We’re continually posting the beautiful work that you send us from the transition packs. Please keep sending on the work that your sons and daughters are proud of. You can click on the image below to go straight to our transition website.
Category : Front Page News
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G28
You may have noticed on our transition Google Site the name G28.
This is the name of our new Year 7.
G is for Gateshead.
28 is for 2028. Whilst we are an 11-16 school, our mission is for all students to be on a path to university readiness when they leave us. 2028 is the year that they will be accepted to university, if that is what they choose to do.
In Doncaster we have X28 for XP School’s new Year 7, in XP East it’s E28.
We are G28!
#wearexpgateshead
#wearecrew
Beautiful Work
Already we have some beautiful work from students sent as part of their transition work, and some work that they wanted to show that they are proud of. This is lovely to see.
https://sites.google.com/xpgateshead.org/g28-transition-xpg-2021/beautiful-work
Participant information form, including medical details
In addition to the forms you have been completing for us, there is a separate form that needs to be completed for the visit to Ullswater. The form is called the participant information form and includes medical details. The form is completed online.
It is important that you complete the form as fully and as honestly as you can.
The form should take around 15-20 minutes to complete.
The form must be completed by Tuesday 20th July please.
The link to fill in the form is here.
Here is a video explaining how to get set up to fill in the form:
Additional information evening
Due to the rise in COVID cases at the moment, the information meeting for Ullswater will now be online.
This will be hosted in Google Meet at 6pm on Wednesday 14th July.
We will email you with the link to join the meeting.
The meeting will give us an opportunity to show you the site and give you an idea of some of the types of activities that your son or daughter will be doing with their new crew. We will also be able to answer your questions too.
This will be our last meeting together as a community before the Summer break.
It’s official! We have our funding agreement.
Today, we received final confirmation from Katherine Cowell – Regional Schools Commissioner for the North – of our funding agreement. This means that the Secretary of State has agreed to enter into a funding agreement with XP School Trust. We are now officially approved to open on August 31st this year, with our first cohort of 50 students.
The Local Authority have also been informed and arrangements will now be made to officially transfer the places over to our school for our 50 students. We will also soon be in touch with those families that were not successful.
We would like to thank the whole community of Gateshead for their support in helping us to get to this stage. It seems like a long time ago that we first met with families in the Jury’s Inn in November 2019. We would not be where we are now without the support of families across Gateshead, Gateshead Council, New Schools Network, our colleagues in XP School Trust and also our colleagues in schools across Gateshead and beyond too.
Kit list for Outward Bound Ullswater
We are delighted to be able to share with you the kit list for the Outward Bound visit.
Please read this post carefully. Then click on the link at the bottom of the page to see the full kit list.
Some important things to note from the kit list:
Students will need to bring a packed lunch with them on Tuesday 31st August.
The first meal provided by the centre is the evening meal on the Tuesday. We will eat our packed lunches when we get off the coach after arrival at the centre.
Students need to bring a £10 refundable deposit.
We will collect these deposits on the morning of Tuesday 31st August when you drop off you son or daughter.
Crew deposits are pooled together. Any equipment that is damaged due to misuse is covered by the combined crew deposit. We will use this as an opportunity to teach our crews joint responsibility. We expect all crews to act in a way that means they will have their deposit returned to them.
Clothing will get wet and muddy.
There is no need to go out and buy lots of new clothes for the residential. Every course involves water and outdoor adventure. You should choose clothes that you don’t mind your son or daughter getting dirty.
Socks are very, very important.
The centre provide all specialist kit such as walking boots etc. However it is important that the students have a few pairs of thick socks. They do not necessarily need to be specialist walking socks. However it is important that your son or daughter has some thick pairs to help prevent blisters.
You can find the full kit list by clicking here.
Please contact us if any of the items on here are going to be an issue for you to have in place for your son or daughter.
XP iPad purchase scheme
At XP Trust:
- We support and challenge students to be leaders of their own learning
- We pull down the barriers to learning, ensuring social equity
- We encourage creativity; respectful, individual expression
Our approach to technology mirrors this. From September 2021 students must bring their own appropriate device to learn at XP Gateshead – smartphones are not appropriate devices for the classroom.
As we all know, technology continues to improve, and we are now highly recommending that parents purchase the latest iPads, which gives them access to Google Docs and many creative apps such as iMovie, GarageBand and art apps. We believe that iPads are now the best pound-for-pound device for learning.
To enable this to happen for our students, we have created a great value parental contribution scheme which offers all our parents affordable access to the latest iPad with comprehensive insurance.
In our scheme, you are able to buy an iPad with a keyboard case and trackpad, with the option to purchase an Apple Pencil. The case and pencil mean that the iPad can do everything a laptop can, but with the additional creative options that having a touch-screen, camera and pencil allow.
The iPads come with comprehensive insurance with accidental damage covered and no excess. If a device is lost or stolen, it cannot be used, repurposed or reformatted by anyone else.
This cost to parents is significantly cheaper than if you were to buy them from a shop (roughly 20% cheaper), and you get to spread the cost over the payment plan. After the final payment, the iPad is yours to do with as you wish.
The iPads are managed by the school, which means that during school time, only apps needed for school will be available. Out of school, any other apps can be installed by students but they will not be available from 8am to 5pm on school days. During the evenings, weekends and holidays, you can use your iPad freely.
You can order yours here.
Click here to find out more about iPad
XPG Transition Activities – Launch Event
This coming Sunday evening we will be hosting an online video meeting for all of our families and children to launch our transition activities.
The launch event will start at 6pm on Sunday 4th July. It will be around 20 minutes long. The meeting will be hosted in Google Meet, the same platform we have used for our family meetings.
We will send out a link for families to join the meeting this evening via email.
We recognise that due to the pressures of COVID, the experience for children across different primary schools will be different, and they may not all be able to work on the activities in their primary schools on Monday and Tuesday.
The meeting on Sunday will give us a chance to put children at ease over what is being asked of them. Importantly, this meeting will be a chance for our students to see each other online for the first time too.
If you are not able to make the meeting, please let us know by emailing [email protected] . The meeting will be recorded and pertinent parts edited and shared privately for those that are not able to attend.
We are so excited to share our plans with you, and to be able to meet with you as a community for the first time.
We will follow up short Google Meet check-ins at 6pm on Monday 5th July and Tuesday 6th July to get feedback from our children and to celebrate their work.
Dress code and branded clothing
At XP, we believe that:
- Children need to learn to express themselves responsibly.
- Children are not all the same, so they should not be forced to look the same.
- Families would rather spend their money on clothes that their children can wear inside and outside school.
- Our strong community and positive culture will not tolerate any kind of bullying or teasing.
As such we do not have a school uniform. Instead, we have a dress code.
Our dress code
Our dress code asks students and staff to:
Please dress appropriately and modestly.
Dress should not be offensive, dirty, revealing, portray gang membership or sexualise the child.
We should all be clean and hygienic and avoid overpowering perfumed products and the negative effect this has on others.
We encourage students to wear our branded polo shirts for regular day to day learning.
For more guidelines on our dress code and to access the branded clothing shop, please click here.
Transition Days, funding agreement and general updates
The draft funding agreement has now been agreed, so we hope to have the funding agreement signed in the next couple of days.
In the next week we will post updates on our dress code, iPad scheme with our preferred devices for students and the Outward Bound visit too.
Transition Days – Monday 5th July and Tuesday 6th July
It has now been confirmed that the transition days on 5th and 6th July will be virtual due to the rise in cases of the delta variant.
Given that each primary school has perhaps 1-5 students joining us, we are aware that access to ICT and online meeting during these days will be difficult. To ensure equity, we are putting together some paper packs of transition activities that we are going to drop off at primary schools later this week.
We would like to be able to meet with all students online though. Since this is difficult in the primary school setting we propose the following:
- A short Google Meet video meeting with all families on the evening of Sunday 4th July where staff can introduce themselves and we can brief students for their work over the following two days.
- Paper-based work on a min learning expedition for students in school on Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th July. This will include a final product which we will ask students to work on, and bring with them to the first week of term in August.
- Short Google Meet video meetings at home with students on the afternoons of Monday 5th July to check-in on progress and then another short video meeting on Tuesday 6th July to check-out and offer our appreciations.
We will post more details on timings and how to join these meeting later this week too.
Online family meetings
We are delighted to announce that you can now book your online family meeting with us. We would like for your son/daughter and at least one other adult to attend the meeting. The meeting will last for 30 minutes.
We are looking forward to meeting with you as a family, and finding more about your son/daughter.
During the meeting we will discuss our values and expectations through our home/school agreement. We will also share some forms for you to fill in and return as well as a document where you son/daughter can tell us all about themselves.
There will also be an opportunity for you and your son/daughter to ask any questions that you might have. You can also share anything that you would like us to know about your son or daughter too.
You will have received an email with details on how to sign up to a meeting slot. Please contact [email protected] if you have not received that email.