Thanks so much to the families that have signed up to the iPad scheme.
If you have already completed the form, there is nothing more that you need to do right now. We will order the iPads on your behalf and organise payment with you at the start of the academic year.
If you have not already done so, please complete the form here to order your child’s iPad.
Here we are at the end of another academic year and what a year it has been! Our students have continued to work hard producing beautiful work and developing their character.
Here are a couple of quotes from our external school review which took place in June, which illustrate the quality of our work:
‘Staff are committed and relentless in their pursuit for culture to be right’
‘Crew is an effective system for ensuring that primarily students are known very well to adults, and that students exist in a safe place to talk with confidence about many issues’
‘The curriculum model, is being implemented successfully, thanks to experienced leaders, as well as collaboration with other experienced leaders across the trust, which is positive’
‘Interpersonal skills are being well developed – students are skilled at listening to others, being respectful and sensitive, as well as in offering advice, critiquing others, and in offering their own opinions and thinking’
We have enjoyed two fantastic Celebrations of Learning with you this week in which we have showcased the work of our students from across the year and it has been wonderful to see your smiles and hear your praise for this work.
It is the staff team at XP Gateshead who enable all of this greatness and I want to celebrate their hard work and efforts. We have an incredibly passionate, professional and skilful team of staff here who exemplify our character values on a daily basis. It is a privilege to work alongside them.
As you know, Mark Lovatt leaves us as Co Principal, taking a wider role across XP Trust. He will continue to support our work at XPG next year as we grow.
XP Trust would like to extend our special thanks to Mark Lovatt who, having been the founding Principal at XP Gateshead, now moves into the Trust to work on developing XP instructional practice and developing leadership. Mark’s work has been highly significant showing that the XP model can be rolled out and work in other parts of the country and he should be proud of the work he has accomplished in the past three years.
There will be a staggered start time for different year groups on Tuesday and we will communicate these details to you prior to the start of the new term. Our website, as always, will be our main channel of communication so please make sure that you have subscribed to this so are alerted when updates are posted.
All that remains is for me to thank you all for your ongoing support this year, thank you for being ‘Crew’. When we work together, in service to each other and with integrity we achieve extraordinary things.
I hope you and your families have a great summer.
Julie Mosley
Principal
G29 Students at XP Gateshead launched their book ‘From The Ground Up’ which answered the guiding question ‘What do the communities of North East England owe to the miners?’ at Seven Stories in Newcastle!
They also celebrated all of their beautiful work from their first year at XPG – you can view a collection of it here!
Year 5 and 6 Students at Plover School launched their awesome new Poetry Anthology ‘At the Coalface’ at a Mining Gala they hosted for their local community – beautiful work!
Over 5 years ago Miss Stewart and Miss O’Neill started their journey with us at Green Top as apprentices. They then progressed and secured Learning Coach positions whilst studying towards a degree in Education. Over the last two years they have both completed their degree and qualified as teachers! We are so unbelievably proud of them both and grateful that we were a part of their special journey. Sadly we didn’t have any teaching positions for them at Green Top so they have secured teaching positions in other schools. Again, we are so, so proud of them! We wish them both lots of luck in their new schools and know that they will be wonderful teachers inspiring many children in the future!
This year we say goodbye to Sue, one of our school cooks. She has been looking after us all for 30 years and we will be sad to see her leave!
We presented Sue with flowers and gifts today and celebrated her time at Green Top!
Good Luck Sue!
Year 9 students from XP and XP East gifted 30 terrariums they created for the residents of the Oaklands Care home this week. The home on Bawtry Road was delighted to accept the miniature indoor gardens, which the residents will look after and keep.
Darren the Oaklands manager is pictured here accepting the terrariums – all of which are low maintenance and were happily handed over to residents.
Ed Miliband shared an update from his Facebook page about XPCC23, praising students for their awesome work and involvement in the conference.
Pizza Party! @ Carcroft School
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
Red Carpet Celebrations @ Plover
Products at the Picnic @ Green Top
Ahoy there, Shakespeare? @ Norton Juniors
Year 10’s Final Year Group Community Meeting @ XP
Jeff’s Law – exciting Expeditions on the horizon! @ XP Comms
Thank you for joining us for another great year of beautiful work and stories from across the XP Trust – we hope you have a wonderful summer!
We’ll see you in September!
XP Comms Crew
G29 Students at XP Gateshead launched their book ‘From The Ground Up’ which answered the guiding question ‘What do the communities of North East England owe to the miners?’ at Seven Stories in Newcastle!
They also celebrated all of their beautiful work from their first year at XPG – you can view a collection of it here!
Year 5 and 6 Students at Plover School launched their awesome new Poetry Anthology ‘At the Coalface’ at a Mining Gala they hosted for their local community – beautiful work!
Over 5 years ago Miss Stewart and Miss O’Neill started their journey with us at Green Top as apprentices. They then progressed and secured Learning Coach positions whilst studying towards a degree in Education. Over the last two years they have both completed their degree and qualified as teachers! We are so unbelievably proud of them both and grateful that we were a part of their special journey. Sadly we didn’t have any teaching positions for them at Green Top so they have secured teaching positions in other schools. Again, we are so, so proud of them! We wish them both lots of luck in their new schools and know that they will be wonderful teachers inspiring many children in the future!
This year we say goodbye to Sue, one of our school cooks. She has been looking after us all for 30 years and we will be sad to see her leave!
We presented Sue with flowers and gifts today and celebrated her time at Green Top!
Good Luck Sue!
Year 9 students from XP and XP East gifted 30 terrariums they created for the residents of the Oaklands Care home this week. The home on Bawtry Road was delighted to accept the miniature indoor gardens, which the residents will look after and keep.
Darren the Oaklands manager is pictured here accepting the terrariums – all of which are low maintenance and were happily handed over to residents.
Ed Miliband shared an update from his Facebook page about XPCC23, praising students for their awesome work and involvement in the conference.
Pizza Party! @ Carcroft School
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
Red Carpet Celebrations @ Plover
Products at the Picnic @ Green Top
Ahoy there, Shakespeare? @ Norton Juniors
Year 10’s Final Year Group Community Meeting @ XP
Jeff’s Law – exciting Expeditions on the horizon! @ XP Comms
Thank you for joining us for another great year of beautiful work and stories from across the XP Trust – we hope you have a wonderful summer!
We’ll see you in September!
XP Comms Crew
We are very excited for our Celebration of Learning at Seven Stories this evening – which includes the launch of your children’s first book – From the Ground Up.
The book will eventually be on sale in the store at Seven Stories for members of the public to buy. For tonight, it will be £10 cash if you would like to purchase a book as we will be selling these directly from the school’s stock.
We look forward to seeing you this evening!
As you know, we are hosting a big event for Year 8 on Thursday evening in school from 6pm. This event will celebrate work from throughout the year, and will also include a preview of the trailer for our film ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’.
Part of the evening will involve a hosted gallery walk from your child.
Please could all Year 8 families complete this Google Form to confirm how many people will be attending the event for your child, and to let us know of any accessibility issues.
As you know, we are hosting a big event for Year 7 tomorrow evening at Seven Stories in Newcastle. This will celebrate their work from throughout the year, including the book launch for From the Ground Up.
Part of the evening will involve a hosted gallery walk from your child.
Please could all Year 7 families complete this Google Form to confirm how many people will be attending the event for your child, and to let us know of any accessibility issues.
At XP Gateshead we have a partnership with Gateshead Music Hub to provide our instrumental music lessons. There are 36 lessons over the course of a financial year from April 2023 until March 2024. Each term is divided into 12 lessons. Each lesson is 30 minutes long. These will be delivered during the school day by staff from Gateshead Music Hub.
We work to make the timetable for instrumental lessons have the least impact on students in terms of missing time from expedition lessons. We ask for a minimum contribution from parents towards the cost of the lessons, this is charged to your ParentPay account on a termly basis.
There are two options for your child’s lessons.
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.
Welcome to our final week of the Summer term. As always, it has been a week filled with hard work from students and staff here at XPG.
Our teachers’ Educator Led Conferences (ELC’s) have taken place this week. This is where adults present their learning to an audience of their peers, sharing their work and success from the year. The high quality work and thinking shared, the integrity and honest reflection from staff and the level of professionalism displayed was simply stunning and a testament to the great staff crew we have at XPG.
The leadership team also presented their work to colleagues from Trust this week in the Annual School Review (ASR). The review is an opportunity to understand and celebrate how well we have done this year and identify our development priorities for the coming year.
On Thursday G28 students who have studied a personalised research project in their Common Mission time presented their work to the rest of their year. Archie presented on complex ideas in cosmology including: spinning black holes and time dilation, Dyson spheres with a focus on how increasing understanding of the universe may make future technological leaps that support the evolution of human intelligence. Holly and Katie presented on criminology and the motivations behind some of history’s most notorious criminals. Bella presented on the difficulties in diagnosing child mental health problems, with a focus on resources available and attitudes in today’s society. All three presentations dealt with complex issues and were presented professionally and sensitively. All four presenters also fielded questions from their audience with accuracy and integrity. A great piece of work – we look forward to more presentations this week from our Year 7s and Charlie in Year 8.
Our Year 8 students interviewed more experts to hear their stories about moving to the UK. This will form part of the celebration of learning for Year 8 later this week on Thursday.
On Friday we enjoyed our final Crew Day of the year. Like always, this day was about building crew but this time, the theme was sport. Students were challenged to design crew mascots which represented their crew, compete in a Sports Quiz then represent their crew in a variety of physical activities: handball, dodgeball, rounders, athletics.
The day finished with awards in a full school community meeting were much anticipated crew totals were announced. Crew Attenborough won the trophy for G29 and for G28, we had a tie with Crew Angelou and Crew Frank.
It was a fantastic day, enjoyed by students and staff alike and the chance to remind ourselves of the importance of crew. Like we say, ‘If we get Crew right, we get everything right’. Huge thanks and congratulations goes to Mr Devitt for coordinating our first Crew Sports Day and to Mr Currie, Miss O’Grady our XP Doncaster colleagues who supported us with the planning and delivery of the event.
PE sessions will take place on Tuesday for Year 8 and Wednesday for Year 7 students this week. Please make sure that your child has a full PE kit.
Our usual extended study and clubs will not run this week due to our two Celebrations of learning. We will run an extended study session on Monday only.
Please see the website post for full details on this event. We expect that families ensure that someone is there to support their child at this event and also ask that students dress formally. Our XP polo shirts are suitable for occasions like this.
Students will remain in school on Tuesday and we will transport students from school to Seven Stories. We would recommend that they bring a healthy packed tea or snack to eat after school. Students will return home with their families after the event.
As above, please see the website post for full details on this event. We expect that families ensure that someone is there to support their child at this event and also ask that students dress formally. Students will remain in school on Thursday. We would recommend that they bring a healthy packed tea or snack to eat after school.
Towards the end of this week, parents will receive a final progress update and review of the year from their child and Crew leader.
As always at the end of term, our students finish at 1:30pm. This allows for a full de-gunge of the school before the Summer break. This one is especially important as we will need to move some of our resources to new spaces in August with our expansion to larger parts of the building.
As usual, if you have any questions please contact your child’s crew leader in the first instance.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Julie Mosley
Co-Principal
“Every young person should learn about climate change in school. It’s marginal to most people’s curriculums – not XP School as you’re such a brilliant school”
Ed Miliband – Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero
After the success of our inaugural conference last year and with climate change at the heart of our activism as a Trust, we held this year’s event on 13th July with the question: If not now, when? If not us, who?
The programme for the evening featured the work and research of our Year 10 students and the contribution of experts from across our region.
Powerful keynote speeches, delivered by six students left the audience in no doubt that the planet is in crisis and action has to be taken now.
What that action might be was ably and inspiringly answered by the panellists taking part in our Q & A.
These were The RT. Hon Ed Miliband MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero; David Pulham, UK Manager Vossloh and Tim Newton, Sustainability officer, Doncaster City Council.
The conference also featured many stalls covering such subjects as Sustainability and ‘greener’ food, as well as scientific demonstrations and break out discussions.
One of the breakout presentations was delivered by Dr Mike Sprakes, Gastroenterologist, Mid Yorks Hospitals NHS Trust and Peter Leighton Jones, Head of Sustainability, Mid Yorks Hospitals NHS Trust.
Their talk focussed on Climate Change and the NHS.
We’re already thinking about next year’s conference – but more importantly if you can pledge to make a difference all year round we can all work together to save our planet. There is no Planet B.
Crew Marsh Transition @ Carcroft School
Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead
Crew 5&6 are loving XP Outdoors @ Plover
