Letter to Year 7 parents from the Principal, 7.2.2025

7 February 2025

Dear Parents/Carers of Year 7,

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey that I shared with you earlier in the month. This closed on Monday 27^th January and has 117 respondents.

The design of the survey is one that I have used over the past 3 years, assisting with making direct comparisons. The questions are taken directly from the Ofsted ParentView survey and then I have added an open response box to the end, to allow parents to give specific details and examples where I can gain an even greater understanding of the successes or areas for improvement.

In terms of successes, I am pleased to see that the vast majority of respondents agreed that:

their child is happy at Cottenham Village College,
their child does well,
the school has high expectations,
the school makes sure the pupils are well behaved,
their child feels safe at school,
their child can participate in clubs and activities.

Areas for us to work on:

The school makes me aware of what my child will learn through the year.	I have asked Mrs Goudie to look at what we share with parents and how we share it, so that we can improve this offer. On Monday 27^th January, we also discussed this with our LGC (Local Governance Committee) to get some additional feedback from current and past parent governors on what worked well and not so well. We will provide an update on this before the end of February 2025.
My child has SEND and the school gives them the support to succeed.	Although the numbers of respondents in this category was small, not all parents agreed that this is in place. I have asked Mrs Chipps, SENCO, to meet with Mr Winter and myself to review the arrangements in place for students and contact individual families to follow up.
Cost of residential trips for activities week	I have tasked Mr Winter with going back again to the company who provide the Year 7 residential experience to see if there is anything they can change in the programme to make the trip more affordable. Unfortunately, taking large groups of 160+ students away to one location in July means there are limited sites who are willing/have availability, and this is not the same as being able to take a group of 30/60 students to one location. We must book places over a year in advance to be able to guarantee a space at this time of year, as there is a lot of competition between schools. Mr Winter will come back to you with more information on the residential trip or the alternative in-school offer for activities week.
Challenge of the maths curriculum for students who excelled at primary school.	I have met today with the leaders of maths to review the mid-year assessment data for maths to be able to plan the second half of year 7 now that we have more information on the cohort. Appropriate challenge is key to the planning moving forwards.

I want you to know that I am absolutely committed to continuing to improve the school experience for your child and for you as parents, the feedback that you have shared is being directly used to influence the work that is taking place this term. I will work with the members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to move forwards with improvements.

I appreciate, from my own experience as a parent, that the transition from the systems in a small primary school to a larger secondary school can be confusing. Therefore, before I sign off, I thought it would be helpful to outline the roles of some of the senior leaders in relation to Year 7, to make it clearer who has responsibility for key areas in the school (whereas this may all have been with the headteacher in a Primary setting) so that parents are clear on the structure in place at school.

Mrs Goudie, Vice Principal	Quality of Education, curriculum, resources, homework.
Mr Crisford, Vice Principal	Behaviour and attitudes, student culture and conduct, rewards and sanctions.
Mrs McKeand, Vice Principal	Safeguarding, bullying.
Miss Parker, Assistant Principal	Assessment and reporting.
Mr Winter, Assistant Principal	Year 6-7 transition, student enrichment, Head of Year 7
Mrs Chipps, Assistant Principal	Special Educational Needs (SEN).

The form tutor is the first port of contact for all parents, should this not provide the solutions required, then Mr Winter is the second port of call.

Yours sincerely,

Zoe Andrews, Principal