community; working to raise aspirations and to improve the future prosperity and regeneration of the local area. We want to encourage community use of the Academy, and when we move to state-of-the-art new buildings this will further develop opportunities for community activities and involvement.

The new Academy offers a rare opportunity for a group of students transferring to secondary school. They can grow with us as we expand in size and they will have the opportunity to stay on at the Academy until they are 18 as we develop our post-16 provision. We want to offer courses in our specialist subjects and support the collaborative model of learning across North-East Derbyshire for post-16 provision. We have an exceptional sponsor in ALLRoads, the highways contracting arm of Derbyshire County Council. In addition we are privileged to have Sheffield Hallam University working with us as our educational partner. Both are committed to supporting our dual specialisms of Science and Construction. They will provide substantial additional resources to develop new and exciting opportunities for learning and work experience.

Our aspiration is for the Academy to be a confident and caring environment that will equip your child for life in the future. Students at Shirebrook Academy will be given opportunities to gain confidence as they grow into young adults. They will be listened to and be expected to listen. They will be given responsibility and will be expected to take it on. They will be given excellent advice and guidance and we hope they will pass that on to others while making the best use of it themselves. I genuinely look forward to meeting you and to working with you and your child in the future

Julie Bloor

Principal