Dear Families
As you know, we put out a consultation to families about our term dates for the next two academic years.
We received 78 responses to our consultation, 36 from G29 families, 39 from G28 families and 2 from our new G30 families. These are shown here:
Thank you to those parents who shared details about the challenges they faced when our holiday dates have not lined up with Gateshead schools. It was very sobering to read how some parents have had to take unpaid leave from work to cope with mismatched holidays and how difficult some families were finding not having holiday time together. Some families shared the frustrations of their children being unable to spend time with friends from other schools during holidays or join local holiday clubs when term dates did not align.
In light of this consultation we have decided that, from the next academic year (2023/2024), we will better align our holiday dates with Gateshead Schools where possible. This means we will commit to changing our half term holiday breaks to align with other Gateshead schools. Please see our new XP Gateshead holidays in the diagrams at the bottom of this post.
As stated, there are some holiday dates that we cannot change – Christmas, Easter, Summer – this is due to the set length of term time we need for our expeditions. All XP Trust schools keep the Easter break in the same position to maintain the usual length of the term, around which we plan the content and calendars for the Spring and Summer learning expeditions.
We appreciate that changing dates at this stage may affect some families with holidays booked. We will honour these holiday dates and authorise any absence. Please contact us at [email protected] if you are in this situation.
So, for the next two years, our calendars are shown below. As soon as Gateshead LEA release 2025/26 term dates we will publish ours for 2025/26 with alignment of half term holiday breaks.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at [email protected].
Thank you as always for your support.
Julie Mosley
Co-Principal