- We recommend you personalise the letter as much as possible around your reasons for supporting the school.
- We recommend you submit the letter as the main body of text in an email to the Secretary of State. Contact details are below.
- We suggest you copy in the constituency MPs for our proposed admissions area: Gateshead and Blaydon; their contact details can be found below.
- You may wish to copy in Baroness Berridge, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State using [email protected]
CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Dear Secretary of State,
I am writing to you in my capacity as a parent of a primary school aged child in Gateshead.
XP School opened in 2014 and was rated ‘Outstanding’ in all areas by Ofsted in 2017. XP School and its sister school XP East were both founded after hundreds of parents in their local community demanded something better for their children. Not only were the school’s first set of GCSE outcomes strong, but their innovative curriculum and model of education is having a positive impact on the wider community of Doncaster.
In advance of the spending review, I am getting in touch to add my support to the approval of XP Gateshead. Like you, I want my child and pupils across the country to have the best possible chance in life, as the XP School Trust has worked tirelessly to do.
In the case of XP Gateshead, there is a need for more secondary school places for children in Gateshead right now. Secondary schools across the borough are currently being asked to admit more pupils than their published admissions number. This is not sustainable.
Not only have the XP Gateshead team identified a community that needs a great school, they are proposing to use a beautiful and vacant school building in that community that is currently mothballed. This means that the capital investment needed to open XP Gateshead will see a massive return in terms of the impact I know that the school will have on the area.
The north of the country has been hit hardest by the current pandemic. The approval of XP Gateshead will send a clear message that our children’s education is at the forefront of the government’s agenda in this difficult time.
I would be very interested in discussing this matter with you further and I look forward to receiving your response. I have also sent a copy of this email to Ian Mearns, the MP for Gateshead, Liz Twist, the MP for Blaydon, and Baroness Berridge, Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Department for Education.
Yours sincerely,