Admissions Second Round – 31st March

4th March 2014Gwyn ap Harri

Thanks to everyone who have let us know straight away whether they will be taking up their offer at XP. After receiving so many passionate messages from parents who desperately want a place at XP, we are pleased to announce there will be a second round of admissions on the 31st March.

The Local Authority will press the randomiser button again and we will be offering the spare places available, so fingers crossed!

We would again like to thank the support of the parents who have been to our meetings and supported the school. It has been overwhelming.

Best of luck!

Dream Team!

21st February 2014Gwyn ap Harri

We are delighted to say that we have recruited our pioneering teachers for the 2014-15 academic year. We are so excited about them as talented individuals, but more so in how their blend of skills will join to create a fantastic team.

Martin Said will join us from Cramlington Learning Village, an internationally renowned school in Northumberland. Martin is Head of ‘Create’ (a cross-subject department including Music, Media and Drama), and also has a Maths and Engineering background. Martin will deputise for Andy when needed. Martin is nationally known as an outstanding Project-based practitioner, and has even had articles published by High Tech High. Here are a couple of projects Martin has worked on: http://stonesinamineshaft.blogspot.co.uk & http://callofthewildproject.blogspot.co.uk

Gemma Thornton will join us from Armthorpe Academy. Gemma has led the creation of a Humanities and Arts theme-based curriculum, and is very experienced in pastoral support. She is a lovely person and an outstanding teacher.

Gemma said in her application letter, “I do not understand why any teacher would not want to teach in a creative environment that personalises learning of the individual student by challenging the way they create, design and develop their work.” – Neither do we, Gemma.

Marc Voltaire comes to us from the Doncaster School for the Deaf as an outstanding PE teacher with Biology background. Again, Marc has very strong pastoral skills, and led a fantastic project to create a multi-sensory nightclub for his students. He also has achieved Level 3 in British Sign Language.

Martin, Gemma and Marc will join Andy as our pioneering teachers at XP. Supporting us will be Anna Switzer, who is from Florida, USA and is an experienced Expeditionary Learning school designer. Anna will join us in April and help our teachers understand and implement the ethos and practice of EL. Our teachers will create our curriculum as their first expedition, and exhibit their plans to our parents.

What a dream team!

 

Example Learning Expeditions Year 7, 2014/15

21st February 2014Mr A Sprakes

XP. School Curriculum Map(Draft) for Year 7 Students 2014/15

The following project ideas are only meant as a guide and are subject to adaptation and/or change depending on the skills, passions and expertise of staff appointed to XP. Therefore, these projects are presented as examples, not exemplars, and will be used as a baseline from which improvements will be made to ensure depth and quality to everything we do at XP. Also, National Curriculum levels will be reviewed and altered where appropriate in line with the changes to assessment at a national level.

First Expedition

Outward Bounds Expedition to North Wales 28 August to 1 September

This will be a fantastic opportunity to live our values of Respect, Courage, Quality, Compassion and No excuses through team building activities.

After the Expedition we will reflect on our experiences and create a presentation about what we learned on our expedition.

Continue reading →

Public Meeting – Keepmoat Stadium 20th February 2014 6pm-7pm

13th February 2014Mr A Sprakes

East Stand

We are hosting a Public Meeting on Thursday 20 February 2014 from 6pm until 7pm, as part of our statutory consultation, as we move towards opening our school in September 2014. We will provide an outline of our proposals and an update on progress.

The meeting will take place at the restaurant in the East Stand so you will need to report to the Commercial and Events Reception that looks out onto the Lake (on the opposite side to the Main Reception).

After the presentation both Andy Sprakes, Principal designate and Gwyn apHarri, Chair of Governors will be available to answer questions about the opening of XP.

We look forward to meeting you next week!

Andy Sprakes and Gwyn ap Harri.

XP School Statutory Consultation

26th January 2014Gwyn ap Harri

The Statutory Consultation for XP School will take place from 24th January 2014 to the 8th March 2014

We would like to know your views about our proposal to open a Free School in Doncaster

Please fill in the consultation form by clicking here

You can download the consultation document by clicking here

It is important we get as many views as possible as this will allow us to enter into a funding agreement with the Secretary of State to open our school in September 2014

There will be a Consultation Event at the Keepmoat Stadium, Lakeside, Doncaster on Thursday 20th February 2014 from 6pm to 7pm

Thank you for your continuing support!

Update Event at Keepmoat

20th December 2013Gwyn ap Harri

Thank you to everyone who came to the Doncaster Rovers Keepmoat Stadium for our update event. The Belle Vue Suite was packed with enthusiastic and passionate parents and their children.

We updated everyone on the site of the school, and revealed that we hoped it would be at Lakeside. We feel there is a very good chance it will be as we have the support of Doncaster MBC, and many community stakeholders such as Doncaster Rovers, Doncaster Chamber of Commerce, and local politicians. We also stated that we would like any temporary accommodation to be at the Keepmoat Stadium. This is all subject to contracts and ongoing negotiations, but we felt it important to let our parents and children know of our intentions and hard work to get the best site possible for our school.

We announced our calendar for 2014/15 and showed how mindful we were being for families with more than one child who would have different holidays in different schools. Our calendar is here.

We announced our Statutory Consultation will go ahead early in the New Year, and that it was important for parents to be as positive as possible.

We updated parents on staff recruitment, and the high calibre of staff we are hoping to recruit. We reiterated that our staff will be highly qualified to teach our children and continue their professional learning as part of the school.

We clarified our admission policy which is here and made our intentions clear to keep parents up to date, meeting the teachers when recruited and being involved in the exhibition of our school curriculum and the pastoral system to support it.

We also announced our first student expedition as being an Outward Bound adventure at Aberdyfi, Wales which will be funded wholly by the school. This will focus on the students’ crews and our character values.

Thanks again, we had some great questions asked by the children and parents, and we would like our website to hold all these answers in the FAQs section. If it doesn’t, please email us your question.

Thanks again, and have a great christmas!

Gwyn and Andy

Update Event for all Applicants!

12th December 2013Gwyn ap Harri

We are holding an
Update Event
at the
Doncaster Rovers Keepmoat Stadium, Belle Vue Suite
at
Lakeside, Doncaster
on
Thursday 19th December 2013
from
6pm to 7pm

Please try to attend this important event if you have applied for your child to attend XP from September 2014

We will be updating you on all aspects of our progress in opening our exciting new school!