Dear Year 6 Families

We are delighted to be able to announce the calendar of transition events that we have planned to welcome your children and your family into our community at XP Gateshead.

More details on each of these events will follow in due course, but here is an overview of the activities so that you can plan ahead and discuss this with your child.

Online Family Meetings

This week we will send details of how to sign up for an online family meeting. Meetings will be in the fortnight commencing 29th April. These take place via Google Meet during the evening and are with a senior leader in the school. The meetings are a first chance for us to meet you and your child, to find out about them and discuss our expectations as a school. Your meeting will last up to 30 minutes. We will send details of how to book an appointment to you on 16th April.

Primary School Visits

We aim to visit every child in their Primary School this term. This is done by members of our transition team and means that as well as seeing your child in an educational setting, they get to know another friendly face before they come to us.

In-Person Information Evening for parents/carers

We will be holding an In-Person Information Evening at our school on 23rd May at 6pm.

It is vital that all families attend as we will give important information about the Outward Bound course that takes place for all students at the start of Year 7 as well as our iPad scheme. In addition, we will address some of the misconceptions about our school so that families are completely clear on what we are: ‘A mainstream school with a relentless focus on beautiful work, character growth and academic success’, and also what we are not. There will be an opportunity for you to ask us questions too of course.

Transition Days at XP Gateshead

Your children will join us in school on Tuesday 2nd July and Wednesday 3rd July. Again more details of these days will follow in due course. Like a regular school day, students can arrive in school from 8:00am but need to be present by 8:25am. Our school day finishes at 3:15pm.

Your child will follow a typical day at XPG on both days which include some crew sessions, expedition sessions and a community meeting.

Meet your child’s Crew Leader

Following the transition days, on Tuesday 9th July we will invite parents and carers into school in the evening to meet your child’s new Crew Leader. We expect all families to attend this event. We are proud of the strong relationships that we form with families at XP Gateshead and this is an important opportunity for you to begin to build that relationship with the person that will be the key adult for your child when they start with us. As well as our cross-curricular learning expeditions, our pastoral structure Crew is what sets us apart from other schools.

We start school earlier than other schools in the local authority to allow for the Outward Bound experience. Our first day of term is Tuesday 27th August. More info on our term dates can be found by clicking here.

Information Gathering

A huge thanks to all of those families that have completed the Google Form to let us know about you and your child. Please can all families complete these forms as soon as possible.

New starter: Google Form

Parent/Carer voice Google Form

We will also gather information from Primary Schools over the coming term so that we build a clear picture of your child and how we can support and challenge them to be the best version of themselves and see success.

Dear Year 6 Families

We are delighted to be able to announce the calendar of transition events that we have planned to welcome your children and your family into our community at XP Gateshead.

More details on each of these events will follow in due course, but here is an overview of the activities so that you can plan ahead and discuss this with your child.

Online Family Meetings

This week we will send details of how to sign up for an online family meeting. Meetings will be in the fortnight commencing 29th April. These take place via Google Meet during the evening and are with a senior leader in the school. The meetings are a first chance for us to meet you and your child, to find out about them and discuss our expectations as a school. Your meeting will last up to 30 minutes. We will send details of how to book an appointment to you on 16th April.

Primary School Visits

We aim to visit every child in their Primary School starting from the week commencing 20th May. This is done by members of our transition team and means that as well as seeing your child in an educational setting, they get to know another friendly face before they come to us.

In-Person Information Evening for parents/carers

We will be holding an In-Person Information Evening at our school on 23rd May at 6pm.

It is important that all families attend as we will give important information about the Outward Bound course that takes place for all students at the start of Year 7 as well as our iPad scheme. In addition, we will address some of the misconceptions about our school so that families are completely clear on what we are: ‘A mainstream school with a relentless focus on beautiful work, character growth and academic success’, and also what we are not. There will be an opportunity for you to ask us questions too of course.

Transition Days at XP Gateshead

Your children will join us in school on Tuesday 2nd July and Wednesday 3rd July. Again more details of these days will follow in due course. Like a regular school day, students can arrive in school from 8:00am but need to be present by 8:25am. Our school day finishes at 3:15pm.

Your child will follow a typical day at XPG on both days which include some crew sessions, expedition sessions and a community meeting.

Meet your child’s Crew Leader

Following the transition days, on Tuesday 9th July we will invite parents and carers into school in the evening to meet your child’s new Crew Leader. We expect all families to attend this event. We are proud of the strong relationships that we form with families at XP Gateshead and this is an important opportunity for you to begin to build that relationship with the person that will be the key adult for your child when they start with us. As well as our cross-curricular learning expeditions, our pastoral structure Crew is what sets us apart from other schools.

We start school earlier than other schools in the local authority to allow for the Outward Bound experience. Our first day of term is Tuesday 27th August. More info on our term dates can be found by clicking here.

Information Gathering

A huge thanks to all of those families that have completed the Google Form to let us know about you and your child. Please can all families complete this form as soon as possible. 

We will also gather information from Primary Schools over the coming term so that we build a clear picture of your child and how we can support and challenge them to be the best version of themselves and see success.

A warm welcome to all of the Year 6 families that have been lucky enough to be offered a place at XP Gateshead for your child to join Year 7 in August 2024.

Please check your emails as we have sent you the details that are in this post below.

You will no doubt have lots of questions, but rest assured, all of these will be answered over the coming months of transition. At XP Gateshead we spend a lot of time getting to know our students and families prior to starting with us and we have a range of transition activities planned to allow this to happen. 

There are two forms for you to complete as family:

1. XPG – New Year 7 Admissions Form Aug 24 

There are lots of questions to complete on these forms, please take your time. It is vital that we have up to date and relevant information for all of our students (contact details, medical information, dietary requirements, school meal entitlements). We have also included sections here which ask for your permissions around media consent and fieldwork.

2. XPG New to school Parent/Carer Voice Aug 24

This form is really important to us and gives you the chance to share more details about your child with us.  It’s the start of us building an individual picture of your child and getting a better understanding of them. 

In addition to gathering this information from you as a family we will also communicate with your child’s primary school to ensure we have the fullest picture of your child and how we can support and challenge them.

Our wider transition programme will include an online meeting with you and your child as a family, primary school visits and a transition day in the summer term. We will publish a timeline of these events soon.

Our website xpgateshead.org contains a wealth of information and should be a start in answering your questions, in particular the frequently asked questions section is useful for new parents.

It is really important that you subscribe to our website by entering your email contact in the section on our front page as this will update you with an email every time we post some new information.

Families will be added to our private Facebook group once we have carried out the online family meetings.

Should you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact [email protected].

Thank you again for choosing XP Gateshead, we really look forward to working with you and your child over the next five years.

Julie Mosley

Principal 

XP Gateshead

Our Open Evening this week is now fully booked

Due to high demand and our limited size and space in our current temporary building, we have had to limit the number of places at the event. If you have not registered to attend, please do not turn up on the evening as we will not be able to accommodate you.

More information about our school

Our website is also a valuable source of information and will give you a real flavour of the rigour of XP and our relentless focus on academic success, character growth and beautiful work.

We have put together an information website for families that were are not able to attend which you can find here.

Frequently asked questions can be found here.

We look forward to meeting lots of year 6 families this week.

Julie Mosley

Principal

XP Gateshead

Beautiful Work – Character Growth – Academic Success

We are pleased to be able to announce more details for our Open Evening on Tuesday 3rd October at 6pm. This is an event for prospective families that are considering XP Gateshead as a destination school for their children in the next academic year (from September 2024).

Signing up to the event

As we are anticipating high interest in these evenings and due to our limited size and space in our current temporary building, you will need to sign up for this event to be able to attend.

We are limiting the number of places to three places per family, including your child in Year 6.

Please do not sign up if your children are currently in Year 5 or below. This will mean that we can accommodate as many Year 6 families as possible.

TO SIGN UP FOR THE EVENT PLEASE CLICK HERE

More information about our school

Our website is also a valuable source of information and will give you a real flavour of the rigour of XP and our relentless focus on academic success, character growth and beautiful work.

Last year we put together an information website for families that were not able to attend which you can find here.

Frequently asked questions can be found here.

We look forward to meeting you.

Julie Mosley

Principal

XP Gateshead

If you would be interested in signing up for instrumental music lessons, please complete this form.

To be clear, this is not a commitment from you at this stage. This is an expression of interest.

As you know a school-managed iPad is part of the standard kit required of students in secondary schools across XP Trust. We have brokered a successful Parental Contribution Scheme to enable this for all our children for the last 4 years and continue to do this again for 2023/24.

The iPad scheme for September 2023 includes:

• An iPad 9th Generation

• A logitech keyboard and trackpad

• AppleCare + for two years 

• Jamf – (device management and security)

• A glass screen protector

We will have a bank of Apple Pencils for use in Art and Design sessions. You are welcome to purchase an apple pencil of your own, should you wish, and we would recommend either:

• Apple Pencil – Touch sensitive
• Skriva – Not touch sensitive but does shade on the angle of the nib. 

The extended warranty is covered by Apple for the first two years. You handle your own claims through an app. Further information can be found here:

https://www.apple.com/uk/support/products/ipad/ 

There is a claim excess for broken screens at £29, we will supply a glass screen protector free of charge. This will be checked regularly by Crew Leaders as part of our kit checks. 

You can get support and make warranty claims here: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/apple-support/id1130498044

Loss or theft of the iPad needs to be covered by your personal home insurance.

Cost of the scheme

The total retail cost of these items bought separately would be £598. Through our new purchase scheme the cost to you is £451.

This balance will be applied to your Parent Pay account and you can manage your own payments. Here are a few options.

• £12.53 per month for 36 months (£2.89 a week)
• £18.79 per month for 24 months (£4.44 a week)
• Pay the balance at any time within three years at comfortable amounts for your circumstances.
• Speak with your child’s Crew Leader if you need financial support with this.

At the end of your child’s time in school the device can be kept by the family if the balance has been paid in full.

To order your child’s ipad, please complete this Google Form.

What a delight it has been to welcome your children into their new school for the last two days. A reminder that on Thursday we have an event in school for adults from families at 5pm.

This is an opportunity to reinforce some really important messages, and to meet your child’s Crew Leader.

Children do not need to come to this event.

You can follow live updates throughout the day on our Twitter feed here. Smiles all round!

For year 6 students, each day will start at 9.00am with students able to arrive from 8.40am.

Each day will end at 3.15pm.

Lunches

Students can have a delicious school lunch or a packed lunch.If you have not already done so, please can you complete this form to let us know of your child’s dinner choices for each day.

Dress Code

Some students choose to come in their primary school uniform or PE kit, however this is not necessary. Students need to dress modestly and appropriately for a day of learning in school. More details of our dress code can be found here.

Students will be introduced to PE at XP on Monday, so we recommend trainers and clothing appropriate for sports on Monday so that a change of clothes is not needed.

Plans for the days

Our guiding question for the two days will be:

“What will it take for me to be the best version of myself at XP?”

Monday 3rd July

On Monday students will experience Crew, Humanities and English, PE and Art.

We will end the day with a Community Meeting where students will make appreciations to each other connected to our character traits of courage, respect, integrity, craftsmanship & quality, and above all compassion.

Tuesday 4th July

On Tuesday students will have another Crew session as well as Spanish and STEAM sessions in Maths and Science.

Again we will finish the day with a Community Meeting to celebrate the beautiful work and character of our newest students over the two days.

Thursday 6th July – Meet your child’s Crew Leader

Our ‘Meet the Crew Leader’ will be hosted in school. This is an important opportunity for families to meet their child’s Crew Leader and being forming the strong relationship that will be needed to support and challenge your child to become the best version of themselves. This event is for adults from families only, you do not need to bring your child to this event.

This event will start at 5pm on Thursday evening and is expected to last for around 45 minutes.

We are so excited to welcome G30 into their new school next week, and meeting you all again on Thursday.